3 ms·
> PostScript allows characters to have names instead of only numbers All defined Unicode codepoints do have names. "Mathematical Monospace Capital C" is codepo
by corty 6y ago
> PostScript allows characters to have names instead of only numbers
All defined Unicode codepoints do have names. "Mathematical Monospace Capital C" is codepoint U+1D672. Using character names as an encoding is inefficient but valid, you can do so in e.g. Perl: $foo = "\N{MATHEMATICAL MONOSPACE CAPITAL C}";
Btw., Perl is the one language I would point out for really excellent Unicode support, I know of none that comes even close.
- zzo38computer 6y agoYes, although that is not the point. PostScript isn't using character names as an encoding; there is an array to specify which character names are being encoded, so that you can encode everything with numbers instead. But I agree it isn't really that good; having a character set name and then the numbers, would be better, I think. PostScript supports that too, though.
- g-b-r 6y agoOne of the requisites of a normal character set, and one of the aims of Unicode in particular, is random access, if you have references to an array it's a different thing, that in many contexts can't work
- mcswell 6y agoI won't disagree with you about Perl, but Python comes close, including in its support of Unicode character properties in regex's using the newer regular expression library (https://pypi.org/project/regex/ https://pypi.org/project/regex/).