3 ms·
The fact that in Windows-speak 'unicode' and 'UCS-2' (an encoding) have been used as synonyms has caused a universe of confusion. Even after I grokked the diffe
by tragomaskhalos 4y ago
The fact that in Windows-speak 'unicode' and 'UCS-2' (an encoding) have been used as synonyms has caused a universe of confusion. Even after I grokked the difference I still had arguments with colleagues who remained bamboozled by it. The fact that for a brief time there were only 64k code points, so that you could sort-of fudge the distinction, only made things worse in the long run.
- xurukefi 4y agoIn my experience, most technical people these days still don't know the difference between UTF-8 and Unicode for example.
- Tempest1981 4y agoIs this the best reference? Too detailed? https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minimum-every-software-developer-absolutely-positively-must-know-about-unicode-and-character-sets-no-excuses/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minim...
- aew4ytasghe5 4y agoYou found a quality link.
- ChrisSD 4y agoIt does simplify things in places. One thing that isn't covered is that a code point is not necessarily a letter or vice versa. E.g. a single letter/symbol/emoji/whatever can be made up of multiple code points. So it isn't quite true that one "platonic" letter is one code point (it may or may not be).
- Spivak 4y agoIf you deal with strings in Python 3 it kinda forces this distinction on you and I think is right to do so. It makes you painfully aware when you're assuming the world is utf-8.
- fluoridation 4y agoNote that Windows uses UTF-16, not UCS-2.
- scurvy_steve 4y agoIt uses what's sometimes referred to as WTF-16. It's UTF-16 but with no actual guarantee that its well formed(i.e. invalid surrogate pairs).