Slava wrote:
> But with replacement characters, having a UTF8 default with no
> indication that it is UTF8 would lead to confusion among newbies
> attempting to read binary files.
Let's assume the newbie is living in mandatory encoding parameter land.
The newbie, being a typical newbie, learned about <file-writer> by seeing it
used in some code. He saw "..." utf8 <file-writer>.
Statistically speaking, based on encoding distributions, he is most
likely to
see that incantation, with the 'utf8'.
Now, this guy is a newbie. We're talking, Factor is his first programming
language. So, what does he do? He pastes that code into his program when
trying to read his jpeg... and confusion ensues.
I think it's an awful idea to optimize for the newbie at the expense of the
hacker and elegance of the language.
It's even more awful that a design desicion made on behalf of the imagined
newbie doesn't even help that much.
What if the "newbie" doesn't want to read binary, but wants to read text? He's
forced to choose from one of four symbols. This guy's never programmed
before. Are you ready to give him a tutorial on unicode? If so, be prepared
for more confusion. Why?
I know veteran programmers who are confused by unicode
When newbies (like students in cs classes) have programming assignments, isn't
it common for them to have to read from "text" files?
And never mind that newbies are more likely to read from text than from
binary. Just look at the core Factor implementation. Or the contributed
libraries. Even we use utf8 the most.
Going with a default of "utf8" and an optional setting of "binary" (for the
arguably exceptional cases) is more beneficial to newbies and, I would argue,
is a "humane interface" in the spirit of Jef Raskin.
Ed
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