On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 02:41:48PM +0400, Dmitry Stogov wrote:
> I'm not completely against it. It's just an incomplete solution.
>
> echo "\u{1F602}"; // won't output 😂 if the output encoding is not UTF-8
>
> echo "Привет \u{1F602}"; // won't output anything useful if script
> encoding is not UTF-8
>
> The second problem present even for European counties that use Windows-1250
> codepage.
I think that we need to clarify what we are talking about.
What Andrea has proposed is a way of writing string constants. These characters
in these strings will still be 8 bits big, this means that there needs to be
some way of encoding characters with code points that will not fit in 8 bits.
The only way of avoiding that would be to use, internally, 32 bit characters --
which would be a huge change.
So: we need to have some form of encoding.
As I started ''a way of writing string constants'' - ie a *compile* time action.
With the code below it is likely that at *run-time* mb_internal_encoding() has
been called before the echo is executed or the 'Content-Type:' header specifies
some encoding.
> echo "mañana \u{1F602}"; // won't output anything useful if script
> encoding is not UTF-8
This is not something that the compiler can guess.
It is even worse if my proposal of \U{arabic letter alef} types is added, how is
that encoded ? UTF-8 or iso-8859-6 or .... ?
So, how do we fix the problem ?
* mb_internal_encoding($new_encoding) finds every string (variable and constant)
and converts from the previous encoding to the $new_encoding.
Possible, but horribly slow and would prob break things (eg strings that
contain binary data).
Not a good idea.
* Decide that UTF-8 is king.
That is what I have decided - but I do not have any legacy code to worry about
-- being a Brit I don't have to worry much.
* Rely on the programmer to understand encoding and know what the eventual
output encoding will be and if it is not UTF-8 write characters using \Xxx or
use mb_convert_encoding($string, $output_encoding, 'utf-8').
If we decide to support non-utf-8 encoding at compile time then we could extend
the syntax a bit to allow the encoding to be specified, eg:
\U{utf-8: arabic letter alef}
\U{iso-8859-6: arabic letter alef}
Ie, allow this to be optionally specified and terminated by ':'. If not
specified then assume utf-8.
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Alain Williams
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