Eric Ray wrote: > 1. The library does not really evaluate the Japanese characters > to make logical decisions. We believe base64 encode the > character array to avoid any "bad things happening in the code" > (such as hitting a null value or other values that could > potential cause problems).
Hint: consider revising your project on the light of the fact that both Unicode (ISO 10646) and the Japanese character set (JIS X 0208) have ASCII-compatible "multibyte" formats. Unicode's ASCII-compatible format is called UTF-8. The most popular JIS ASCII-compatible format is called EUC. ASCII-compatible means that all byte in the ASCII range (0-128) are only used for ASCII characters. So, among other things, no "bad things" happen with null terminators or control characters. For UTF-8, see Unicode's FAQ <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html> or read the historical RFC which proposed it <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2279.html>. BTW, base64 was also the base of an obsolete Unicode format called UTF-7. Searching UTF-7 on the web, you'll find a few information and lots of bitter comments about why this approach is obsolete. _ Marco
