On May 23, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Jim Allan wrote:
John W Kennedy wrote:
If you have something to blame Microsoft for, then document it, as
people have for the OOXML fiasco or discrepancies from standard
HTML, or some of their dirty tricks or mistatements.
Your comment about broken glue doesn’t make sense to me at all.
ODBC is, by definition, a many-languages-to-many-databases interface.
If it had the kind of proprietary crap that Microsoft traditionally
smears all over standards, it wouldn't work at all.
Microsoft currently uses UTF-16 internally which can use initial
BOM. So there is nothing wrong there with Microsoft using initial
BOM. Check the Unicode manual.
What has that to do with the question of whether or not Microsoft has
vandalized UTF-8?
UTF-8 does not define a BOM, and does not need one. However, one is
often encountered, which frequently causes trouble, because the damn
thing is invisible, and typically manifests itself as a phantom syntax
error. I have /heard/ that this evil practice started with Microsoft,
but I do not know. Perhaps someone else here does.
--
John W Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract,
Man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams. "Bors to Elayne: On the King's Coins"
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