> 3. The multi-byte support, as it currently exists, is founded on a particular
> philosophy, one which I argue is not the most pragmatic. In the East Asia
> that I know and love, multibyte support, as a rule, is an ugly hack on top
> of unibyte tools and infrastructure. The exception is end-to-end Unicode
> systems, which can be relied on to produce predictable data. However, I've
> never encountered a native Simplified Chinese GB application in which it
> was the least bit difficult to produce "illegal" code sequences. In a
> real-world environment, with email attachments, cut-and-paste, and whatnot,
> it's practically inevitable.
I am supprised to hear that you have so poor quality tools that
produce illegal code sequences of Simplified Chinese. In Japan, as far
as I know, we never have such a low quality tools which generate
illegal Japanese charaters just because they are not accepted in the
market, even in the case of email attachments, or cut-and-past or
whatever. I would like to hear from one living in others countries
such as Taiwan or Korea about their situations.
Anyway, IMHO letting users know that they have corrupted data is much
better than making them believe that their data are ok.
--
Tatsuo Ishii