RE: draft-hoffman-utf16-01.txt available

["Martin J. Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>]

At 16:33 99/02/03 -0500, Francois Yergeau wrote:
> タ 00:10 04/02/99 +0900, Martin J. Duerst a 馗rit :

> >I agree. But I think going the other way would be equally fatal:
> >Not defining things clear enough, and just do handwaving.
> 
> It's not mere handwaving, the basic distinction between UTF-16 and
> UTF-16BE/LE is that the former doesn't tell you byte order while the latter
> does.  The BOM issue is secondary, is unclear and will probably remain
> soemwhat unclear because of the fact that the BOM does double-duty with the
> ZWNBSP.  

I disagree. Whether you tell the byte order or not is obviously
very related to whether you need the BOM or not.

If we start with the premise that the BOM is unclear and then
write the document, we will have a self-fulfilling promize.
We can have the same self-fulfilling promize if we separate
things clearly.

And exactly because of the double-duty of the BOM and the ZWNBSP,
it is very helpful to say exactly where we expect a BOM and where not.

Regards,   Martin.


#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, World Wide Web Consortium
#-#-#  mailto:duerst@w3.org   http://www.w3.org