Re: shift_jis / windows-31J

[Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>]

* Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>It would only break if the content they consumed contained code points  
>that mapped to invalid characters and they relied on that, though. And the  
>content was not relying on being mapped to the superset mapping of  
>Windows-31J instead, which seems far more likely given the dominance of  
>the Web and Windows.

The prime example problem with shift_jis is the ambiguity of the octet
0x5C which maps to a backslash for some and to the yen sign for others.
As far as I am aware, 0x5C is not invalid and this particular problem
is not a matter of supersets and subsets, you get 0x5C and you do not
know whether you should interpret it as yen sign or backslash. And it's
not going to change, systems built around one interpretation will use
that interpretation, systems built around the other interpretation will
stick with their interpretation aswell. If you have two web services
that exchange data they may be running on Windows and on the Web, but
they may not be using the Windows/Browser/whatever interpretation.
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