[Haskell-cafe] Re: Strings and utf-8

[Maurí­cio]

 >> Language of messages is quite different
 >> from language of a file you read. (...)

 > Yes, it's a fundamental limitation of the
 > unix locale system and multi-user
 > systems. However it's no less wrong than
 > just picking UTF8 all the time. (...)

Am I wrong to think that UTF8 should be THE
standard? I believe it can encode anything
encoded by other encodings.

Can't we consider non-utf8 text as "legacy"?
I don't like that word, but I do think it is
the right way to go for text. If you know
your text has a diferent encoding, just use
'iconv' to convert it, or a special Haskell
library for conversion.

That will make life difficult for a few, but
make life a lot easier for programers and
users.

Maurício