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

[Johan Tibell]

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

All the UTF-* encodings can encode the same code points. There are
different trade offs though.

> 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.

The important thing (I think) is to have an abstract concept that
encompasses all the necessary characters (i.e. Unicode) and then a few
well specified encodings with different trade offs. A Unicode Haskell
library should handle at least a few of them (and more importantly
keep track of the encoding.)

-- Johan