On Mar 17, 2012, at 2:28 PM, Christophe Rhodes wrote:
>> PS: This is an oft-seen train-wreck!
>>
>> Where are the char-encoding-dwim restarts?
>> Where are the char-binary-agnostic streams?
>
> A utf-8b external format would be a fairly sensible addition to our
> external format support (along with all the other missing features, such
> as the oft-requested crlf line termination). Bivalent streams are
> supported; see section 10.1 of the manual. You can define your own
> "DWIM" character encoding handlers for stream output, where passing a
> suitable argument to USE-VALUE allows you to encode what you mean.
Thanks, UTF-8B bivalence should be mighty easy to implement
and would be the sanest default in general.
>> Let's be liberal in what we accept and conservative in what we send.
>
> This approach is directly against the principles documented in the
> PRINCIPLES file of the SBCL source tree. You're of course free to
> advocate what you want, and people may even listen to you, but you might
> want to consider your audience.
Which survived the test of time, x.25/ISO or TCP/IP?
Shorp tools are brittle and prone to break.
Think of restarts as eye protection.
When the host OS hoses the users this often and
a restart fixes 99% of the lossage, it's just
good manners to provide it. Failing that,
augment the error message. As a last resort
make sure the cure appears high in search results
for the cryptic error message, if it must remain so.
Peace
--Devon
PS: I see now why I worked so long to stay with CMUCL but
I'm determined (holding nose) to give SBCL a fair shake
by trying it in at least one real commercial project.
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