Re: [TCLCORE] Unicode in Tcl 9 - a commentary and critique

[Jan N. <jan...@gm...>]

Op vr 27 jan. 2023 om 16:37 schreef apnmbx-public:

> I’ve written up my view of “state of Unicode in Tcl 9” at
> https://www.magicsplat.com/tcl9/tcl9unicode.html
>

>From this document:

    % encoding convertto -strict ascii \uE0
    ?

    The character U+E0 is not representable in ASCII so in the presence of
the -strict option, the above command should have raised an exception

Reading this, I was about to file a Bug report. But then I tried it:

    $ tclsh9.0

    % encoding convertto -strict ascii \uE0

    unexpected character at index 0: 'U+0000E0'



So, I am wondering which version of Tcl 9.0 you were testing.


My other remark is that you don't handle Tcl8.7. One of the

challenges in the TIP's was to provide a smooth upgrade path

from Tcl 8.6 through 8.7 to 9.0. Therefore, -strict sometimes

does nothing in Tcl 9.0, which might be for 2 different

reasons:

   1) The encoding in Tcl 8.6 already did all the 'strict'

       checks, there's nothing to be added specifying -strict

    2) Outputting lone surrogates is simply illegal in

        utf-8/-16/-32,  therefore Tcl 9.0 always throws an

        exception whether -strict is specified or not.


I'm sure that this reaction will trigger other reactions ..... that's

fine. But I hope that real inconsistencies will lead to bug-reports,

or (even better) patch submissions. You all are capable to

report more complaints than I can handle. Many are

simply wrong (in my opinion, but you have the right

to disagree on that), but I'm doing my best to filter the

real ones out if it. Reporting bugs multiple times doesn't

help to get them fixed faster, neither duplicate them

on the Tcl Core list and the Tcl chat.


Have a nice weekend!

          Jan Nijtmans