Re: UTF-8: Case mapping

[Steve Underwood <steveu coppice org>]

Hi Owen,

Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> Case conversion: [ http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55852 ]
> 
> [...]
> There is also the question of "fuzzy" comparison routines -
> the equivalent of strcasecmp - we actually have three axes
> on which we can ignore differences:
> 
>  * Normalization (none, canonical, compat)
>  * Case (unfolded, folded)
>  * dotted-i-folding method
> 
> I _don't_ think we should offer all these possibilities; not
> having a sense yet of what the right choices are, I'm inclined
> to leave out such fuzzy comparison routines and let people
> build what they need out of the primitives.

I agree with most of what you said, but I can see a practical reason why
your last point is a poor solution. Most people only know one or two
languages. We lack the skills needed to build any generally meaningful
string manipulation functions. Surely i18n will only become a reality if
these types of operation are buried in libraries, where many people can
contribute and expand the coverage over time. Having the component
features is good for special uses, but full set of highly pan-language
functions is a powerful tool.

Regards,
Steve