[fpc-devel] Unicode resource strings

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

HI,

On 20 August 2012 23:26, Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> UCS2 is nowadays known as the BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane) of full
> Unicode.

The UCS2 is considered obsolete! Nothing else needs to be said. :)


> Have a look at the full Unicode codepages, what is and what is not
> part of the BMP.

Download the Unicode eBook chapters and look at the section "Details
of Allocation" normally in Chapter 2. There are lots of useful things
in Plane 1-16 (BMP being Plane 0).

Like I said, outside the BMP, less is used for the spoken languages,
but there are some CJK characters in Plane 2. Plane 1 has many
interesting things for "modern applications" like Domino Tiles,
Advanced Math symbols (which we use in our company), Map Symbols often
seen on GPS units, Mahjong Tiles, Musical symbols, Smiley Face symbols
used in emails and IM programs, System of Divination symbols, Large
Historic Script area, Large private areas (any apps that ship custom
fonts could use those private areas - MacOSX uses the private areas
for the "apple" symbol in their fonts) and many more.

The reluctance to support Planes 1-16 is often seen by UTF-16 or UCS-2
users, because they are just lazy! That is just wrong. I'll say it
again, that is what makes UTF-8 so great. NO special handling or
implementation is required to handle the _whole_ Unicode character
set. Implement UTF-8 to handle the BMP (Plane 0), and you get handling
for Plane 1-16 for free.


-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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