Re: Unicode browsers (was: Re: Comments on: "Character Set" Considered Harmful)

Bob Jung (bobj@netscape.com)
Wed, 26 Apr 95 21:25:04 EDT

At 11:25 AM 4/26/95, Gavin Nicol wrote:
>...
>>What (briefly) is the problem with requiring Web browsers to
>>understand and display Unicode? Is it simply the availability of
>>Unicode font sets, or are there some deeper architectural issues
>>here?
>
>There are many small issues, but from my experience, and Amanda and
>others will verify this, implementing a Unicode based application is
>*far* easier than trying to support even a small number of coded
>character sets and encodings.

I disagree.

Supporting canonical Unicode will require major changes to parser and
layout engines. Supporting ASCII-superset encodings is relatively easy
and in many case more efficient. UTF8 is an ASCII-superset and would
fall in the easy to support bucket.

But this is implementation detail, and should be of secondary importance
in defining our direction. Web content requirements are what should
be of primary importance.

-Bob

--
Bob Jung        bobj@netscape.com       +1 415 528-2688, fax +1 415 528-4122
Netscape Communications Corp.   501 E. Middlefield      Mtn View, CA   94041