writefln and ASCII

[Steve Horne]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:17:13 -0400, nobody <nobody at mailinator.com>
wrote:

>> Metadata. When your document cannot be represented as a simple text
>> file, use something else.
>> 
>
>It is my opinion that if you need metadata in addition to textual data then your 
>method of representing textual data is inadequate.

Ah. So you believe that HTML and XML are garbage, then. Along with all
binary word-processor document files.

But then, Unicode is inadequate also. You need additional metadata for
anything beyond the simplest text. Unicode gives you a huge selection
of characters, but it can't specify paragraphs styles etc.

>I am certain that to freely mix data from any codepage you would probably use 
>something like an escape code.

That would be the most cryptically compressed form of metadata, I
suppose. But why compress the metadata at the expense of the character
data?

Switching languages and codepages is a relatively rare thing. Most
documents don't do it at all. Even those that do are hardly likely to
switch every other character.

By the huffman compression principle of representing the most frequent
things with the smallest codes, the logical thing to do is to have
single byte characters as much as possible and use a multibyte
sequence - a tag - to select codepages.


I'm getting the feeling that I've given the wrong impression. Just for
the record, I posted some ranting because I have too much time on my
hands. And I really do believe that unicode could have been simpler.
That doesn't mean I'm saying it's useless, and you shouldn't take it
all too seriously.

I can say things in a way that causes offense sometimes. I can be too
strong in defending opinions when I really don't care that much, for
instance. Picking silly holes in arguments, out of a pure love of
absurdity. And it doesn't help that I have an overformal way of saying
things that I've been told is like being lectured at all the time.

I mentioned the word Aspie in another post. That's as in Aspergers
Syndrome. For info on how and why we end up unintentionally upsetting
people, try...

http://www.mugsy.org/asa_faq/

and in particular...

http://www.mugsy.org/asa_faq/getting_along/index.shtml

I dare say someone else here has Aspergers, or at least knows someone.
Everyone does these days. It's not always a big deal. I'm having
problems, but I really don't want to go on about them here.

Just wanted to make the point that any apparent tone you may pick up
from what I write is usually random noise. Sure I criticise things,
but it's not that serious. Almost all humour is based around some kind
of criticism, directed either inward or outward. I just can't get the
tone right is all.

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