[PD] request for objections: any2string -> unsigned char

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Thu, 15 Jan 2009, Bryan Jurish wrote:

> Would anyone object if the [any2string] semantics were changed so that 
> only "unsigned char" values in the range (0..255) get output, rather 
> than (as is currently the case) "signed char" values in the range 
> (-128..127)?

I would object, as I expect to be able to put values in the range 0 to 
1114111, or at the very least the range of Unicode that people would 
use... 65535 is probably not enough. I'd recommend storing strings as 
either UCS-4 or UTF-8, but in the latter case you have variable number of 
bytes to take care of. Internally, I believe that UCS-4 (32-bit encoding) 
is full good, as Pd's lists of floats are gonna be encoded over 64-bits or 
128-bits anyway (wasting nearly half or 3/4 of the bits depending on 
whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit OS/mode).

What's important to me is that the Pd user does not struggle with making 
pd interpret UTF-8 variable-length encoding, and instead struggles with 
making pd work with lists of characters, which is already enough work 
anyway. I like that [list length] gives me the number of characters and 
not the number of bytes, because the latter is rarely significant.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec