Re: [xmlvoc] Def: character-set

[Erik Wilde <net.dret@dret.net>]

hi.

>   A set of abstract characters with an integer value for each
>   character, which is used to represent it. An abstract character
>   corresponds closely to the common-sense concept of a letter, but
>   also includes punctuation, digits, whitespace, and other special
>   symbols. Abstract characters are independent of any specific visual
>   design, which is left for fonts to provide.
> 
> If we want more information we can add this:
> 
>   The integer values are usually chosen to allow character sequences
>   to be efficiently encoded as a sequence of bytes, and to ensure that
>   the resulting sequences have desirable byte signatures, especially
>   in order to ensure compatibility with other character sets and
>   encodings. 

shouldn't there be a clear distinction between the coded character set 
and the character encoding scheme? unicode's division into five 
different categories (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr17/) may be too 
much, but i believe the ccs/ces separation is a good thing to do and 
helps people to understand unicode better.

cheers,

erik wilde  -  tel:+41-1-6325132  -  fax:+41-1-6321035
           mailto:net.dret@dret.net  -  http://dret.net
           computer engineering and networks laboratory
           swiss federal institute of technology  (eth)
           * try not. do, or do not. there is no try. *