RE: [xml-dev] [ Revision #2 ] 15 elementary truths about XML

[Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>]

On Thu, 2011-11-03 at 09:01 -0700, David Lee wrote:
> Concrete case:  Java "String" objects do not use "bytes" to encode strings.
> They use "16 bit ints". 
[...]
> Saying something is encoded in "Bytes" to me emplies
> a encoding format such as UTF8 or some such which translates codepoints to a
> stream of bytes.
> Java strings store the codepoints directly, no encoding or decoding to a
> stream of bytes is done unless you write it to a file or byte array.

Since Unicode is a 32-bit character set, Java is not storing the
codepoints directly in all cases, but only the ones that fit; to be fair
those are by far the most common in most environments in which Unicode
is used today.

We are straying, I think, a little far, but, an understanding of
character representation is important to anyone working with text.

Best,

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
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