David hi
> There are at least two encodings:
> * Encodings of text at rest (stored in a document), which are handled
> by XML
> * Encodings of text when stored in memory, inside an evaluator. This
> may not be, and is often NOT, the same. If an implementation uses 32
> bits per character, then it can do easy random access. I don't know
> of any implementations that do this, but instead do all sorts of weird stuff.
How an implementation internally encodes its text is surely a technical detail out-of-scope for OpenFormula. Implementers will use their language's built-in Unicode support or a library like http://site.icu-project.org/
Granted it can be a bit of extra work to support Unicode (especially above the BMP), but if and when OpenFormula is submitted to become an International Standard there are two areas where I think the "it's too hard to make mandatory" argument will get nowhere. One is accessibility, the other is internationalized functionality.
- Alex.
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