[utf-8] UTF-16 support ?

[Elias Martenson]

m=C3=A5n 2004-06-14 klockan 22.46 skrev Christin LIVINE:
> Hi,
>=20
> First, I'm not a specialist of UTF.
>=20
> I've read (http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn12/) that Windows 2000..., Mac =
OS
> X, QT/KDE fully support UFT-16.

What do you mean by "fully support"? KDE certainly uses UTF-8 just like
GNOME and the rest of Linux does. Certain applications can support
UTF-16, like mozilla or gedit.

The only systems working with UTF-16 (like windows and java) does so
because of legacy reasons. In java the use of UTF-16 is almost
transparent anyway.

> I've just read (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show=5Fbug.cgi?id=3D42893) th=
at
> Mozilla 1.7 will include an option for UTF-16 webpages.
>=20
> But I don't know about situations of Linux, Gnome or other applications.

Neither Linux nor GNOME uses UTF-16 in any shape or form. As a system
encoding that is. As mentioned, certain application may support working
with UTF-16. For any others there's iconv.

> Why not start pushing adoption of UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 on Linux ?

Because UTF-16 is a terrible encoding which combines the worst features
of UTF-8 and UTF-32 and none of the benefits.

Can you think if a single case where UTF-16 is better than UTF-8? I
certainly can't.