* Unicode, FH and other apps

[AdrianBruce]

Arising out of today's comments in the List about Unicode - I'm curious on this aspect...

I don't have a personal need for Unicode right now, but am interested about how other applications would cope if .GED files suddenly turned into Unicode, e.g., text editors?

I think that if the file contained only the British 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, then these are identical under Unicode as now, so there's be no issue for me.

I note that TextPad (my text editor of choice) 'automatically detects 16-bit Unicode and UTF-8 encoded characters, when opening files' and converts them 'to single or double byte characters (DBCS), using the locale corresponding to the font script selected for the document class'. OK. But the help file then adds: 'This means that it is only possible to edit, without data loss, files containing characters from the implied code page.'

This rather suggests to me that TextPad wouldn't be able to cope with a .GED file containing characters from 2 different writing systems (because there's only 1 code page) - so it couldn't cope with a file containing both Polish and Thai. Maybe?

Indeed, if I had the normal UK style code page in operation but tried to edit (say) Polish characters (assuming they're not on the UK page), would I be able to do edit such a file in TextPad?

Obviously issues with TextPad are not the concern of this UG but I'm just wondering if anyone with a deeper understanding might explain the implications?


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