[r6rs-discuss] [Formal] Improve port i/o.

[Michael Sperber]

Per Bothner <per at bothner.com> writes:

> Michael Sperber wrote:
>> The best way to let a Scheme program make use of iconv
>> is to provide it as is, and let the program invoke it explicitly.
>
> Are you seriously proposing that people whose locale uses a
> non-Unicode encoding would need to explicitly invoke iconv
> in order to write "Hello world"?

No.  First of all, we're not even talking (yet) about non-Unicode
encodings for the I/O system in the standard at all.  I am assuming
that locale encodings should be supported by the I/O system, just not
via iconv.  (Or via iconv, but not in the most convenient manner for
iconv.)

>>> * We need to have some way of layering textual i/o on top of binary
>>>   i/o.
>>
>> No, we can, but we don't need to to.  Layering is one option in the
>> design space.
>
> A text file or network port is *inherently* layered on top of a byte
> stream.

I don't understand how that view relates to reality.  On my hard drive
or on the wire, there's just one data stream, one of bytes.  Text is
merely an interpretation of that data.

-- 
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla