[r6rs-discuss] Why Unicode matters

[John Cowan]

Grant Rettke scripsit:
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 5:48 PM, John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
> > As the R6RS process's chief Unicode hound, I'd like to say a word or
> > two about why I think Unicode matters.  There are at least three kinds
> > of reasons.
> 
> All good points.
> 
> How much of a cultural shift is this for Scheme?

I'm not an authority on that.  R5RS requires only the ASCII
character repertoire; various Schemes have supported Unicode
in various ways and to various degrees.

It's been a vexed question whether R5RS and earlier RnRS documents
imply that strings must provide O(1) random access to the characters
that constitute them.  It is not so in R6RS.

-- 
Do I contradict myself?                         John Cowan
Very well then, I contradict myself.            cowan at ccil.org
I am large, I contain multitudes.               http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass