[Cuis-dev] Some questions on The Cuis Book & other questions

[Juan Vuletich]

On 2/22/2023 12:39 PM, Hilaire Fernandes via Cuis-dev wrote:
>
> Oops too late I already update the book (html updated, no the pdf build)
>
> https://cuis-smalltalk.github.io/TheCuisBook/Message-to-string-entities.html#index-Unicode
>
> https://cuis-smalltalk.github.io/TheCuisBook/String-_002d_002d-a-particular-collection.html#index-Unicode-2
>
>
> Le 22/02/2023 à 16:00, Hernán Wilkinson via Cuis-dev a écrit :
>> If my memory does not fail me I remember talking with Juan about this 
>> behavior and the reason for copy to return the same object is because 
>> UnicodeString are immutable... but let's wait for Juan to confirm that.
>>
> Yes, I remember that too.
>
> -- 
> GNU Dr. Geo
> http://drgeo.eu
> http://blog.drgeo.eu

Hi Folks,

A few clarifications (some / most you all already figured out)

- String literals containing only ASCII characters are instances of String
- String literals containing any non-ASCII character are instances of 
UnicodeString
- Both are correctly indexed. #at: works as expected. But the same 
UnicodeString can be encoded in various forms. See #asNFC, #asNFD, 
UnicodeString>>#=. This is just the way Unicode works.
- String and UnicodeString are interchangeable and interoperable. 
Conversions are done automatically. You don't need to care, except for:
- UnicodeString are immutable

An important note is that we can make UnicodeString modifiable via 
#at:put: if we want. In most systems Unicode strings can not be 
modified. But in Cuis we can compute and store the new 'bytes', nil 
'hash' and we are done. On one hand, the system works well with 
immutable strings. It is not really needed. On the other hand, making 
them modifiable improves compatibility with older code and tutorials, 
and other dialects. It is also a good example of Smalltalk "magic".

Hilaire, after we make our minds wrt immutable or mutable 
UnicodeStrings, I'd like to rewrite those sections on the book. In last 
year's Smalltalks conference at Buenos Aires, I presented a short paper 
on Unicode in Cuis: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=c93fukpVINA . The main 
point I make is that most programmers usually don't need to know or care 
about the encoding used for Strings. They should only care about their 
behavior. So, I'd like to rewrite those parts in the same spirit.

Thanks,

-- 
Juan Vuletich
cuis.st
github.com/jvuletich
researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich
independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich
patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich
linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
twitter.com/JuanVuletich '

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