Per Bothner scripsit:

> (2) a fixed number of bytes in a file - if so immediately fire anybody
> who writes any new applications doing this!  (And "legacy" applications
> will not support Unicode.)

I meant this case.  New applications frequently have to process old data,
and may not wish to treat the file content as a pure octet vector when
it is in fact meant to be interpreted as characters.

--
Eric Raymond is the Margaret Mead               John Cowan
of the Open Source movement.                    xxxxxx@ccil.org
        --Bruce Perens,                         http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
          some years ago                        http://www.reutershealth.com