[erlang-questions] cookbook entry #1 - unicode/UTF-8 strings

[Tristan Sloughter]

I know they used DocBook and I see someone in the thread says the framework
for this is not free software. I really really though I had it at one point
though, haha.

Why don't you ask O'Reilly to set it up if its really not open for anyone to
use :)

Tristan

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 3:49 AM, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Francesco Cesarini
> <francesco@REDACTED> wrote:
> > Joe,
> >
> > it would be great if what has already been done on an earlier version of
> the
> > Erlang cookbook could be reviewed and integrated:
>
> Absolutely - we won't start from scratch - and we want some kind of
> commenting system like
> http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/
>
> I'm digging around to see how this can be achieved
>
> /Joe
>
>
>
> > http://trapexit.com/Category:CookBook
> >
> > It has 89 articles in 9 categories.
> >
> > Rgds,
> > Francesco
> >
> >
> >
> > On 19/10/2011 11:14, Joe Armstrong wrote:
> >>
> >> cookbook # 1 - draft 1
> >>
> >> <aside>
> >>  We're going to write a cookbook.
> >>
> >>  This will be free (in an electronic version, PDF, epub)
> >>  And you will be able to buy a paper version (POD)
> >>
> >>  The development model is
> >>
> >>   - a few authors
> >>   - many reviewers (you are the reviewers)
> >>     the reviewers report errors/suggest changes
> >>     the authors make the changes
> >>
> >>  The POD version we hope will generate some income
> >>  this will be split according to the contributions. Authors
> >>  will be paid as will reviewers whose suggestions are incorporated.
> >>
> >>  Payment (if we make a profit) will be in direct relation to the size
> >> of the contribution
> >>
> >>  Expensive things like professional proof reading, will be
> >>  sponsorship, or crowd sourced, or otherwise financed.
> >>
> >>  To start the ball rolling I have some text below.
> >>
> >>  Please comment on this text. If your comments are accepted one day you
> >> might get paid :-)
> >>
> >>  Note: 1) By commenting you are implicitly agreeing that if your
> comments
> >> are accepted into the final text then you will be subject to the
> >> licensing conditions of that text. The text will always be free and
> >> open source.
> >>
> >> </aside>
> >>
> >> Cookbook Question:
> >>
> >> I have often seen the words "UTF-8 string" used in sentences like
> >> "Java has UTF-8 strings". What does this mean when applied to Erlang?
> >>
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Answer:
> >>
> >> In Erlang strings are syntactic sugar for "lists of integers"
> >>
> >> Imagine the string "10(Euro)" - (Euro) is the glyph representing the
> >> Euro currency symbol.
> >>
> >> The term "UF8-string" representing "10(euro)" in Erlang could
> >> mean one of two things:
> >>
> >>    Either a) [49,48,8364]           (ie its a list of three unicode
> >> integers)
> >>    Or     b) [49,48,226,130,172]    (ie its the UTF-8 encoding of the
> >>                                      unicode characters)
> >>
> >> The so words "UTF-8" string might mean a) or might mean b)
> >>
> >> Erlang folks have always said "unicode/UTF-8 is easy in Erlang
> >> since strings are just lists of integers" - by this we mean that
> >> Erlang programs should always manipulate strings given the type a)
> >> interpretation. *all* library functions assume type a) encoding.
> >>
> >> The type b) interpretation only has meaning when you write data to a
> >> file etc. and should be as invisible to the user as possible (but when
> >> things go wrong and you get the wrong character printed you need to
> >> understand the difference)
> >>
> >> Question 1) How can we get a unicode characters into a list item?
> >>             or what does a string literal look like?
> >>
> >>    >  X = "10\x{20ac}"
> >>    [49,48,8364]
> >>
> >>    This is not described in my book since the change came after the
> >>    book was published (is it in the other Erlang books yet?)
> >>
> >> Question 2) How can we convert between representations a) and b) above?
> >>
> >>    Easy - though one has to dig in the documentation a bit.
> >>
> >>    >  B = unicode:characters_to_binary(X, unicode, utf8).
> >>    <<49,48,226,130,172>>
> >>    >  unicode:characters_to_list(B).
> >>    [49,48,8364]
> >>
> >> Question 3) Can I write "10(Euro)" in an editor which supports
> >> unicode/UTF-8 and does the erlang tool chain support this?
> >>
> >> Will "erlc foo.erl" automatically detect that foo.erl is unicode
> >> encoded and do the right thing when scanning and tokenising strings?
> >>
> >>    Answer: I don't know?
> >>
> >> Question 4)  Can string literals be improved on?
> >>
> >> I hope so -- In Html I can say (I hope)€
> >>
> >> I'd like to say:
> >>
> >>       X = "10€" in Erlang
> >>
> >>       People who know far more about this than I do can tell me if this
> >> is OK
> >>
> >>
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> erlang-questions mailing list
> >> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> >> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
> >
> > --
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