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

[Tristan Sloughter]

Does look like maybe its just older versions that are available open source
-- hard to say for sure:

http://blog.threepress.org/2009/05/21/open-feedback-publishing-system-launched/

http://labs.oreilly.com/2009/05/collaborative-publishing-based-on-community-feedback.html

http://hg.serpentine.com/mercurial/book/file/5225ec140003/web

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 9:03 AM, Tristan Sloughter <
tristan.sloughter@REDACTED> wrote:

> 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
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >> _______________________________________________
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