Problems
Both specifications suffer from the problem that standard communication protocols are built around octets rather than nonets, and so it would not be possible to exchange text in these formats without further encoding or specially designed protocols. This alone would probably be sufficient reason to consider their use impractical in most cases. However, this would be less of a problem with pure bit-stream communication protocols.
Furthermore, both UTF-9 and UTF-18 have specific problems of their own. UTF-9 requires special care when searching, as a shorter sequence can be found at the end of a longer sequence. This means that it is necessary to search backwards in order to find the start of the sequence. UTF-18 cannot represent all Unicode code points (although unlike UCS-2 it can represent all the planes that currently have non-private use code point assignments) making it a bad choice for a system that may need to support new languages (or rare CJK ideographs that are added after the SIP fills up) in the future.
Read more about this topic: UTF-9 And UTF-18
Famous quotes containing the word problems:
“Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some other inward emotion than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”
—Njabulo Ndebele (b. 1948)