
UTF-8 history (2003) - olalonde
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt
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Todd
I think Bob unfairly discounts the work that IBM did here. It's clear that
there was synchronicity between the wants of the Plan 9 team and what IBM was
doing. The need was clearly 'in the air' back then.

Upon reading this, it doesn't appear to me that Bob watched Ken design this
system on the back of a placemat one fine day. Instead, they got a complete
design with working code from a team at IBM. Being the seasoned bit twiddlers
that they were, they realized that they could do it better. Their design is
clearly an improvement, and their code is more elegant. In addition to getting
the conceptual head start, they also appear to have received the full support
of the IBM team in promoting and promulgating the RFC as a standard. To me,
it's also story of humility vs. hubris.

As an aside, Windows NT shipped in 93, and wasn't able to benefit from this
new encoding format. As a result, UTF-16 is baked-in and Windows developers
have been living with it ever since (even if file formats are largely UTF-8
now, the API is still solidly UTF-16).

~~~
enneff
I'm not sure what point you're making. You say almost exactly what Rob says
(who's "Bob" btw?), which is that Ken invented the UTF-8 encoding scheme to
improve on IBM's proposal. I don't see hubris here; just a desire to give Ken
the recognition he deserves for some clever work.

~~~
Todd
(Thanks for the correction.) Perhaps I was reacting to the first paragraph of
the post. He says the 'incorrect story' is that IBM designed it and Rob and
Ken just implemented it. The correct version is that Ken designed it. I think
that's a bit strong and doesn't give enough credit to the IBM team. Upon a
more careful read it appears that they designed very similar approaches in
parallel, with Ken's version being more elegant. I still don't think it gives
enough credit to the IBM team. But you're point it well taken.

