Article:		Versioning Problems
Subject:		Nobody will be able to use it
Date:		2001-12-29 15:00:54
From:		Joe Montgomery
XML 1.1's goal is inclusion but the result is exclusion. Unicode3 specifies 4-byte characters. Windows COM programming supports UCS2 which is 2-byte characters. Java's characters are also 2 bytes long. Given that most non-COM languages only support 1-byte characters (and possibly UTF-8 with much pain), there's no way anybody's going to be able to program against 4-byte characters. Not even .NET supports 4-byte characters natively. Not to mention that displaying 4-byte characters on today's operating systems is not even possible in most cases. XML 1.1 assumes a revamp of all programming languages, tools, and operating systems! It's insane.

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