Lots of people wrote:
I want a UTF-8 bikeshed! No, I want a UTF-16 bikeshed!
What the heck does it matter what encoding the library uses internally? I expect the interface to be something like (from my own CompactString library):
fromByteString :: Encoding -> ByteString -> UnicodeString toByteString :: Encoding -> UnicodeString -> ByteString The only matter is efficiency for a particular encoding.
I would suggest that we get a working library first. Either UTF-8 or UTF-16 will do, as long as it works. Even better would be to implement both (and perhaps more encodings), and then benchmark them to get a sensible default. Then the choice can be made available to the user as well, in case someone has specifix needs. But again: get it working first! Twan