Re: [xml-dev] UTF-8 Question: e with acute accent should requiretwo bytes, right?

• From: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@...>
• To: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@...>
• Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:35:02 +0200

Jonathan Robie wrote:
> Hi Roger,
> 
> UTF-8 uses an 8 bit encoding. E9 fits in 8 bits. It doesn't fit in 7, 
> but there's no such thing as UTF-7, the problem you refer to is an ASCII 
> 7-bit problem. Since 8 bits represents twice as many characters as 7 
> bits, it's enough to represent most European languages using one byte 
> per character.
> 
> Jonathan

Ahem, this is either incorrect or at least expressed in a confusing way.

UTF-8 uses sequences of bytes (of 8 bits). As UTF-8 can encode all 
Unicode code points, most of them -- all characters with code points >= 
128 -- need two or more bytes.

So no, although E9 fits into 8 bits, it's UTF-8 encoding requires more 
than one byte.

BR, Julian