Patrick Elliott wrote:
  > How can it be, given that it doesn't allow access to all unicode
> characters? It by definition can't, since true unicode requires a 
> 'section' code, followed by a 'character' code, of *always* two bytes. 
> UTF8 treats only specific characters as a 'section' code, so part of the 
> unicode set if unavailable. Unless I am completely missing something... 

There is no such thing as a "section code" in Unicode. Unicode defines one 
continuous set of character codes. UTF8 is an encoding of Unicode, providing 
access to all Unicode character codes. You definition is clearly wrong; I 
suspect you are confusing Unicode with "code pages" from long forgotten DOS 
and early Windos times.

> But I have seen people complain before about how they can't use some 
> character with POV-Ray and the reason always given is that UTF8 doesn't 
> support them. If I am wrong, then why does this problem crop up all the 
> time?

Because* people do not realise that most editors, including those included 
with POV-Ray for Windows and POV-Ray for Macintosh do *not* save text files 
in UTF8 but ISO-8859-1 and MacRoman respectively.  As such, entering any 
character outside the ASCII range and setting "charset" to "utf8" causes 
POV-Ray to try to interpret those an UTF8 sequences, which they are not. 
This of course yields all kinds of strange errors, with POV-Ray rejecting 
characters many times, or replacing them with blanks after issuing a warning 
(it depends).

	Thorsten


* This applies to POV-Ray 3.5 and later only.

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