


Diff of /ansi_characters.xml [dbf28d] .. [66e977] Maximize Restore

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--- a/ansi_characters.xml
+++ b/ansi_characters.xml
@@ -8,6 +8,15 @@
  <para>&ECL; is fully ANSI Common-Lisp compliant in all aspects of the character
  data type, with the following peculiarities.</para>
+ <section xml:id="ansi.characeer.unicode">
+   <title>Unicode vs. POSIX locale</title>
+   <para>There are two ways of building &ECL;: with C or with Unicode character codes. These build modes are accessed using the <code>--disable-unicode</code> and <code>--enable-unicode</code> configuration options, the last one being the default.</para>
+   <para>When using C characters we are actually relying on the <type>char</type> type of the C language, using the C library functions for tasks such as character conversions, comparison, etc. In this case characters are typically 8 bit wide and the character order and collation are determines by the current POSIX or C locale. This is not very accurate, leaves out many languages and character encodings but it is sufficient for small applications that do not need multilingual support.</para>
+   <para>When no option is specified &ECL; builds with support for a larger character set, the Unicode 6.0 standard. This uses 24 bit large character codes, also known as <emphasis>codepoints</emphasis>, with a large database of character properties which include their nature (alphanumeric, numeric, etc), their case, their collation properties, whether they are standalone or composing characters, etc.</para>
  <section xml:id="ansi.character-types">
   <title>Character types</title>
@@ -81,6 +90,7 @@
   <literal>#\Newline</literal> and thus is a member of
+ </section>
   <title>Line Divisions</title>