String reboot (plain text)

[John Rose]

On Feb 11, 2019, at 3:05 AM, elias vasylenko <eliasvasylenko at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>  I think this is one of the few situations where the entire meal needs
> to be served all in one go.
> 
> I agree with your goal statement, but there are assumptions about escaping
> which I don't think bear out. And I realise I've said most of this before
> on this list and I hate to sound like a broken record, but this choice can
> only be made once.

I have similar worries, but here's why I don't think things are as bad
as you do.

Such a choice can be made in a way that either precludes or reserves
encoding space for future additions.

I'm hoping we come up with a design that can be extended to include
strong quotes, at a later point, if needed.

It's straightforward to extend the strong quotes concept to include
escapes.  You simply define a variation of each close quote (for each
open quote)  to serve as a string interruptor, rather than a terminator.

With a finite set of quotes, your concern can be addressed by reserving
some combinations of characters within the string that are neither body
characters nor the close quote.  A reservation is all that's needed, not
a full definition.  Since the set of characters that can *follow* a Java
string is limited, the reservation can take the form of a close quote
followed by further characters.

— John