A new WG21 paper is available. If you are not a committee member, please use the comments section below or the std-proposals forum for public discussion.

Document number: PO3OOrO

Date: 2016-04-01

Enhancing the C++ Basic Character Set with Standard Character Mappings

by Robert Douglas, Faisal Vali, Nate Wilson, Nevin Liber

Excerpt:

Languages evolve, as the means by which people best express their ideas. As this is the
domain of programming languages, it is up to us to make sure that C++ evolves in conjunction
with how people can best communicate their intents to machines and co-workers. Current
language has begun a transition to new forms of language.

The world is additionally becoming far more social. In this new world, a competitive language
must be ready to embrace modern social forums with better support for the social paradigms of
the day. Unfortunately, C++ has a rather heavy syntax for expressing ideas. This is less of a
problem when armed with a keyboard and large monitors, but most devices these days are
smaller with shrinking keyboards, if any physical keyboard at all. This problem must be
mitigated, if C++ is to be an appealing language with the newest generation of developers.