I am currently trying to create a scripting language which is usable for general purpose tasks but has a high golfing potential due to many short built-in functions, operators, syntax etc.
At the moment I'm wondering which character encoding would be best to use.
- I really want to use a single byte per character encoding to make scoring easy and to avoid using special symbols as single-character operator that actually take multiple bytes.
- The codec should ideally not waste too many characters on non-printable control characters or use less than the full 8 bits like ASCII.
- I would prefer a codec which contains a fair amount of symbols that are easier to understand as operators rather than one that mainly contains alphabetic characters in numerous variations, e.g. with different accents.
- On the other hand all of its characters should be relatively easy typeable using a standard keyboard so that we do not need a hex editor to code. However, many symbols are more important than easy typeability.
If necessary, I might also write a tool that converts typed characters or character representation strings in a standard encoding like UTF-8 to my specific codec, so that e.g. if this codec will contain a symbol→, the converter could treat-->as representation of that.
Based on these criteria, can you recommend me some existing character codecs that could suit my needs?
Or should I assemble my own codec as well that contains all those symbols I want? What steps would be needed to officially publish such a codec then so that it may be used on the site?
Any guidance regarding this topic is appreciated, thanks in advance.
