Re: support for multilingual Packages files?
From: Radovan Garabik <garabik@melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk>
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 01:04:50PM +0200, Michael Bramer wrote:
> >
> > IMHO the packages, the crontroll file and the Package files are to big
> > with this. We need a better system!
>
> probably. But we have to keep with current one for a while
It'd be less complex and quicker to switch over to Bramer's plan than to
yours. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we have fully localized Package
files for unstable the day this freeze ends.
> > There are reasons not to use UTF-8 locales even when UTF-8 locales
> > will be available. These problems are so complex that I have no idea
> > how to solve these problems. And more, Unicode people tend not to
> > even agree there ARE problems. (Yes, I sometimes send mails to
> > Unicode Consortium to ask to fix bugs).
>
> Problems should be made visible and discussed, and solutions
> should be find, instead of just telling "unicode is bad, we are never
> going to accept it"
You don't understand. The problems Tomohiro wants fixed, aren't going to be
fixed, anymore than the pound sign could be add to ASCII or the Euro to
Latin-1. It's not some draft standard that can still be messed with at will;
it's a decade old standard that is already in use in several major operating
systems and an intrical part of several standards. For most major languages
(include CJK languages), the basic methodology is frozen, including the
identity and unification of characters.
> (oh, well, and occasional diacritics in english words like rôle and
résumé,
> and I think it is reasonable leaving this up to maintainer's common
sense -
> to decide if he prefers "correct" usage no matter what or leaves
diacritics
> out and saves people without utf-8 console some headache)
I think any maintainer who uses diacritics in those words in a Debian file
should be flamed. International computer English, which Debian uses and is
written in ASCII, does not use those characters. Heck, American English, as
written day in and day out, does not use those characters. Any one using
those characters is being pedantically correct at the cost of our users, and
that's just obnoxious.
> > 2. Generally, number of bytes, characters, and columns differs one
> > another. The difference is different between locales. Thus,
> > mismatching of locale and encoding will break the layout of the
> > screen. (This is not a problem for dumb-terminal-based softwares
>
> yes, this is bad. However, it does not make dselect unusable.
So mojibake isn't bad . . .
> Yes, this is a big problem. I was caught by this, when I installed
> intranet fulltext search machine. (and I also made multilingual
> on-line dictionary).
> Fortunately, searching by maintainers' names is not a keypoint for
> debian tools.
. . . and neither is breaking current functionality? For your information, I
search on maintainer's names all the time in places like the BTS.
> or they could decide if they prefer not to include the ASCII version at
all,
> so that nobody is confused by incorrect variant of their name (I am
talking
> now about latin-script names with diacritics)
What about people being confused by the diacritc version of their name?
People mangle people's names all the time - I get called "Dave" every so
often, which annoys me to no end. It's life - is it more important to
communicate and work well with others, or to have your name be pedantically
correct everywhere you can.
--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
"The pig -- belongs -- to _all_ mankind!" - Invader Zim
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