Bug#99933: second attempt at more comprehensive unicode policy
Colin Walters <walters@debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 13:50, John Goerzen wrote:
>
> Sorry, we have to start somewhere. Unicode is the way of the future,
> and if we wait until every vendor of some random terminal updates it
> with support for UTF-8, we will never start.
I don't disagree that we should move to Unicode. I disagree that such
a move must inherently remove support for legacy (or even, the
majority of CURRENT) terminals.
> Now is a good time, since (again) major chunks of upstream software
> included in Debian like GNOME are making a major push towards UTF-8.
>
>> "may introduct incompatibilities" is something of an understatement.
>> "Break compatibility with 50 years' worth of computing and almost
>> every other vendor" is more accurate.
>
> Well, that's what we're going to do.
Sorry, this discussion is about what we're doing, isn't it? I don't
recall seing "Colin Walters, Debian Dictator for Life" voted on
anywhere.
>> I do not buy that for one minute. Surely it is possible to translate
>> things back to a character set the terminal actually supports?
>
> If we change programs to output to the terminal in the locale's
> encoding, then yes, it will work, at least if the terminal's charset
> covers all of the characters in question (which it may not).
What "change programs?" That's what they do now.
>> Perhaps you mean "it is EASIEST to break compatibility." That may be
>> true. That is also the wrong motivation.
>
> We will try to preserve compatibility as much as possible.
Yet your own proposal breaks compatibility with, let's see, EVERYONE?
-- John
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