Bug#701081: debian-policy: mandate an encoding for filenames in binary packages
Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:
> On my side, I made a proposal with actionable items: fix the few
> packages that are not using UTF-8, and modify the Policy to reflect the
> current practice of using ASCII in most of the times and other UTF-8
> characters parcimoniously.
> I understand very well the arguments against having any UTF-8 character
> at all, but we currently have such packages in our archive, so if there
> is no plan to modify these packages, then we can not plan to solve this
> bug.
> Can others comment how they would like to see this bug solved ?
I think we should require UTF-8 as the character encoding for file names
and fix the non-UTF-8 file names in the archive currently. None of the
other courses of action really make any sense to me.
To me, that's obviously the right thing to do, so I have a hard time
stepping back far enough to even understand why it's an argument, I guess.
I certainly do agree that using non-ASCII characters in file names that
are unlikely to be in people's fonts or otherwise be difficult to display
is a problem, but I guess that seems like common sense. But I don't mind
saying something to that effect in Policy.
We have files in the archive already using non-ASCII encodings, and asking
them to convert to ASCII feels like a real step back.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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