On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 02:53:52PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote: > > By this, I'm not talking about enforcing this character code on the > > whole Debian system, but see to that: 1) Installing systems with > > UTF-8 is easier, also with locales not strictly in need of > > this. UTF-8 as default is not necessarily my ultimate goal (as the > > title suggests), but having the option of using UTF-8 (or other > > encodings) system-wide, no matter what languages are chosen. > I think the locales package is the place to start this. For etch, I > would like the UTF-8 locales to be the default for all languages (with > language-specific encodings being offered as alternatives). Then please begin coordinating with the respective language teams involved with the debian installer, to ensure that we have a usable UTF-8 based console environment for all languages. (Or hand us a d-i based graphical installer sprung fully-formed from your forehead, whichever you find easier.) There's more to providing a working UTF-8 capable second-stage installer than just setting "UTF-8" in the locale name, and this is a major issue that makes UTF-8 a non-viable default for sarge. > > 2) See to that all Debian packages handles UTF-8 properly. > This is a policy issue. Not all packages need to handle it, so this > should be a reccommendation rather than a requirement. For example, > there are specialised packages that only work with certain specific > encodings, and these should probably not be a priority to change. > Certainly, all general-purpose packages should be UCS-aware, though. I hope you're just conflating UCS-2 with UTF-8 here. UCS-2 is a crap charset, which there's no reason at all for most Unix programs to support. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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