On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 11:47:42AM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote: > Preferring to use Unicode does seem to be the direction that all of > computing is going in, as a simplifying assumption - for example W3C > advice for HTML is "You should always use the UTF-8 character encoding"[1] > - and as we know, things that aren't tested usually don't work. So I > think the level of functionality for non-UTF-8 locales and encodings in > the software we package is going to decline over time, whether Debian > wants it to or not.
If the world's most populous country uses something that is not UTF-8, I think it's safe to say it's being tested, if only by people who will file bugs when things go awry. If the PRC government *requires* a non-UTF-8 encoding for things sold to them, we would be doing our users who want to sell a product containing Debian to the PRC government a disservice by dropping support for it altogether. We don't have to ensure it works perfectly out of the box; just that support is achievable with a reasonable amount of work. -- w@uter.{be,co.za} wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org} I will have a Tin-Actinium-Potassium mixture, thanks.