H. Peter Anvin writes:
> > Yes. This is the point. When users set "LANG" vairable, they
> > expect all softwares to obey the variable.
>
> The issue is, however, what that does mean? In particular, strings in
> the filesystem are usually in the system-wide encoding scheme, not
> what that particular user happens to be processing at the time.
Obeying LANG is important in two scenarios:
1) For the user who uses a single locale, and this locale's encoding
is not ISO-8859-1. He sets LANG in $HOME/.profile.
Such a user will in the long run use non-ASCII filenames. They
will be stored in locale encoding on the disk. Programs should
be able to display and use such filenames.
2) For the user who tries out a locale in a different encoding.
He sets LANG on the command line.
Such a user will have to be prepared to problems with non-ASCII
filenames. But everything else should work without manual
intervention.
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 xterm -> get an UTF-8 xterm
LANG=ja_JP.EUC-JP gvim file -> edit EUC-JP encoded file
LANG=vi_VN emacs -> start emacs with Vietnamese
input method
etc.
It's for the second case that it is important that no encodings are
stored in $HOME/.* files. And it's for the first case that non-ASCII
filenames must be supported.
Bruno
-
Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
