The default encoding should certainly be based on the locale. However, there are any number of reasons why someone would edit text with multiple encodings. The most obvious is when you are editing something that has been sent to you by someone else who is using a different encoding. For a single language this would probably involve UTF-8 and a single 8-bit encoding. For multilingual people, which includes a sizeable number of open source developers, it could involve multiple 8-bit encodings as well, which make automatic detection impossible.
My own preference would be very simple. Assume a default based on the locale, but allow selection of a different encoding on the fly. This is just a gentle suggestion because I am not currently using Abiword. David Starner wrote: > > On Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 10:54:01AM -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2077 > > > > ------- Additional Comments From [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2001-10-30 10:54 ------- > > No, abiword shouldn't assume that your text is UTF-8 just because you're > > running in a UTF-8 locale. > > Huh? That's part of the definition of a locale. Under a locale, the text > encoding is the same as the terminal encoding, which is the same as the > locale encoding. If the text encoding isn't the same as the terminal > encoding, you can't use cat or more or grep or any other console program > without recoding the output to screen. You couldn't redirect output to > disk without recoding it. If the locale encoding differs from both of > them, then what does it mean and why is it useful? Gettext, for one, > uses the locale encoding for the terminal/text encoding. > > If I'm wrong, then someone please clarify, but I don't understand where > you're coming from at all. > > -- > David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org > "I saw a daemon stare into my face, and an angel touch my breast; each > one softly calls my name . . . the daemon scares me less." > - "Disciple", Stuart Davis > - > Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels > Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/ -- D. Dale Gulledge, Sr. Programmer, [EMAIL PROTECTED] C, C++, Perl, Unix (AIX, Linux), Oracle, Java, Internationalization (i18n), Awk. - Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
