[Fink-devel] Text encoding for .info files?
Is there a policy about what encoding to use for .info files? The fink tool (or specifically perl 5.8.x) and online package database seem to expect Unicode while FinkCommander assumes MacRoman. There are two files, gtktalog.info and recode.info, that use MacRoman in the Maintainer field. Thus they show correctly in FinkCommander but not anywhere else. If I change those files to UTF-8, fink info gives the correct result. Of course, then FinkCommander is wrong. :) I came across this issue because I'm working on a Cocoa program that reads package info from fink, and since Cocoa assumes text is in Unicode, Bad Things were happening with those two files. As in crashing. I had to explicitly convert the text from MacRoman first, like FinkCommander does. I couldn't find anything in the Packaging Manual about this. Perhaps a good policy would be to require all .info files to use UTF-8 and document this? -- Daniel Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP public key: http://homepage.mac.com/danielj7/publickey.txt PGP.sig Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [Fink-devel] Text encoding for .info files?
Daniel Johnson wrote: I couldn't find anything in the Packaging Manual about this. Perhaps a good policy would be to require all .info files to use UTF-8 and document this? I would vote for 7-bit ASCII, if possible. Everything else gives trouble. Just look at the package database and try to find the packages maintained by the maintainers of gtktalog or recode: 0 packages found. I doubt that recoding their names in unicode would help there, but I am sure they can live without the accents on their names in the info files. One of the main advantages of the Fink info format is that it can be handled by a wide variety of tools from different backgrounds and with different purposes. -- Martin --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6595alloc_id=14396op=click ___ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
Re: [Fink-devel] Text encoding for .info files?
On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 08:33:04AM -0500, Daniel Johnson wrote: Is there a policy about what encoding to use for .info files? They are supposed to be plain text files in the traditional Unix sense. As such, I don't think there's is any issue about encoding. The validator emits a warning if a .info file contains characters not part of the POSIX :ascii: class. The fink tool (or specifically perl 5.8.x) and online package database seem to expect Unicode while FinkCommander assumes MacRoman. There are two files, gtktalog.info and recode.info that use MacRoman in the Maintainer field. Yup, 'fink validate' on those files gives: Warning: maintainer contains non-standard characters. (gtktalog.info) Warning: maintainer contains non-standard characters. (recode.info) Thus they show correctly in FinkCommander but not anywhere else. If I change those files to UTF-8, fink info gives the correct result. Of course, then FinkCommander is wrong. :) I came across this issue because I'm working on a Cocoa program that reads package info from fink, and since Cocoa assumes text is in Unicode, Bad Things were happening with those two files. As in crashing. I had to explicitly convert the text from MacRoman first, like FinkCommander does. ...and that kind of how do I encode this portably? weirdness is one of the reasons we want everything in plain-text ASCII. So the proper solution is to not use non-ASCII chars:) I just patched those two .info files in 10.3/unstable. dan -- Daniel Macks [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netspace.org/~dmacks --- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6595alloc_id=14396op=click ___ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
Re: [Fink-devel] Text encoding for .info files?
On Feb 25, 2005, at 10:15 AM, Daniel Macks wrote: On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 08:33:04AM -0500, Daniel Johnson wrote: Is there a policy about what encoding to use for .info files? They are supposed to be plain text files in the traditional Unix sense. As such, I don't think there's is any issue about encoding. The validator emits a warning if a .info file contains characters not part of the POSIX :ascii: class. The fink tool (or specifically perl 5.8.x) and online package database seem to expect Unicode while FinkCommander assumes MacRoman. There are two files, gtktalog.info and recode.info that use MacRoman in the Maintainer field. Yup, 'fink validate' on those files gives: Warning: maintainer contains non-standard characters. (gtktalog.info) Warning: maintainer contains non-standard characters. (recode.info) Heh. I didn't think to try 'fink validate'. Duh. Thus they show correctly in FinkCommander but not anywhere else. If I change those files to UTF-8, fink info gives the correct result. Of course, then FinkCommander is wrong. :) I came across this issue because I'm working on a Cocoa program that reads package info from fink, and since Cocoa assumes text is in Unicode, Bad Things were happening with those two files. As in crashing. I had to explicitly convert the text from MacRoman first, like FinkCommander does. ...and that kind of how do I encode this portably? weirdness is one of the reasons we want everything in plain-text ASCII. So the proper solution is to not use non-ASCII chars:) I just patched those two .info files in 10.3/unstable. dan Plain ASCII works for me. But unless I missed it (which isn't outside the realm of possibility), it's not documented anywhere and probably should be. Thanks. -- Daniel Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP public key: http://homepage.mac.com/danielj7/publickey.txt PGP.sig Description: This is a digitally signed message part
