Missed this one the other day, but cannot let it go...
Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
> > filenames, what is one supposed to do? Convert all
> filenames to UTF-8?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Who will do that?
>
> A system administrator (because he has access to all files).
My my, you are assuming all files are in the same encoding. And what about all the references to the files in scripts? In configuration files? Soft links? If you want to break things, this is definitely the way to do it.
> > If you keep all processing in UTF-8, then this is a decision you can
> > postpone.
>
> You mean, various programs will break at various points of time,
> instead of working correctly from the beginning?
So far nothing broke. Because all the programs are in UTF-8. If you would try to write it in UTF-16, it would break. So nobody does it. Except those that must.
> > I didn't encourage users to mix UTF-8 filenames and Latin 1
> filenames.
> > Do you want to discourage them?
>
> Mixing any two incompatible filename encodings on the same file system
> is a bad idea.
As soon as you realize you cannot convert filenames to UTF-8, you will see that all you can do is start adding new ones in UTF-8. Or forget about Unicode.
Lars
