On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 08:42:10PM +0100, Étienne Mollier wrote: > Marc Haber, on 2024-11-22: > > I might be naive here , but I don't have much experience with non-ascii > > names since I have the privilege of being fluent in two languages that > > use the latin alphabet. > > I am not sure whether I am the intended audience here, because > my name is almost Ascii based. That being said, I happen to > have one weird enough latin based character as the first letter > in my first name, that it gives interesting results when thrown > toward random databases. Thus I do happen to have some thoughts > about this topic.
All opinions are important. > > On the other side, wouldnt it be a courtesy to allow people having a > > name that needs transcription to be written in latin to use their name > > in the real alphabet that it is usually written in as a login name as > > well? To make things worse, transcriptions are often ambigious. > > > > I would like to hear the opinion of people who would be affected by this > > change. > > I tried to consider what it would take to have an émollier or an > Émollier login, and there is one little blocker : I may have to > login from environments or keyboards lacking the necessary i18n > and l10n capabilities to transcribe the 'e' acute, let alone the > uppercase 'e' acute. Yes. Configuring all keyboards and input subsystems in the realm of this instance of the user database in a way that all users are able to login are the responsibility of the local admi. >For example, I hit this particular issue > when populating the Gecos field from the Debian installer > environment: if I choose a Qwerty US configuration but miss the > step to choose which Qwerty US internationalized variant I want > to use, then I don't get to type uppercase 'e' acute, but there > are many other situations unrelated to d-i or even Debian where > I run into that. That issue would only affect users created from the Installer, and even if you insist to have étienne as UID 1000, you could change to that after installation. I tend to classify the inability to type the intended user name on account creation a user error ;-) I always create "zgadmin" in the installer, which is my user to ssh into before sudoing to root if my regular account (which has a higher UID for historial reasons) is unavailable. I wonder whether we should give this advice in the documentation we are bound to write once we have decided to officially allow UTF-8 login names. >For this practical reason, I tend to feel > better about keeping a full Ascii login name. I wouldn't feel > strongly if unicode support for login never happens. It is already allowed. Only its support status is unclear. >I believe > however that the Gecos is the right place to store the properly > typed-in person name, because it is a "presented" name that > hasn't the technical coupling that the login name has, and I > would probably have stronger feelings if it were to not have > unicode support. Console tools tend to ignore the gecos/comment name. Greetings Marc -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Haber | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header Leimen, Germany | lose things." Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402 Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421
