Colin Walters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 13:50, John Goerzen wrote: > > Sorry, we have to start somewhere. Unicode is the way of the future, > and if we wait until every vendor of some random terminal updates it > with support for UTF-8, we will never start.
I don't disagree that we should move to Unicode. I disagree that such a move must inherently remove support for legacy (or even, the majority of CURRENT) terminals. > Now is a good time, since (again) major chunks of upstream software > included in Debian like GNOME are making a major push towards UTF-8. > >> "may introduct incompatibilities" is something of an understatement. >> "Break compatibility with 50 years' worth of computing and almost >> every other vendor" is more accurate. > > Well, that's what we're going to do. Sorry, this discussion is about what we're doing, isn't it? I don't recall seing "Colin Walters, Debian Dictator for Life" voted on anywhere. >> I do not buy that for one minute. Surely it is possible to translate >> things back to a character set the terminal actually supports? > > If we change programs to output to the terminal in the locale's > encoding, then yes, it will work, at least if the terminal's charset > covers all of the characters in question (which it may not). What "change programs?" That's what they do now. >> Perhaps you mean "it is EASIEST to break compatibility." That may be >> true. That is also the wrong motivation. > > We will try to preserve compatibility as much as possible. Yet your own proposal breaks compatibility with, let's see, EVERYONE? -- John
