>I agree that it would be a good idea to store filenames as UTF-8 >in the filesystem. But I (being a part of "everyone") do not >agree, that we should even try to switch every terminal in the >world to UTF-8. We do need conversion of file names somewhere >between the filesystem level and output.
A Posix filename is a null terminated byte string (sans '/'). Any widescale conversion is going to cause aliasing issues and other bugs, whether or not we stay Posix compatible. Just as important, conversion is not an issue for debian-policy; linux-utf8@nl.linux.org (the primary Unicode-Linux discussion list) is strongly against it, and I believe the people who matter - the ones who work on the kernel and libc - are generally against it. I'd been interpreting this part of the policy amendment as saying "You shouldn't have filenames in packages (or created by packages) in non-UTF-8 encodings." (I'm not generally a fan of filenames in non-ASCII UTF-8, but at least it's consistent.) If we're talking about what programs output, it should use whatever name and encoding the user asks for. We can't dictate what encoding end-users use; just what Debian packages use internally. David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED] may be disappearing soon - [EMAIL PROTECTED] will work, but is not suitable for high-volume traffic.)
