Le 24 août 2023 10:41:23 GMT+02:00, Msavoritias <em...@msavoritias.me> a écrit : > >What I am saying here is that: >Its easy to see from our very US centric tech culture why everybody >should just use ASCII because "This is how it is". But there is very >little reasons why we shouldn't strive to be more inclusive of all >cultures. >Especially since nowadays where we have tools like Unicode that make our >lives easier compared to US or nothing of 30-40 years ago. >Just imagine how many good programmers we are missing because they don't >want/can't learn English or don't have an ASCII keyboard. > >MSavoritias > >MSavoritias <em...@msavoritias.me> writes: > >> Nguyễn Gia Phong <c...@loang.net> writes: >> >>> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]] >>> On 2023-08-24 at 10:41+03:00, MSavoritias wrote: >>>> Nguyễn Gia Phong <c...@loang.net> writes: >>>> > I think the distinction must be made here between Guix and GuixSD. >>>> > >>>> > The packaging software should support full localization, >>>> > but the distro should target the least common denominator. >>>> >>>> Depends what do we mean the "distro" here. >>>> If I can pick arabic or chinese in the installation as a display >>>> language and also I am able to use an arabic/chinese keyboard sounds >>>> good to me. >>> >>> I meant GuixSD. I agree a distribution based on Guix Systems >>> shouldn't meet any obstacle declaring packages with non-ASCII names. >>> That you can type arabic and chinese and I can type hangul >>> and most latin characters doesn't mean names having all of the above >>> will be accessible to either of us or a third person. >>> >>> On 2023-08-24 at 10:41+03:00, MSavoritias wrote: >>>> Regarding the initial question it was about package names to my >>>> understanding. Specifically package names in the store to use unicode >>>> characters. Which makes perfect sense there because some packages dont >>>> use ascii names. >>> >>> It does, but as said before, whether this is desireable depends >>> on the target audience. The purpose of API is to be used, >>> i.e. it would be useless if even just one user can't type it. >>> >> Well we already have that don't we? What I mean is that ASCII names cant >> be typed by all keyboards layouts easily. So what you are saying already >> happens. Thats why I always have an ASCII layout available as a >> secondary, next to my non ASCII. I bet every person that uses packages >> with names other than english can add a seperate layout. >> >>> On 2023-08-24 at 10:41+03:00, MSavoritias wrote: >>>> Regarding the broken install example, most (all?) base >>>> packages use ASCII due to unix historical baggage. >>>> So you shouldn't need to type anything non ASCII >>>> to fix an install with only basic packages. >>> >>> Due to historical baggage, most (all?) keyboard layouts can fall >>> back to ASCII alphanumerics. A broken install was given >>> as the worst case; there's no reason any other packages >>> should be less accessible based on the users' culture. >>> >> >> But they are already aren't they? Because if I want to add a package >> with the Greek alphabet or the Japanese one I have to transliterate it >> into ASCII which is always going to be worse and people won't be able to >> find the package. Because they won't know we changed the name. Plus they >> will have to change the layout. Same as an ASCII user would have to do. >> >>> I suggest, in an international context such as GuixSD, >>> for every package to have a ASCII name. It'd of course >>> be better if a correctly written name is also available. >>> >> >> So you propose two names? Sure if that can be done I don't see why not. >> Either way not >> having unicode names is a bug. Also to note: Most of the world speaks >> Unicode. So its more for compatibility purposes i guess (?) rather than >> to be "international". >> >> MSavoritias > >
There are two things discussed here: 1. A restriction in the daemon prevents using unicode in store item names. I think this is an issue worth fixing, as it would allow users to define their own store items more easily. For instance, I might want to make a file with non-ascii name a file-like item, eg. (local-file "fond d'écran.jpg") 2. Naming policy for packages in the Guix channel I don't think we should distribute packages that have non-ascii characters in their names. Of course I don't know all keyboards that exist out there, but I don't think you can find a programmer that can't type an ascii character, or a guix user that can't at least type "guix" in their terminal. For discoverability, we could add the real non-ascii name in the package description.
