<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
Op 10-06-2021 om 18:17 schreef Richard Narron:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:b8169b53-e5bc-fccf-dd35-9b4fcf2dc711@gmail.com">
<pre>If we use UTF-8 for names in Spanish, where does it end?
</pre>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
I cannot easily recognize UTF-8 names in Chinese or Thai or Russian or
Japanese.</pre>
</blockquote>
SBo could require that Japanese names can be required to be <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese">transliterated
into Romaji form</a>. However real Japanese names are written in
kanji. The problem here is that while different kanji may be
pronounced the same (and therefore they can also map onto the same
romaji-string) while in the Japanese script, these different symbols
refer to different persons.<br>
<br>
Therefore, if you only have the romaji representation while you
don't have the name as it is written in the Japanese script, you'll
have a hard time tracking down the person and or verifying that you
have found that particular person if the need should arise.<br>
<br>
So you should just use the Japanese or Chinese representation for
the names.<br>
<br>
Please note that Chinese also has the exact same problems. (the
terminology for "kanji and romaji" is "hanzi and pinyin" for
Chinese, so the Chinese languages behave the same in this regard)<br>
<br>
A fix might be to request that Chinese and Japanese people include
both a transliterated name and a name in their native script.<br>
But for matters of accountability or the acknowledgement of merit,
there is no way around writing the names in their native script.<br>
<br>
Therefore, I don't see any other appropriate solution than using
UTF-8.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:b8169b53-e5bc-fccf-dd35-9b4fcf2dc711@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">My keyboard does not easily support such languages.</pre>
</blockquote>
If you run "<tt>chmod +x /etc/profile.d/scim.*sh</tt>" and do some
configuration your keyboard does support Japanese and Chinese
characters. I use SCIM on Slackware 14.2 on a regular basis.
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:b8169b53-e5bc-fccf-dd35-9b4fcf2dc711@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">If we allow UTF-8 names in SlackBuild scripts then how about UTF-8 in
documentation and descriptions?
Where does it end?</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>I hope that it's clear that this issue should have been resolved
years ago and that there's really no way around UTF8 anymore. It
should just be implemented and used by default. Slackware 15
apparently uses it by default so that's the direction in which
things are moving. We should be thinking about how we are going to
support UTF8 as well, because UTF8 is going to be the default that
will be used everywhere whether we like it or not.<br>
</p>
<p>However, I am also aware that quite a lot of software is still
incapable of processing UTF-8 properly and that this might cause
problems in the actual .SlackBuild scripts and documentation-files
at the time of writing.</p>
<p>So as a compromise I propose that we use UTF8 for the .info
files, but allow the use of ASCII in the scripts for now.</p>
<p>If we combine this with a kanji and a transliterated version of
the names written in Japanese, Chinese, etc. we can properly
allocate merit and accountability without having to worry about
this right now.</p>
<p>Note that this solution is not a permanent one.<br>
Its main benefit would be that it provides us with a proper amount
of time to come up with something better.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:b8169b53-e5bc-fccf-dd35-9b4fcf2dc711@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">I would hope that we keep the English language as a standard for
software that I can, read and write and that matches my keyboard.</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>I understand your desire for "Keep It Simple Stupid", but I just
don't see a way around UTF8 anymore if SBo, Slackware and Linux in
general, want to stay relevant for the next 10 years. <a
href="https://brilliantmaps.com/population-circle/"
moz-do-not-send="true">This map</a> really drives the home the
point about the enormous number (billions) of people in Asia and
those aren't the only people which use a writing system that
cannot be expressed adequately through ASCII, because these
problems also apply to Dutch (my native language), French, German,
Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian and many more.<br>
</p>
<p>If we are not going to support them, we're going to get
marginalized and replaced in less than a decade by something which
does support their native languages.<br>
</p>
<p>Spycrowsoft<br>
</p>
</body>
</html>