Re: man/man7/pathname.7: Correct handling of pathnames

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

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Hi Jason,

On Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 06:07:30PM -0500, Jason Yundt wrote:
> > I would do in a GUI exactly the same as what command-line programs do:
> > pass the raw string to whatever API prints them.  If the string makes
> > sense in the current locale, it will be shown nicely.  If it doesn't
> > make sense, it will display weird characters, but that's not a terrible
> > issue.  Just run again with the appropriate locale.
> 
> OK, but how does that API figure out what characters to display?  What
> character encoding should that API use when drawing the characters?  I
> think that it???s OK to replace the current recommendation, but
> pathname(7) should really explain how such an API would figure out what
> characters need to be drawn on the screen.

That's not a pathname issue anymore.  It's just the issue of printing
bytes to a user.  I don't think pathname(7) should talk about how bytes
are shown to a user.

That wouldn't affect at all how applications handle files.

For example, I have just installed my new laptop (with the C locale),
and nab's name shows as ??????.  I expect a Japanese filename to be
shown similarly, although that depends on what each application wants to
do.  It doesn't really matter, since it's just a cosmetic issue.  The
string still contains the appropriate bytes, even if I can't read them
properly.  If I had a file called nab in cyrillic, I would expect ls(1)
to similarly show ??????, but internally just handle it well, because it
doesn't even look at the bytes; it just passes them through.


Have a lovely night!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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