Re: email address handling

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> That's my argument here. Life is tough.  Not everthing is going to be 
> easy. Your solution would "work", but it would be a horrid piece of crap.

..and I really think that the

	"=?utf-8?q?S=2E=C3=87a=C4=9Flar?= Onur" <caglar@pardus.org.tr>

example should be the one that makes you say "Ok, you're right".

The undeniable fact is, if we kept things in that format, even your broken 
mailer wouldn't have corrupted it. You could cut-and-paste things, and 
they's show up correctly at the other end, regardless of whether the 
problem is with your mailer or with the cut-and-paste, or anything else.

So clearly, "=?utf-8?q?S=2E=C3=87a=C4=9Flar?= Onur" _must_ be the superior 
format that git should have used, no?

Because clearly that is the most automation-friendly thing that _never_ 
requires anybody to think at all, and you can cut-and-paste it between 
programs without ever having to worry about anything at all. No special 
characters, no special meanings, no need to worry about limitations of 
implementation.

So the fact that git completely FUCKS IT UP, and when you do 'git log' git 
will have corrupted this to

	Author: S.Çağlar Onur <caglar@pardus.org.tr>

is clearly git doing the wrong thing. Right?

WRONG.

The fact is, git does the right thing. And yes, it means that you cannot 
just blindly cut-and-paste. And yes, it means that your mailer actually 
has to work right for you to even -see- the right email address. And yes, 
it means that any number of things can screw up, and corrupt it.

But it is STILL the right thing. Because what matters more than your 
ability to cut-and-paste or anything like that is  the fact that we should 
make things look sane.

The thing is, you can actually get git to output the crazy names. Just do

	git show --pretty=email 37a4c940749670671adab211a2d9c9fed9f3f757

and now you get the email-prettified thing for at least the author. No, 
git won't corrupt the actual message, so the Signed-off-by: lines will 
still show Çağlar's first name, but you can actually get back that odd 
format.

(In fact, --pretty=email will do it as

	From: =?utf-8?q?S.=C3=87a=C4=9Flar=20Onur?= <caglar@pardus.org.tr>

which is admittedy _even_uglier_, but whatever.. The difference between 
really f*cking ugly and really f*cking uglier is not really relevant).

			Linus