Re: JFS default behavior (was: UTF-8 in file systems? xfs/extfs/etc.)

Jamie Lokier
2004-02-13T03:23:13Z

viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 02:16:53AM +0100, Robin Rosenberg wrote:
> > Yes, so ext3&co. should be equipped with charset options just the other so
> > it can be fixed by the user or in some cases the mount tools.
> >
> > Is there a place to store character set information in these file systems?
>
> Bullshit. Just as there is no timezone common for all users, there is no
> charset common for all of them. Charset of _machine_ doesn't make any sense
> at all - toy operating systems nonwithstanding.

Charset of a filename does make sense, though. That's not per user,
it's per filename.

A name which one user entered as "£10.txt" should ideally display as
that sequence of characters to all users who want to display the name.

I already have this problem on my filesystems: some programs show the
names assuming UTF-8, other programs show them assuming
iso-8859-1.

But it's worse than that. On my filesystem, names are stored in UTF-8
as is recommended these days. "ls" on some terminals shows the names
as I wrote them. But on other terminals it shows the wrong names.

If I create a file using a shell command, what I get depends on which
terminal I used to create it. If I am using a terminal which displays
UTF-8 but ssh to another machine, the other machine assumes the
terminal is displaying iso-8859-1 even though the other machine's
default locale is UTF-8. And so on.

-- Jamie