From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264267AbUBRLHb (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Feb 2004 06:07:31 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264374AbUBRLHa (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Feb 2004 06:07:30 -0500 Received: from mail.shareable.org ([81.29.64.88]:32645 "EHLO mail.shareable.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264267AbUBRLH3 (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Feb 2004 06:07:29 -0500 Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 11:06:48 +0000 From: Jamie Lokier To: Robin Rosenberg Cc: Hans Reiser , Stefan Smietanowski , Linus Torvalds , Marc Lehmann , viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk, Linux kernel Subject: Re: UTF-8 practically vs. theoretically in the VFS API Message-ID: <20040218110648.GF28599@mail.shareable.org> References: <200402150107.26277.robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com> <40324741.4040707@stesmi.com> <4032BF78.70802@namesys.com> <200402180308.48354.robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200402180308.48354.robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Robin Rosenberg wrote: > A character is the simplest form of image so it should always look the same. People who need the computer to _speak_ names need language or phonetic information attached to a name, for it to be spoken properly. On this, Alex Belits has a good point. It's all very well standardising on UTF-8 so every name can be displayed nicely. That is incomplete for a user who needs "ls" to work audibly, though. In practice, such a user configures their machine to assume a particular language, or guess it with bias to the one they use most often. That is, in some ways, the same problem as having a mixture of filenames in an unknown character encoding, except that UTF-8 doesn't solve it. -- Jamie