Re: po files and charset field

[Pablo Saratxaga <pablo mandrakesoft com>]

Kaixo!

On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 09:48:09AM +0100, Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote:

> > > Should they be made all utf-8 (I can take the task to convert all those
> > > files if needed),
> > 
> > I'd say yes.  But it's arguable whether author have to write them
> > directly with an UTF-8 editor or whether is better to build the final
> > .desktop etc. files on the fly from other encoded input files (XML
> > prefered).
> 
> I would prefer these desktop files to be marked with a charset
> label. I have seen too may errors from people thinking
> it was an 8859-1 file when it actually was an utf-8 file.

Those files are a mix of several texts in several languages; the only
possibility to use a single encoding is to use utf-8.
Otherwise, the file have to be generated from other sources,
or the format has to be changed to tell the encoding (breaking compatibility),
or the charset told in the locale filed; but that:
- will need actions from the translators (or someone else)
- won't be in action until done
that is, it doesn't have any advantage over switching to utf-8; so maybe
switching directly to utf-8 would be better (and then, the file can tell,
in a comment, the file is in utf-8, for all strings).

Using utf-8 will also keep away the problem of breaking some locales texts
due to some "smart" actions of the text editor on chart values not belonging
to the encoding used by the locale of the language being edited.

> > > and for which release of Gnome should it be mandatory that they will
> > > be all in utf-8 (with conversion to the real charset asked by the user
> > > trough LC_CTYPE if needed).
> 
> It really should not be mandatory.

Why not ?

(The user can still choose whatever encoding he wants; what I advocates is
using utf-8 for source files so that Gnome routines can convert it to the
needed encoding, giving even more power to users. But for that it is necessary
to know both the start and end encodings; the end encoding is provided by
the user; the start one is currently not told in desktop files; what I advocate
is, when not told, assume it is in utf-8, and make that the official policy.


> 
> Kind regards
> keld

-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

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