[GnomeMeeting-list] Re: UTF-8

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld dkuug dk>]

On Mon, Jul 08, 2002 at 11:02:18PM +0200, Christian Rose wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote:
> > > > Why do they need to be in utf8?
> > >
> > > I think we'd like gnomemeeting to work on systems with older glibc's and
> > > non-glibc systems too. These systems usually cannot do character set
> > > recoding on the fly and hence the po files have to be in the character set
> > > we specify, which is UTF-8. I thought this had been explained umpteen
> > > times on gnome-i18n gnome org 
> >
> > Well, we have discussed it, and I think the conclusion was that there
> > was no need to require utf-8. At least this was the conclusion on the
> > Gnu translation project list.
> 
> That must have been it, because I for sure haven't heard any such
> conclusion on gnome-i18n gnome org  On the contrary.

So I cannot remember seeing those conclusions... Mybe you could
refres my memory?
> 
> 
> > There is no problem for older systems.
> 
> I would love to hear the details on why. I'm sure others would love to
> hear the reasons too.

OK, I will dig it out of my mail archives.
As far as I remember the reason was that they could use the newer
gettext, as there was no licencing problems - it is under LGPL.
And this could then be distributed with the distro.
> 
> > > > utf8 is a pain in the a**, at least to me..
> > >
> > > What's the problem? Please be more specific. I've had no trouble ever when
> > > using iconv or msgconv.
> >
> > utf-8 is just one more source of errors that it would be nice to be
> > without. I have explained this a couple of times, also on this list.
> 
> I'm curious about what type of errors you are referring to.

It is people trying to edit utf-8 files in latin-1 and then
the files end up being a mix of utf8 and latin-1 and it is a
pain in the a** to clear this up. I have had several instances
like this, mostly with kde files, where they have used utf8
for some time now. As utf8 is not necessary, there is no need to
introduce these kinds of errors.

Kind regards
keld