Re: [RFC] Suggesting UTF-8 instead of ASCII

[John Darrington]

Since it is my fault that Ludo raised this, I feel it my duty to try to put 
things right ... :)

If there is a case where ascii is just not going to do the job, then utf8 is 
obviously the correct choice.  I have written such files myself - for example 
the .pot files in PSPP contain math symbols encoded in utf8.

However, I would be very sad to see anything which encourages people to use 
non-ascii in source files without good reason.  Inserting the Copyright sign
is not IMO a good reason - (C) is perfectly well understood and so long as the 
word "copyright" is there it has full legal significance.  A source file
which is purely ascii except for this one character is I think rather 
unnecessary.

Ludovic has an accent in his name and can understand that he wants his name
spelled correctly.  So I concede him this privilege. 


Although not factually incorrect, it is a false argument to simply state:

  The GNU C Library has supported UTF-8 locales for years, and most
  editors and tools, both console and graphical, support it as well.

The fact is, that although the C library and most tools "support" utf8, many 
machines (for whatever reason) do not have the locales installed.
For example, if you logon to fencepost.gnu.org and try export LC_ALL=de_DE.utf8
you will get an error.



Coding standards are supposed to be conservative.  The current coding standards 
prefer ascii, but allow utf8 when necessary.

So I think that this section of the  coding standards are fine as they are.


Just my $0.02


J'


On Sun, Jul 06, 2014 at 12:08:03PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
     
     Given that comments are written in English, they are essentially ASCII
     anyway.
     
     However, I’d like to suggest that things like the copyright sign,
     characters that appear in people’s names, etc. are all acceptable in
     comments too.
     
     WDYT?
     
     Ludo’.
     

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