moving all .po files to UTF-8

[Christian Rose]

On 3/11/07, Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld at dkuug.dk> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 03, 2007 at 01:15:48AM +0000, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> > O/H Keld Jørn Simonsen ????????????:
> > > On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 01:24:53AM +0000, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> Rather than doing it at build time, for all the software that's translated
> > >>> in/by Fedora, it seems simplest to do it in the .po files itself. Therefore,
> > >>> at some point in the next few days, we intend to do this in the CVS
> > >>> repository.
> > >>>
> > >>> Does anyone forsee any issues with this?
> > >
> > > I am not happy about this, and in general I think it is the wrong way to
> > > go. Eg. all my own tools for translation are using other charsets than
> > > UTF-8
> >
> > Hi Keld,
> >
> > I think most people would agree that UTF-8 is the "right" way to go -- that's
> > the reason for its existence, right? It's something that can make sure
> > everything will work for all languages.
>
> maybe most people, but this is not the question, - most people already
> have gone to UTF-8 already.

Exactly. Only a very small fraction are still using ISO-8859-* for
their po files today, at least in most larger translation projects.


> > I'm thinking that this is an opportunity for all who don't use it in their tools
> > to start using it. :)
>
> It would be a backwards step for me, UTF-8 allows some characters that I
> automatically avoid using 8859-15. Thus my translations would have
> fewer errors not using utf-8. And my tools run 8859-15.

IIRC, you were the only one raising any big objections back in 2002
when an upstream project (GNOME) moved to mandating UTF-8 for all po
files [1]. If memory serves me well, the objections were the same back
then.

Given the amount of time that this has been an issue with those tools
you refer to, couldn't those tools have been fixed in that time? It's
been almost 5 years...


Christian



[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2002-April/msg00075.html