[Bug 226079] Merge Review: libxml2

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Sat May 31 10:36:31 UTC 2008


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Summary: Merge Review: libxml2


https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=226079





------- Additional Comments From pertusus at free.fr  2008-05-31 06:36 EST -------
(In reply to comment #14)
> Okay, I will drop ChangeLog and News from the package, after reading this
> and the thread it looks apparently more important to the Fedora Packaging
> guys to follow blindly a "This has to be UTF-8" rule than understanding
> that people may have preferences set in their viewing and editing tools.

It should not be done blindly. But utf8 is the default for fedora since
some time for locales, so, for example, the file will look better in less
if it is encoded in utf8. That being said I think that it is perfectly right
to use other locales, and that things should also work in these locales.
But since utf8 is the default, it is more likely to be correct for text 
files that don't carry over the encoding.

> I would think it is more important to be able to read the ChangeLog missing
> some characters than not seeing anything. Not a big deal they will go look
> upstream if they really need this.

In this case, with multiple encoding, the best may indeed be to keep it 
as is.

> If the history annoys Fedora I will just drop it from the package.

It is not the point.
 
> The argument for it having to be UTF-8 just doesn't hold, you're picking
> one encoding while, the problem is that 1/ you can't garantee there is only
> one encoding in a text file 2/ even if it's the case you have no metadata
> to indicate what encoding was used for authoring. Blindly assuming this has
> to be UTF-8 is a wrong and lost battle, even the Unicode consortium would never
> try to suggest something that radical, 

Fedora is not bound to the Unicode consortium. Default encoding is utf8
so text files are more likely to be have correct rendering of characters
if dile is utf8. 

> and sorry if I were to write a README.cn
> I would use a BIG5 encoding in it, not UTF-8, because that's not what the
> concerned people would expect. 

This could be a good reason not to change the encoding for this file.

> Get yourself a filesystem with metadata if you
> really want to solve the problem, forcing upstream into UTF-8 or converting
> on the fly are both wrong IMHO.

Doing it blindly is wrong. But doing it when it makes sense is right.

> For the NEWS file it's actually generated via XSLT when the package is released
>   <xsl:output method="text" encoding="ISO-8859-1"/>
> it could be switched to UTF-8 without problem but converting at rpm generation
> time is just the Wrong Way of doing it.

If the text file is ISO-8859-1 encoded for sure, converting it
on the fly seems acceptable and even preferrable to me.

> Still w.r.t. #13 it's not so much that I think I have higher priorities to do,
> it's that I see things imposed like a dogma, that they look broken to me, and

It is not a dogma. There are reasons to prefer utf8 for text files in 
fedora. Now if you don't like it, you are perfectly right, but you'll
have to find another packager who agree with you to review your package.


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