Re: [gnu.org #1363250] ASCII maintain.txt is no longer ASCII

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> I asked what you defined as "pure" and "unpure ASCII".  What is
> "unpure ASCII"?  I gather that by "pure ASCII" you mean exactly 7-bit
> ASCII, is that correct?

Yes, that is correct. AFAIK, 7-bit ASCII is the only ASCII, and 
according to my Oxford fictionary, "pure" means "unmixed with any other 
substance, etc".


> I took simple to mean dumb, what is a simple terminal?

By "simple terminal" I meant any terminal unable to show multibyte UTF-8 
characters correctly.


>     This is how maintain.txt should look:
>
> Mike Gerwitz mentions that it is intentional that the GCS etc should
> be using UTF-8, not 7-bit ASCII.  So it definitly should not use 7-bit
> ASCII quotes in that setting.

IMHO, using multibyte UTF-8 quotes in an otherwise ASCII file is making 
a disservice to all users with 8-bit terminals.


>     This is how maintain.txt looks on my ISO-8859-15 terminal viewed with ed:
>
> What is a ISO-8859-15 terminal? Is it compatible with VT100?  But if
> you are using the wrong locale, of course the results will be strange.

It is a text-mode linux console on an old machine with a kernel compiled 
without UTF-8 support that can't be changed. I guess this is not the 
only machine out there unable to show multibyte UTF-8 quotes.


>     I know of no info viewer able to convert every UTF-8 character to a
>     printable character in ASCII or ISO-8859-X. The info viewer in this
>     machine (info (GNU texinfo) 4.13+) is not even able to convert the
>     three-byte UTF-8 quotes present in maintain.info to ASCII.
>
> That is not what I wrote though, I did not say that Info should
> convert anything only adjust its locale.  There is enough information
> in the Info file to deduce the encoding (i.e. coding: utf-8 at the
> bottom).

It seems you have a powerful machine with a modern distro that allows 
you "adjust its locale" (to UTF-8, I guess). On many machines out there, 
that is not possible (or desirable).


>     So, please, could maintain.txt and maintain.info be coded again in ASCII
>     (as advertised) for maximum compatibility with UTF-8 and 8-bit
>     terminals? Thanks.
>
> Lets not make hasty random changes, specially when this one was very
> explicit.  Lets take the time to understand the problem first, and
> then find a solution.

IMHO, the problem is clear. Using multibyte UTF-8 characters where ASCII 
suffices, inconveniences all users lacking an UTF-8 capable machine or 
software.

Moreover, what is the advantage of multibyte UTF-8 quotes for users with 
UTF-8 capable screens? They make the text easier to understand or something?


Best regards,
Antonio.