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

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > My machine is over 10 years old.  I can't even remeber when you
   > _couldn't_ modify the locale on a GNU system.  If your system is that
   > old then you have more problems than viewing a text file! :-)

   This machine is 20 years old. It is powered by a Slackware from 2007 
   because nothing more modern seems to be installable on it. 

That is not the normal case I think, we should try and cater for the
normal case and not for the obscure one.

   > It sounds more and more like your situation is not the norm, but
   > rather a very special case.

   In the first world, sure.

I don't know what that means, I run old hardware and old installations
-- even much older than your setup.  I still believe that your case is
the special case, and not the normal one.  Maybe a poll would be
relevant?

   > Why can you not simply convert (or regenerate) the relevant files?

   Because it is inconvenient and could be easily fixed upstream.

It is not easily fixable, since it has to be done for everyone.  You
can easily regenerate the files in question, that is easy.

   > Today, and for the last 10 years, UTF-8 has been the default and I
   > cannot think of any kind of terminal in the last 30 years that is
   > unable to display UTF-8 properly.

   It is not (only) the terminal. It is the software. Given the lack of 
   concern for backwards compatibility among software developers, it seems 
   from very difficult to impossible to install UTF-8 capable software (or 
   anything else) in old machines.

That is simply not true, and software can always be upgrade.  If you
are running 20 year old software, you have MANY more problems than
displaying UTF-8.

   >     IMHO, the problem is clear. Using multibyte UTF-8 characters where 
ASCII
   >     suffices, inconveniences all users lacking an UTF-8 capable machine or
   >     software.
   >
   > Maybe we should have a poll, on how many 7-bit ASCII users there are
   > versus UTF-8?  I don't see that the problem is clear at all.  And I am
   > guessing that 7-bit terminals is not the norm at all.

   Who said anything about 7-bit terminals? There are lots of 
   ASCII-compatible encodings that are not 7-bit ASCII.

You were complanining over exactly viewing compatible ASCII encodings
on a 7-bit ASCII terminal.  If that is no longer a problem, then maybe
we can put this thread to a rest?

   >     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?
   >
   > If we are talking about Info, then using UTF-8 produces a much nicer
   > output in X11 -- which is what the majority of users would be using
   > today.

   http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Web-Pages.html

   "The overall goals are to support a wide variety of browsers, to focus 
   on information rather than visual adornments".

This is for web browsers, I am talking about Info.  So I do not
understand the context of this quote, can you explain?

   > GNU always prided it self in moving forward, not backward.

   I'm fine with moving forward, but I can't imagine in what way wasting 
   two bytes per quote is "moving forward".

You are overly over exaggerating and going of a tanget.