This is the mail archive of the libc-alpha@sourceware.org mailing list for the glibc project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: Is it OK to write ASCII strings directly into locale source files?


24.07.2017 15:32 Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 07/24/2017 09:28 AM, Mike FABIAN wrote:
> > Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:
> >
> >> [...]
> >> So let us start slowly and agree with 'ASCII - [<>]' where < denotes
> >> the start of a code point and > the end of the code point.
> >
> > Yes, that sounds like a very reasonable first step!
> >
> > Is it OK to use that already *now*?
>
> You and Rafal are localedata maintainers, you can assume consensus, therefore
> you can start changing things in whatever way you wish.

At the moment I would hesitate with this change.  My reasons:

1. 2.26 release is just around the corner.
2. I don't know why this <U00xx> format was introduced.  I'm afraid that
   nobody here knows and also I'm afraid there was a good reason to introduce
   it.  Nobody knows what bugs will (re)appear if we revert to the more
   readable format.

Or maybe somebody understands the reasons and can explain we can safely
revert to the readable format or we can't?  If nobody can then let's
investigate the git history of the repo and find the reasons behind the
change.  If it turns out we can safely switch then let's switch.
If we find a good reason not to switch then we'll just do nothing.
If we still don't know the reasons then let's switch after 2.26 release
so we have enough time to test during the 2.27 development cycle.

> Before you change this though I would like to see your list of reasons
> for making the change, what benefits do you see it bringing? Is readability
> the only one?

Mike has already explained that the readability is a good reason and
to large extent I agree with this.  But which characters can we use in
the source code before the code becomes actually less readable?
What about the languages which use Latin alphabet with lots of
diacritical characters?  Non-European languages using Latin alphabet?
Greek, Cyrillic?  Right-to-left alphabets?  What if another developer
does not yet have or cannot ever have a font which supports a specific
alphabet?

Regards,

Rafal


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]