So don't use that particular tool, and/or file a bug with the
maintainer. :-)
I have used utf-8 for years - the fact that some editors and some terminal
emulators fail is not a problem for me. There are so many that works
just fine. There is unicode xterm, and rxvt if you consider xterm too heavy.
Both vi and emacs have versions that handle utf-8 competently. You may
have to
put in a one-off effort in finding a suitable font for your xterm, if you
actually wants to see proper umlauts in all cases. If you don't care about
looks, then xterm will display blanks/squares and backspace etc. will
still work.
Outside the english-speaking world, userland _was_ completely
broken in the day of ascii. And supporting the multiple
iso8859-xx encodings was completely broken too, if you ever needed
more than one of them.
Unicode gives userland an opportunity to actually work decently
for the first time. Now, ascii may be fine if C development is all
you ever use the machine for. You can mangle a few names in
comments - some people won't like that at all, some won't care.
But try using the same machine for writing a business letter without
a proper character set. You won't be taken seriously. Or even a non-english
gui app with ascii-only menus.
If you want to know what it is like, knock three vowels or so out of the
english alphabet. Consider them not supported. Invent "transcriptions"
if you like.
Try writing a letter that way! Or even kernel code with informative
comments.
See just how much that suck.
Consider the alternative - disable the broken behavior by using a
tool that handles UTF-8. There are certainly enough aware apps/tools for
those of us that need unicode.
It has been done for years because there were no other choice. If you
wanted to work in unix, just forget your own name! Now there is a choice.
Some people still don' care and is fine with "jorn" and such. Some are
pissed off, takes offense, or stick to windows or simply puts unicode
into kernel comments.
If your mailer doesn't support utf-8, chances are you get some mail
from people with very strange looking names too.
Lots of people actually bothered - and created various encoding schemes
to struggle with until they came up with unicode. English speakers and
people _only_ interested in simple tools like tar and ls didn't bother
perhaps.
No problem there - the pressure to support more than ascii always was on
those
wanting to use more than ascii. Now the kernel contains more than ascii,
and if you want to work on it you will have to cope - or succeed in
patching it out again.
Such "rules" may work for kernel comments specifically.
But linux is used for much more than that, so it now supports utf-8 just
fine.
People who have a poperly set up system see no reason why they
can't use utf-8 in the kernel too. Consider tools that work. Or fix
the few remaining that doesn't work - if you are attached to them.
And all those that actually used those "different charsets" disagree,
or they'd used ascii in the first place too. :-)
Helge Hafting
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