Re: [PATCH 8/8] One Laptop Per Child power/battery driver

[Pete Zaitcev]

On Mon, 7 May 2007 22:23:11 +0100, Alan Cox <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> We had this discussion before. Kernel sources should use utf-8 for
> comments where neccessary. Many names cannot be correctly represented in
> US ascii, and mangling them is just plain rude.

I have to disagree here. It is using the native alphabet for the name
which is very rude, because non-native hackers cannot read it. This is
true on systems which can display the name correctly, which may come
as a surprise to you. I used to receive e-mails from Mr. àààà ààà at work.
Do you know who the heck he is? I sure didn't. Beautiful gliphs though!

One peculiar thing I have observed is how all this "UTF-8 in names"
nonsense is being pushed by western Europeans. Why? That's because
their umlauts are grandfathered in, and because English speakers _can_
read their names approximately, simply by ignoring all the strokes
above the letter (or, in Norwegians and Polaks cases, going through
the letter). So do not try to pretend that "correctness" has anything
to do with your demands. Nowhere the ethnocentrism comes through clearer
than in demanding that everyone in the world were able to read names
spelled as convenient for you and not for them.

-- Pete
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