Re: UTF-8 and case-insensitivity

[H. Peter Anvin]

Followup to:  <16433.38038.881005.468116@xxxxxxxxx>
By author:    tridge@xxxxxxxxx
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Given how much pain the "kernel is agnostic to charset encoding"
> attitude has cost me in terms of programming pain, I thought I should
> de-cloak from lurk mode and put my 2c into the UTF-8 issue.
> 
> Personally I think that eventually the Linux kernel will have to
> embrace the interpretation of the byte streams that applications have
> given it, despite the fact that this will be very painful and
> potentially quite complex. The reason is that I think that eventually
> the Linux kernel will need to efficiently support a userspace policy
> of case-insensitivity and the only way to do case-insensitive filename
> operations is to interpret those byte streams as a particular
> encoding.
> 

Realistically, the only sane way to do this is to set our foot down
and say: UTF-8 is *the* encoding.  A good step in that direction would
be to set utf-8 to be the default NLS in the kernel, but as long as
people keep the whole sick idea that we can continue to use
locale-dependent encoding we're in for a world of hurt.

That's really the long and short of it.  Until people are willing to
say "we support UTF-8, anything else and it's anyone's guess what
happens" then nothing is going to happen.

	-hpa
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