Re: "coding: utf-8" emacs local variable in ChangeLog (?)

[Mark Kettenis <mark.kettenis@xs4all.nl>]

> Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:45:18 +0200
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> 
> > Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 11:22:53 +0100 (CET)
> > From: Mark Kettenis <mark.kettenis@xs4all.nl>
> > CC: brobecker@adacore.com, gdb@sourceware.org, ludo@gnu.org
> > 
> > Well, I disagree.  I think it was a mistake.  UTF-8 support is not
> > universally available.
> 
> Any specific examples?

Sure, the OpenBSD system console defenitely isn't UTF-8 aware, and as
far as I can tell the xterm's on OpenBSD don't have UTF-8 encoding
turned on by default either.

> > I can see why Ludovic wants to have his name spelled properly, but
> > he should realize it'll look like "Ludovic Court?\203?is" to many
> > people.
> 
> Not if they use Emacs.

What do you think I'm using?  Ok, that's in emacs running in screen
running in an xterm, and those question marks are really some funny
looking character that I wouldn't know how to type.  But even if I
look at the 2007 ChangeLog with emacs running as an X application
Ludo's last name shows up with that funny capital A with a tiled and "
after it.  I'm fairly sure that's not right.

> > I think we should keep our source files as 7-bit ASCII (with the
> > possible exception of the files maintained by the translation
> > teams), Developers should use a transliteration for their names,
> > just like all deveopers from countries in east-asia or the former
> > (current?) Russian empire seem to do.
> 
> I doubt if you can get that agreed to by many people who live in the
> Latin locales.  (But if you succeed, I won't mind going back to ASCII,
> of course.)

Well, their ancestors didn't have them ;)

Seriously though.  This is not worth fighting about.  I stated my
opinion.  I'll get back under my rock.