From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Apr 4 14:58:38 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mail.rpi.edu (mail.rpi.edu [128.113.100.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7F64837B8DF for ; Tue, 4 Apr 2000 14:58:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.acs.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by mail.rpi.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA241448; Tue, 4 Apr 2000 17:58:04 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200004041517.BAA14140@mycenae.ilion.eu.org> References: <200004041517.BAA14140@mycenae.ilion.eu.org> Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2000 17:58:46 -0400 To: Patryk Zadarnowski , "G. Adam Stanislav" From: Garance A Drosihn Subject: Re: Unicode on FreeBSD Cc: Alex Belits , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 1:17 AM +1000 4/5/00, Patryk Zadarnowski wrote: > > > I have just asked, who will benefit from it. No one answered > > > "I will" -- everyone who makes Unicode support believes that it > > > will benefit someone else. > > > > I thought I did. OK, let me restate: I will! I actually do already > > because I did some work and it is in the ports. > >OK, I didn't say anything ealier because I though it was fairly >obvious that anyone dealing with a *mixed* environment beyond that of >ISO 8859-1 (even if that means just a mixture of ISO 8859-1/2) would >find Unicode support in the kernel a blessing from the heaven. Let me >restate that: I will use it. Currently, if you have a group of ISO >8859-2 users on the system , the ISO 8859-1 people see them as >meaningless junk. I don't even want to think about something like >Arabic. I also think this issue is so obvious that it seems silly to even have to mention it. If anyone is working on unicode support in any part of the system, then more power to them. Even if no one did use unicode support, it is mighty nice to have it sitting there should the need arise. If there is a superior alternative down the road, let's call that unicode-II, then it would also be great if FreeBSD has support for that too. I am not aware of any current alternative which is as widely pursued as unicode, though, and it seems pretty obvious that it would benefit FreeBSD if we were among the operating systems which understand what to do with it. I don't understand what possible benefit there is in having *NO* options to deal with all the language-characters in the world. Even if unicode isn't perfect, it is a damn sight better than nothing. If some specific change for unicode does break things, then I can see arguing that change. I can't fathom why anyone would argue against unicode support per se. --- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message