Re: locale encodings

[Steven Abner <pheonix@zoomtown.com>]

On 12 Nov 2013, at 8:36 AM, Keld Simonsen wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:37:53AM -0500, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
>> On 11/11/2013 08:22 PM, Keld Simonsen wrote:
>>> Well, the encoding of the source coode of all locales should be 7-bit ascii, for
>>> maximum portability. Then the target encoding should be recorded via the 
>>> % charset specification, which gives a list of possible charsets, comma separated.
>>> UTF-8 should always be included there, but other encodings should also be available.
>> 
>> So one of the points that we've been trying to gather consensus on is:
>> Is it really important to have 7-bit ASCII? Why not use UTF-8 for the
>> the locale source? It's readily readable by all editors and allows
>> language specific comments in teh source files for maximum maintenance.
> 
> I think to have UTF-8 is a bad idea, eg for embedded systems, and for systems that is
> not maintained in UTF-8. It also can give trouble when communicating the source.

FWIW all data that is important, save one, is in POSIX's 7-bit ASCII. From the ones I've examined and
patched, seem to be an almost identical copy from Section 7 of The Open Group Base Specifications.
There are some that have minor data problems, but I was trying to access the default character set.
That happens to be in the "comments" section for some reason.
Steve