Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 17:07:55 +0400 From: "Valeriy E. Ushakov" <uwe@ptc.spbu.ru> To: i18n@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: koi8-r is obsoleted by koi8-u (Re: cvs commit: ports/x11-fonts/XFree86-4-fontCyrillic) Message-ID: <20020905130755.GA14301@snark.ptc.spbu.ru> In-Reply-To: <200209050018.15176@aldan> References: <200209031042.g83AgFON078508@freefall.freebsd.org> <200209041155.15033.mi%2Bmx@aldan.algebra.com> <20020905021640.GA37309@nagual.pp.ru> <200209050018.15176@aldan>
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On Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 00:18:15 -0400, Mikhail Teterin wrote: > = Just recall an example understandable by non-Cyrillic related people: > > = ISO 8859-15 differs from ISO 8859-1 only by 8 characters and is "modern", > = but nobody suggest to silently replace ISO 8859-1 fonts with 8859-15 fonts > = everywhere and so on. > > I would suggest just that -- if no application really uses those 8 > characters. *chuckle*... This is not something one would say openly if one wants to be qualified to have an informed opinion on the subject of standard compliance. ;) Standards live their own life when published. It might be tempting to silently ignore some part of the standard but then folks that are not "in the know" come, take the standard and implement it to the letter and bad things happen. E.g. (for my pet peeve) X11 window manager authors used to ignore ICCCM requirement that gravity hint for ConfigureRequest should be interpreted as for initial mapping of the window. Everyone just "knew" that - nobody bohered to publish a new standard or a new version of ICCCM. Then Gnome/KDE folks came and implemented ICCCM to the letter, honoring the gravity hint on ConfigureRequest's. Most programs don't care - but as soon as you need to depend on how this part of ICCCM is implemented by WM - you're thoroughly screwed because you just can't tell which "dialect" of ICCCM the WM is implementing. Also look how Unicode Consortium has been maintaining backward compatibility *religiously*. Even the most obvious and stupid mistakes are not corrected "in situ" - the only way they accept is to declare the old "buggy" char obsolete (and keep it as it is) and add a new, correct one. > But standards change. New RFCs obsolete, modify, invalidate old ones > -- happens all the time in all domains... But you don't claim you are implementing RFC X, when you actually implement RFC Y. > This particular standard -- koi8-r -- was introduced by you, and it > increasingly looks like your personal attachment to it is affecting > your judgement. Mmmm, ad hominem attacks... Who's running out of arguments here? ;) Users are free to use koi8-u or koi8-c fonts for koi8-r text if they know what they are doing (and reap what they saw if things go bad). Insituting this as an approved practice is a wholly different matter. This discussion so vividly reminds me of early 1990s flamewars about russification of unix apps and horrible hacks that were involved. You proposal is at the level of those hacks. I have no doubts that you have best intentions, it's just they pave the same old road. SY, Uwe -- uwe@ptc.spbu.ru | Zu Grunde kommen http://www.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/ | Ist zu Grunde gehen To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-i18n" in the body of the message
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