bug#3501: 23.0.94; Use Unicode in Info (?)

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Drew!

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 08:23:49PM -0700, Drew Adams wrote:
> > > Can't we use Unicode or in some other way use accented characters in
> > > people's names (when appropriate)?

> I was thinking of display - what the user sees. But it should, if
> possible, affect also searching (including regexp searching) and any
> other behavior the user can notice. The user should experience only the
> fancy character, both visually and every other way.

Please no.  I absolutely do not want to "experience" fancy unicode characters
when reading info.  It's bad enough getting them in email and in usenet
postings from Xah Lee.  ;-)  ASCII can be displayed perfectly on any
screen or teletype or even punched card puncher that can display English
at all.  Unicode, by contrast, needs a fancy setup, even if lots of
computers already have such a setup.

Unless accented hackers (of whom we're not two) find the ASCII rendering
of their names offensive, but I haven't seen any evidence of this.

> What is in the actual file is not important here, except in so far as
> it might affect perception.

> > What goes into the Info files depends on the directives in the
> > Texinfo sources and on the command line arguments used when makeinfo
> > was invoked to produce the Info files.  You will see in the `doc'
> > directory that we already invoke makeinfo with --enable-encoding
> > switch in some cases.

> Whatever is already done is not sufficient in this regard, as indicated
> in the original report: I don't see composed characters; I see
> punctuation in the middle of people's names. I see J/orgensen, not
> Jørgensen.

Is that bad?  J/orgensen is more readable (IMHO) than JÀ«rgensen (or
whatever that letter's two bytes actually are).

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).