Re: [bug-gnulib] quote characters in stds

[Bruno Haible]

Karl Berry wrote:
>     Maybe you can reformulate the last two paragraphs in a way that is
>     less incorrect?
>
> Sorry, since I do not see what is incorrect about them

The main point is that it transmits the perception that decent Unicode support
will take "a few years". Whereas it's there already now.

Five years ago, people made up lists of programs that _do_ work with UTF-8
encoded text files. Today, these programs are uncountable. Instead, people
make up lists of programs that _don't_ work with Unicode:
  http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fBadSoftware

> My personal configuration is not the point (it's vm inside emacs).

This is the point: emacs (from HEAD branch, not the emacs-unicode-2 branch)
is the only noteworthy mailer that does not display Unicode adequately.
All the others (mozilla, kmail, evolution, mutt, pine) do by now.

> If you can suggest wording that makes you happier, please do.

My suggestion is to replace

  Unicode contains the unambiguous quote characters required, and its
  common encoding UTF-8 is upward compatible with address@hidden  But Unicode
  and UTF-8 are deployed even less widely than Latin1; it would be
  premature to require Unicode support for running essentially every GNU
  program.

  Perhaps the prevailing situation will change in a few years, and then
  we will revisit this.

with

  Unicode contains the unambiguous quote characters required, and its
  common encoding UTF-8 is upward compatible with address@hidden  Unicode and
  Latin1 are both wildly deployed and well supported.  But there are
  still environments which are dominated by Latin1, and still a
  few applications work better with Latin1 than with Unicode. This is
  likely to change over the next few years, though.

Bruno