Re: [9fans] simplicity

[John Stalker <stalker@maths.tcd.ie>]

> i think this is a character set conversion problem, not a locale
> problem.  a small distinction, but i think one can live with converting
> character sets as they come onto a system.  localized (ha!) complexity.

I'm not sure your solution is always the correct one, or is implementable.
Should an MTA silently convert incoming mail to the local character set?
I'm not sure I want that.  The other program in my example was a web
browser reading from a pipe.  It can't know whether it's processing data
as it comes into the system or data which is already there and has already
been converted, unless either it can trust the meta tag in the document to
have been updated or the conversion is pushed out into the network layer.
Also, it's meaningful to talk about the system character set in the plan9
world or the windows world, but not under UNIX, which is where I spend
most of my time, for better or worse.
-- 
John Stalker
School of Mathematics
Trinity College Dublin
tel +353 1 896 1983
fax +353 1 896 2282