Actually that's not a "real technical reason". If you could point to a package with a bug that would be a serious problem if people used UTF-8, then that would be a real technical reason. But saying "it isn't required for sarge" doesn't mean that it actually doesn't *work*.
I didn't say it did. I pointed to a potential problem. For all I know,
in an exclusively german context UTF-8 won't cause problems at all. What
I did say is that full multibyte compliance isn't guaranteed. That's a
fact. Now, those suggesting that a bunch of people who aren't currently
using UTF-8 suddenly start using it should look at the current state of
affairs and decide whether that's a good idea. IOW, is the quote issue a
big enough problem that we should suggest that all german users by
default use a less tested environment? I would suggest that those
proposing the change bear some responsibility for testing that
configuration from scratch to see what kind of impact it might have on a
new user's experience, compared to the current mode of operation. If
someone were to do that in a comprehensive fashion then I'd have no
question at all about the proposed change--but I doubt there's really
time for that given the number of packages in sarge.
FWIW, I use a UTF-8 locale on sarge and sid exclusively, and I have seen no multibyte-related problems.
I also use a UTF-8 locale, and I can assure you that there are. Most are surmountable, but will raise the complexity of an installation. (It's not just "use LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 and everything will magically work" in an upgrade scenario. Maybe not even in a new install--I don't know. Think things like terminal emulator settings, fonts, remote sessions, etc.) There are definately, e.g., issues with multibyte support in coreutils. How much impact the issues have in the current context, I don't know. Several weeks into the freeze might not be the right time to start quantifying this.
Mike Stone
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