I just second this. Only IMO the UCS2 (fixed two bytes per character) would be much more appropriate to a modern UNICODE system. The variable length (2 to 3 bytes ) UTF-8 encoding can marginally save some space (depending on language) but introduces nasty overhead to character handling - even the most trivial string functions have to check for character boundaries (e.g. even detecting the string length itself is not a trivial operation in UTF-8 !!! or having a fixed length buffer you can never tell in advance how many characters will fit into it - it depends on the language again).
Windows used to have mulitbyte characters in the past (Win95,98) but luckily managed to get rid of this with Windows NT and higher and now both the kernel and userspace is UCS2. Why should Linux again enter the blind alley of Windows 95? Cheers Krystof > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 2:40 PM > To: debian-user@lists.debian.org > Subject: Re: moving to unicode > > Adam James wrote: > > On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 16:04 +0100, Lubos Vrbka wrote: > > > is there any up-to-date document how to move a debian > system to utf8 > > > (both console and X)? i found some info on web, however > it seems to > > > be quite old (~4 years)... a pointer to a list of what > doesn't work > > > with > > > utf8 would be really nice, too... > > > > I found the following documents helpful with regard to UTF-8: > > > > http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Make_your_system_use_unicode/utf-8 > > > > > http://hektor.umcs.lublin.pl/~mikosmul/computing/articles/linux-unicod > > e.html > > What is the current progress towards moving Debian fully to > UTF-8 on installation as much as possible to easy users > working in Debian? > > > > Prueba el Nuevo Correo Terra; Seguro, Rápido, Fiable. > >
