Julien Lepiller <jul...@lepiller.eu> writes:
> Le 24 août 2023 10:41:23 GMT+02:00, Msavoritias <em...@msavoritias.me> a > écrit : >> >>What I am saying here is that: >>Its easy to see from our very US centric tech culture why everybody >>should just use ASCII because "This is how it is". But there is very >>little reasons why we shouldn't strive to be more inclusive of all >>cultures. >>Especially since nowadays where we have tools like Unicode that make our >>lives easier compared to US or nothing of 30-40 years ago. >>Just imagine how many good programmers we are missing because they don't >>want/can't learn English or don't have an ASCII keyboard. >> >>MSavoritias >> >>MSavoritias <em...@msavoritias.me> writes: >> >>> Nguyễn Gia Phong <c...@loang.net> writes: >>> >>>> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]] >>>> On 2023-08-24 at 10:41+03:00, MSavoritias wrote: >>>>> Nguyễn Gia Phong <c...@loang.net> writes: >>>>> > I think the distinction must be made here between Guix and GuixSD. >>>>> > >>>>> > The packaging software should support full localization, >>>>> > but the distro should target the least common denominator. >>>>> >>>>> Depends what do we mean the "distro" here. >>>>> If I can pick arabic or chinese in the installation as a display >>>>> language and also I am able to use an arabic/chinese keyboard sounds >>>>> good to me. >>>> >>>> I meant GuixSD. I agree a distribution based on Guix Systems >>>> shouldn't meet any obstacle declaring packages with non-ASCII names. >>>> That you can type arabic and chinese and I can type hangul >>>> and most latin characters doesn't mean names having all of the above >>>> will be accessible to either of us or a third person. >>>> >>>> On 2023-08-24 at 10:41+03:00, MSavoritias wrote: >>>>> Regarding the initial question it was about package names to my >>>>> understanding. Specifically package names in the store to use unicode >>>>> characters. Which makes perfect sense there because some packages dont >>>>> use ascii names. >>>> >>>> It does, but as said before, whether this is desireable depends >>>> on the target audience. The purpose of API is to be used, >>>> i.e. it would be useless if even just one user can't type it. >>>> >>> Well we already have that don't we? What I mean is that ASCII names cant >>> be typed by all keyboards layouts easily. So what you are saying already >>> happens. Thats why I always have an ASCII layout available as a >>> secondary, next to my non ASCII. I bet every person that uses packages >>> with names other than english can add a seperate layout. >>> >>>> On 2023-08-24 at 10:41+03:00, MSavoritias wrote: >>>>> Regarding the broken install example, most (all?) base >>>>> packages use ASCII due to unix historical baggage. >>>>> So you shouldn't need to type anything non ASCII >>>>> to fix an install with only basic packages. >>>> >>>> Due to historical baggage, most (all?) keyboard layouts can fall >>>> back to ASCII alphanumerics. A broken install was given >>>> as the worst case; there's no reason any other packages >>>> should be less accessible based on the users' culture. >>>> >>> >>> But they are already aren't they? Because if I want to add a package >>> with the Greek alphabet or the Japanese one I have to transliterate it >>> into ASCII which is always going to be worse and people won't be able to >>> find the package. Because they won't know we changed the name. Plus they >>> will have to change the layout. Same as an ASCII user would have to do. >>> >>>> I suggest, in an international context such as GuixSD, >>>> for every package to have a ASCII name. It'd of course >>>> be better if a correctly written name is also available. >>>> >>> >>> So you propose two names? Sure if that can be done I don't see why not. >>> Either way not >>> having unicode names is a bug. Also to note: Most of the world speaks >>> Unicode. So its more for compatibility purposes i guess (?) rather than >>> to be "international". >>> >>> MSavoritias >> >> > > There are two things discussed here: > > 1. A restriction in the daemon prevents using unicode in store item names. > > I think this is an issue worth fixing, as it would allow users to define > their own store items more easily. For instance, I might want to make a file > with non-ascii name a file-like item, eg. > > (local-file "fond d'écran.jpg") > > 2. Naming policy for packages in the Guix channel > > I don't think we should distribute packages that have non-ascii > characters in their names. Of course I don't know all keyboards that > exist out there, but I don't think you can find a programmer that > can't type an ascii character, or a guix user that can't at least type > "guix" in their terminal. > > For discoverability, we could add the real non-ascii name in the package > description. Seems like a good solution for both cases. I agree that it would help with searching especially to have the non-ascii name in the description. or maybe as alternative translation in the name (?). Probably description is the easiest one though. MSavoritias
