> Is this a viable path? Fix String for UTF-8 users once and for all > and get a substantial part of Rails to be multibyte-safe actually > _for free_, or go on, sticking our heads in the sand, finding bugs in > Rails itself and (temporarily) healing the symptoms instead of the > malady?
I don't think anyone would be against having better UTF-8 support for free. The problem in the past has just been that free wasn't so. Usually, it would be that it killed performance. So we can't really say yes or no before we have an implementation that's real and where we can weigh the cons versus the pros. So. Please do go ahead and make a fixed String in Active Support. Then examine all the cons. Like do some serious benchmarking on real apps with and without the fix. Consider how this would break backwards compatibility. Then write it all up in an email to this list. If the case is persuasive, I will not stand in the way for its inclusion. Also, please do dig into the ruby-talk archives to find older discussions on this subject. I believe it has been discussed extensively in the past and you might be able to find some good arguments that can help the implementation. Best of luck! BTW, I believe you're in a uniquely qualified position to do this work. Simply because you want it the most :). That has always been the most powerful motivator in open source. Right on! -- David Heinemeier Hansson http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain http://www.basecamphq.com -- Online project management http://www.backpackit.com -- Personal information manager http://www.rubyonrails.com -- Web-application framework _______________________________________________ Rails-core mailing list Rails-core@lists.rubyonrails.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails-core
