Re: On language-dependent defaults for character-folding

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I don't think this is correct.  I think ö is a letter on its own in
  > any language that uses it.  Which is why I don't see how it is
  > different from ø.

Users seem to disagree on whether to fold diacritics that make
different letters (ñ, ç, polish l with slash) or only those that
modify a single letter (as á, à, â in French).

I think that we should have a user option which controls this and only
this.

That means we should have two levels of folding group definitions: the
smaller groups which hold variants of the same letter, and the bigger
groups which hold similar letters.

These groups need to depend on the language setting.  In English (and
in French), ö is a modified o.  In Swedish (and German, I think), ö
and o are different letters.

I think that each folding group should specify one character that is
the base.  This is because users also seem to disagree on what it
should mean to specify a non-base letter in the search string.

Some plausible meanings are

* Find that one and only that one.
* Treat it the same as specifying the base letter.

There should be a user option to choose between those two (and maybe
some other behaviors for a non-base letter in the search string).

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.