Re: Relaxing the restrictions for store item names

[MSavoritias <email@msavoritias.me>]

Julien Lepiller <julien@lepiller.eu> writes:

> Le 24 août 2023 10:41:23 GMT+02:00, Msavoritias <email@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 <email@msavoritias.me> writes:
>>
>>> Nguyễn Gia Phong <cnx@loang.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]]
>>>> On 2023-08-24 at 10:41+03:00, MSavoritias wrote:
>>>>> Nguyễn Gia Phong <cnx@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