Re: Relaxing the restrictions for store item names

["Nguyễn Gia Phong via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org>]

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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.


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.

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.

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