On 2023-08-24 12:21:24 +0200, Julien Lepiller wrote: > Le 24 août 2023 10:41:23 GMT+02:00, Msavoritias 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 writes: > > > >> Nguyễn Gia Phong writes: > >> > >>> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]] > >>> On 2023-08-24 at 10:41+03:00, MSavoritias wrote: > >>>> Nguyễn Gia Phong 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") Out of curiosity, do you have an idea how would the list of allowed characters look like? Anything except / and \0? Or something more restrictive? > > 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. > -- There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.