Re: [Nmh-workers] nmh architecture discussion: format engine character set

[Jon Steinhart]

Ken Hornstein writes:
> > We know the format of messages on disk, so that's a non issue. The hair 
> > pulling is in converting terminal input and output to/from a local 
> > display character set. Note that this is NOT the same thing as a locale. 
> > The solution is to mandate utf8 for all input and output.  Period.  It's 
> > time to recognize it's 2015.
> 
> Alright, just so I'm clear:
> 
> a) you think we're all crazy (for some definition of 'all')
> b) you think we should simply convert the message at read time to UTF-8
>    and ONLY output UTF-8.  Let's call this the 'Plan 9' approach.  The
>    user's locale setting is simply ignored, at least in terms of supported
>    character set.
> 
> I will agree this makes things a LOT simpler.  Like tons of code could
> be removed.  We'd need to import/require an UTF-8 string library; there
> are a number of those to choose from.  It could be the Plan 9 ones,
> libicu, libunistring ... it doesn't matter.
> 
> We would be telling everyone if they're not using UTF-8, then we don't
> support you.
> 
> So what does everything think of that?
> 
> --Ken

I'm fine with it.  As per my earlier message, times have changed and it's
not clear that we need anything else.  Dumb idea... can we push a new
release that announces this to users on first use and allows them to
click on whether or not it's OK?

Jon