Re: On language-dependent defaults for character-folding

[Per Starbäck]

2016-02-22 19:58 GMT+01:00 John Wiegley <address@hidden>:

> I'm worried that this very long discussion on character-folding is going
> nowhere. We're over 200 messages now, and it seems that the same arguments are
> being repeated about what does and does not constitute a letter to be folded.
> Or maybe my eyes glazed over, and that's what I think I'm seeing...

I would have liked a more focused discussion on the most pressing
issue, namely what to do regarding this in the upcoming release which
is currently in pretest.

Therefore I have avoided discussion on how to make the folding better
in the future, even though I have my views on details on the ideal way
to handle o vs ö vs ø, or how useful collation rules are, or how
useful a user's locale settings are, etc. Artur had an interesting
post on how he plans to make it better which I'd like to comment on
someday, but won't for the time being, because it just detracts.

All of this is interesting, but the planned substantial improvements
in character folding will not be in the next released version, so none
of those details matter and it's essentially just a question of a
default setting of off or on for the feature as it currently stands. I
think it has been shown without doubt that the feature as it currently
stands will lead to many disappointed users. As Artur has written:

> It's important that the default be helpful,
> without appearing to be "buggy" to unsuspecting users.

That is the view of what I understand to be the main developer of this
feature, who tried to set the default to off. I think this should have
been settled then, and think that Eli's view that it can be decided
later is just wrong. Pretests should test what we intend to ship.
Saying that it can be changed at the last moment just invites some
error in the last-minute, for example that someone forgets to update
the documentation that goes along with it. No more data is needed for
this decision. (More data and more discussion may be needed for
finding the best way forward after that, but that is something else.)