Re: Relaxing the restrictions for store item names

[Julien Lepiller]

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.