Re: filename encoding (was: ISO-2022)

[Henry Spencer <henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2001 Andries.Brouwer@xxxxxx wrote:
> ...one single ext2 filesystem has both the files of this Dane
> and of these Russians. All are happy today, but as soon as you write
> somewhere that it contains filenames in KOI-8, the Dane will be very unhappy.

Also, automatic translation of encodings is of very limited value here,
because the Dane and the Russian probably don't have the necessary
characters in their national encodings to be able to read the other's
filenames anyway.

Current Linux filesystems do not tag filenames with the encodings used. 
Thus there is *inherently* a problem, and will be one for a long time,
with trying to render the filenames of an old filesystem.  We cannot wish
this away by devising an elaborate encoding-tag standard -- tagging an old
filesystem is probably as much work as re-encoding it. 

Any scheme that tags filenames is going to require a transition.  That
being the case, we should make a transition to something simple, not
something complicated.  There is no reason to invent complex machinery
to permit creation of new filenames with all the silly old encodings.
If any distinction is to be made, it should be between "encoding unknown"
and "encoding known to be UTF-8".  No other values make sense.

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Linux-UTF8:   i18n of Linux on all levels
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