wrong charmap name for BIG5-HKSCS

Bruno Haible haible@ilog.fr
Mon Jun 11 13:53:00 GMT 2001


Ulrich Drepper writes:

> I don't understand your obsession with IANA.

It is the only charset name registry which is alive (maintained) and
publicly visible. Without such a registry, we get back into the old
times where "US-ASCII" is called "ASCII" on one system, "IBM367" on
another, "646" on yet another etc. Then a user must remember that his
preferred locale is "ja_JP.eucJP" on HP-UX, "ja_JP.IBMeucJP" on AIX,
"ja_JP.deckanji" on Tru64 etc. The issue also arises for iconv()
names, e.g. used when a mail program want to display a BIG5-HKSCS mail
in an UTF-8 locale.

> They would add every name one suggests.

So what? One standardized name is better than interoperability problems.

> This registry is everything but useful.

Without this registry, we could never stop adding stupid aliases
because people would always keep asking for more. Have you seen the
alias list of Helena Shih Chapman? (Appended below.) I don't want to
maintain such a big mess. It is best to choose one stsndard and go
with it.

               Bruno



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