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OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

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Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#41

Post by jaawn »

fletchowns wrote: post #37
jaawn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might not be as bad as we imagine. All speedometers I've seen show both miles-per-hour and kilometers-per-hour, all thermostats I've seen have an option for switching to Celsius, all scales I've owned can display both pounds and kilograms (my current one even has an option for stones), all measuring cups I've seen in a long time have both systems displayed, etc. Even lumber wouldn't necessarily be a huge i…

You're not thinking about all the designs, tooling, manufacturing facilities, etc to build all that stuff though. That's where the real cost is. > Would it be a huge deal to round that to 40mm by 90mm? It actually would be a big deal to round things like that I think. Whole designs would need to be updated to take into account the new dimensions of things.

Any manufacturing component which cannot easily be adjusted to a slightly different measurement is poorly designed, in my opinion. I would expect that much of these tools could be tweaked to produce things in metric measurements. If not, the dimensions can simply be converted and re-labeled. If something manufactures a square piece of metal that is 3" by 3", is it a huge deal to just document it as being 76.2mm by 76.2mm?

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#42

Post by masklinn »

blackbeard wrote: post #23
adamrt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…

We did it in the UK. Its fine. Apart from some things like miles and gallons which would require a massive synchronised change that is. I'd also like it if we drove on the RHS here as well so we can get decent import vehicles.

> Apart from some things like miles and gallons which would require a massive synchronised change that is.

It's less the synchronisation and more the expense of replacing all road signs throughout the kingdom, making it a political non-priority.

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#43

Post by dankohn1 »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #25
adamrt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…

Isn't the United States in practice a worst of both worlds approach where you have both imperial and metric measurements inconsistently mixed together?

Yes. The mix in the US is a disaster: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#44

Post by blackbeard »

masklinn wrote: post #42
blackbeard wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did it in the UK. Its fine. Apart from some things like miles and gallons which would require a massive synchronised change that is. I'd also like it if we drove on the RHS here as well so we can get decent import vehicles.

> Apart from some things like miles and gallons which would require a massive synchronised change that is. It's less the synchronisation and more the expense of replacing all road signs throughout the kingdom, making it a political non-priority.

I'd happily help foot the bill.

So how much is that 1000 mile journey going to cost?

1000/44.94.4561.119= where's my calculator?

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#45

Post by blackbeard »

qznc wrote: post #24
blackbeard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes couldn't agree more with that. Also dates in numeric order I.e. yyyy/mm/dd you know like all the other numbers we deal with not dd/mm/yyyy or the crazy mm/dd/yy.

Use minus instead of slash and you have ISO 8601: yyyy-mm-dd

Sold.

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#46

Post by fletchowns »

jaawn wrote: post #41
fletchowns wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not thinking about all the designs, tooling, manufacturing facilities, etc to build all that stuff though. That's where the real cost is. > Would it be a huge deal to round that to 40mm by 90mm? It actually would be a big deal to round things like that I think. Whole designs would need to be updated to take into account the new dimensions of things.

Any manufacturing component which cannot easily be adjusted to a slightly different measurement is poorly designed, in my opinion. I would expect that much of these tools could be tweaked to produce things in metric measurements. If not, the dimensions can simply be converted and re-labeled. If something manufactures a square piece of metal that is 3" by 3", is it a huge deal to just document it as being 76.2mm by 76…

> Any manufacturing component which cannot easily be adjusted to a slightly different measurement is poorly designed, in my opinion.

Imagine all of the parts in a car engine. Everything fits together perfectly. Engine mounts line up in the right places. It all has to be very precise.

Now imagine you take all those parts and round them off a bit. Nothing much, just a mm here and there. If you try to put the engine together with these parts, it's not going to work at all.

Also consider that you can't just simply convert the units. Take a 5/16" socket wrench for example. Nobody makes a 7.9375mm socket wrench.

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#47

Post by busterarm »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #18
kragen wrote: post #3

I wonder what the pros and cons weighed in the discussion were. Clearly not supporting Unicode text in non-UTF-8 locales (except through, like, some kind of compatibility function, like recode or iconv) is the Right Thing. One problem that I have is that current UTF-8 implementations typically are not "8 bit clean", in the sense that GNU and modern Unix tools typically attempt to be; they crash, usually by throwing a…

I'm willing to bet a large amount that non UTF-8 encoding were broken and nobody cared enough to bother fixing them. OpenBSD does not hesitate to nuke legacy stuff that gets broken. Which i feel is ultimately for the best, because half-assed support that barely functions is worse than no support at all many times.

Having sat in on a BUG meeting where this was discussed by one of the devs responsible, I believe it was basically "UTF-8 won, it's time to not pretend otherwise, we're going to move forward with this."

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#48

Post by scott_karana »

adamrt wrote: post #19
ohitsdom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd strongly consider voting for a US presidential candidate solely on if moving to metric was a big part of their platform. So much time is wasted in school on the confusing mess that is the imperial system.

The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…

If Imperial keeps getting used, it will get even harder to get rid of it.

What kind of argument is this? "It would really hurt to amputate my leg, so let's just wait and let the gangrene go further for now."

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#49

Post by peterfirefly »

fletchowns wrote: post #37
jaawn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might not be as bad as we imagine. All speedometers I've seen show both miles-per-hour and kilometers-per-hour, all thermostats I've seen have an option for switching to Celsius, all scales I've owned can display both pounds and kilograms (my current one even has an option for stones), all measuring cups I've seen in a long time have both systems displayed, etc. Even lumber wouldn't necessarily be a huge i…

You're not thinking about all the designs, tooling, manufacturing facilities, etc to build all that stuff though. That's where the real cost is. > Would it be a huge deal to round that to 40mm by 90mm? It actually would be a big deal to round things like that I think. Whole designs would need to be updated to take into account the new dimensions of things.

> You're not thinking about all the designs, tooling, manufacturing facilities, etc to build all that stuff though. That's where the real cost is.

A lot of them are already metric.

Re: OpenBSD removes support for non-UTF8 locales

#50

Post by protomyth »

fletchowns wrote: post #4

I dream of a world where everything is UTC, UTF-8, and metric.

I'd prefer to skip metric and redefine the foot as the distance light travels in a nanosecond ~ 11.8 inches. The length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second seems a bit arbitrary to me.

I would also vote for any candidate that would ban anything but powers of 2 in the definition of computer storage.

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