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<title>GLEP 31 -- Character Sets for Portage Tree Items</title>
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<col class="field-body" />
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">GLEP:</th><td class="field-body">31</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Title:</th><td class="field-body">Character Sets for Portage Tree Items</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Version:</th><td class="field-body">1.1</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Author:</th><td class="field-body">Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm at gentoo.org></td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Last-Modified:</th><td class="field-body"><a class="reference" href="http://www.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/xml/htdocs/proj/en/glep/glep-0031.txt?cvsroot=gentoo">2004/10/28 17:00:22</a></td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Status:</th><td class="field-body">Draft</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Type:</th><td class="field-body">Standards Track</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Content-Type:</th><td class="field-body"><a class="reference" href="glep-0012.html">text/x-rst</a></td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Created:</th><td class="field-body">27-October-2004</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Post-Date:</th><td class="field-body">28-October-2004</td>
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</tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<hr />
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<div class="contents topic" id="contents">
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<p class="topic-title first"><a name="contents">Contents</a></p>
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<ul class="simple">
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<li><a class="reference" href="#abstract" id="id7" name="id7">Abstract</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#motivation" id="id8" name="id8">Motivation</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#specification" id="id9" name="id9">Specification</a><ul>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#changelog-and-metadata-character-sets" id="id10" name="id10">ChangeLog and Metadata Character Sets</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#ebuild-and-eclass-character-sets" id="id11" name="id11">Ebuild and Eclass Character Sets</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#files-entries-character-sets" id="id12" name="id12">files/ Entries Character Sets</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#suitable-characters-for-file-and-directory-names" id="id13" name="id13">Suitable Characters for File and Directory Names</a></li>
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</ul>
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</li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#backwards-compatibility" id="id14" name="id14">Backwards Compatibility</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#references" id="id15" name="id15">References</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#copyright" id="id16" name="id16">Copyright</a></li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="abstract">
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7" name="abstract">Abstract</a></h1>
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<p>A set of rules regarding what characters are permissible in the portage
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tree and how they should be encoded is required.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="motivation">
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8" name="motivation">Motivation</a></h1>
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<p>At present we have several developers and many more users whose names
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require characters (for example, accents) which are not part of the
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standard 'safe' 0..127 ASCII range. There is no current standard on how
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these should be represented, leading to inconsistency across the tree.</p>
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<p>Although the issues involved have been discussed many times informally, no
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official decision has been made.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="specification">
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9" name="specification">Specification</a></h1>
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<div class="section" id="changelog-and-metadata-character-sets">
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<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10" name="changelog-and-metadata-character-sets">ChangeLog and Metadata Character Sets</a></h2>
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<p>It is proposed that UTF-8 (<a class="footnote-reference" href="#id4" id="id1" name="id1">[1]</a>) is used for encoding ChangeLog and
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metadata.xml files inside the portage tree.</p>
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<p>UTF-8 allows the full range of Unicode (<a class="footnote-reference" href="#id5" id="id2" name="id2">[2]</a>) characters to be expressed,
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which is necessary given the diversity of the Gentoo developer- and
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user-base. It is character-compatible with ASCII for the 0..127
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characters and does not significantly increase the storage requirements
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for files which consist mainly of American English characters. It is
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widely supported, widely used and an official standard.</p>
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<p>The ISO-8859-* character sets (<a class="footnote-reference" href="#id6" id="id3" name="id3">[3]</a>) would <em>not</em> be appropriate since they
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cannot express the full range of required characters.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="ebuild-and-eclass-character-sets">
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<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id11" name="ebuild-and-eclass-character-sets">Ebuild and Eclass Character Sets</a></h2>
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<p>For the same reasons as previously, it is proposed that UTF-8 is used as
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the official encoding for ebuild and eclass files.</p>
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<p>However, developers should be warned that any output which is parsed by
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bash (in other words, non-comments), and any output which is echoed to the
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screen (for example, einfo messages) must not use anything outside the
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regular ASCII 0..127 range for compatibility purposes.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="files-entries-character-sets">
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<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id12" name="files-entries-character-sets">files/ Entries Character Sets</a></h2>
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<p>Patches must clearly be in the same character set as the file they are
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patching. For other files/ entries (for example, GNOME desktop files),
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consistency with the upstream-recommended character set is most sensible.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="suitable-characters-for-file-and-directory-names">
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<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id13" name="suitable-characters-for-file-and-directory-names">Suitable Characters for File and Directory Names</a></h2>
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<p>Characters outside the ASCII 0..127 range cannot safely be used for file
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or directory names. (Of course, not all characters inside the ASCII 0..127
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range can be used safely either.)</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="backwards-compatibility">
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id14" name="backwards-compatibility">Backwards Compatibility</a></h1>
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<p>The existing tree uses a mixture of encodings. It would be straightforward
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to fix existing ChangeLogs and metadata files to use UTF-8.</p>
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<p>The <tt class="literal"><span class="pre">echangelog</span></tt> tool is character-set agnostic. In order to properly
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enter UTF-8, developers would have to switch to a UTF-8 shell session.
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This only applies if the developer is entering new text which uses 'fancy'
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characters -- existing characters are not mangled.</p>
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<p>Certain text editors are incapable of handling UTF-8 cleanly. However,
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since the <tt class="literal"><span class="pre">echangelog</span></tt> tool is generally the correct way to generate
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ChangeLog entries, this should not be a major problem. Generating
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metadata.xml files correctly in these editors could become problematic.
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(The <tt class="literal"><span class="pre">vim</span></tt> and <tt class="literal"><span class="pre">emacs</span></tt> editors, which appear to be most widely used,
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are both capable of handling UTF-8 cleanly.)</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="references">
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id15" name="references">References</a></h1>
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id4" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id1" name="id4">[1]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3629.html">RFC 3629</a>: UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646
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<a class="reference" href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3629.txt">http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3629.txt</a></td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id5" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id2" name="id5">[2]</a></td><td>ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set)</td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id6" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id3" name="id6">[3]</a></td><td>ISO/IEC 8859 (8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets)</td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="copyright">
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id16" name="copyright">Copyright</a></h1>
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<p>This document has been placed in the public domain.</p>
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<blockquote>
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vim: set tw=74 fileencoding=utf-8 :</blockquote>
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</div>
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</div>
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<a class="reference" href="glep-0031.txt">View document source</a>.
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