From Wikitech-l:
Erik wrote:
If UTF-8 has enough advantages (and many people seem to think it does), then telling 2% of the userbase that their browser is outdated and corrupts pages when editing seems acceptable.
The pages will only get corrupted by their browsers /if/ we switch to UTF-8! So why lock out 2% of our user base just to make it a bit easier to have non-Latin scripts on a Latin-based language wiki? [NOTE: I agree that UTF-8 makes sense on meta though; there the advantages /do/ outweigh the benefits.] But if those 2% can be accommodated as is and we can have UTF-8, then great. Otherwise my idea of having a separate UTF-8-friendly edit window for language codes would solve the language link problem (which, IMO, is the only issue that has real merit here).
Sorry, but as a long-time Linux desktop user I get a bit pissed whenever somebody brings up the "only x%" arguments. It is often used as an excuse to prevent me from using certain websites. When I see "You need to upgrade your browser" I leave and never come back. We needn't repeat the "only x%" type of attitude here.
-- mav
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On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 12:01:57PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
From Wikitech-l:
Sorry, but as a long-time Linux desktop user I get a bit pissed whenever somebody brings up the "only x%" arguments. It is often used as an excuse to prevent me from using certain websites. When I see "You need to upgrade your browser" I leave and never come back. We needn't repeat the "only x%" type of attitude here.
I just checked: lynx handles utf-8 very well, and keeps even chinese characters intact after editing. You do not need to change your browser, only _update_ it. Don't expect that your 1998 lynx will go on well with today's webpages, but nothing should obstruct you from upgrading it to the latest version.
Name any widely used browser (including character mode browsers or not full-fledged ones; but please be reasonable, and do not name anything which could not be found even with internet search engines :)) which have problem with utf8 in its latest version, and then we will have a better picture of the problem. I can check you all browsers on linux, and I am pretty sure they all conform utf-8. They're used on other unixen like *bsd, and windoze is covered well with up to date, free browsers. My only dark spot is Mac, but I believe Mac have working browsers as well (but Mac fans can correct me here).
I think we should not support _every_ _possible_ browsers on earth, it's not reasonable. If a user uses a _very_ minority _non-unicode-conform_ browser, then, well, we revert his/her changes right away, and communicate that either s/he should _upgrade_ the browser, or use a different one for editing Wikipedia.
But to tell you: I _have_to_change_my_browser_ when I want to edit english wikipedia, wikitravel, if I do not want to screw up some pages, which contain non-8859-1 characters. Mozilla handles it (illegally, as I have already mentioned), other browsers do it right and change illegal characters to question marks or whatever. So you right now _force_ me to change ("upgrade") my browser, and it is no way better than forcing that definite minority with old, nonconform browsers to use something else for editing the 'pedias.
Oh, and another thing. I do not know about your languages, but Hungarian language have rules. Rules tell you that you _have_to_ use curly quotation marks (lower at the beginning), en dashes and like. If you don't: it's grammatically (well, typographically) incorrect.
grin
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