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