Message: 3 Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Alternative proposal for interlanguage links redesign and a few other issues From: Erik Moeller e.moeller@fokus.gmd.de To: wikitech-l@wikipedia.org Organization: FOKUS Date: 08 Jan 2003 14:55:32 +0100 Reply-To: wikitech-l@wikipedia.org On Die, 2003-01-07 at 19:07, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
- move everything to Postgres
- move everything to common database, with tables
foo_cur, foo_old etc.,
where foo are language names
- make single user table (needs some tweaking to
allow slightly different
preferences), single logging system, single
recent changes, and all other
nice things we can do with that
- move everything to UTF-8, so we don't have to use
%escapes in English Wikipedia
I would appreciate very much that you explain to me very clearly what will be the benefits of switching to UTF 8. I have no idea, and it must be important if you think of moving everything this way.
As I understood, meta is coded in UTF-8.
I'll be very clear why this is an important matter to me : if you move everything to UTF-8, I will just quit Wikipedia.
The only place I can write properly on the meta is from work (W2k and IE). And my boss doesn't appreciate that much.
At home, I can't write any special characters; and if I edit a page with some (for exemple "accueil" our home page), I mess everything. It is a matte of importance in french language.
Opera doesn't support UTF. Netscape doesn't support some of our characters either, and is all crazy with the frames (tool bar unusable). And from time to time, IE refuse to edit long windows (it doesnot cut them as Opera does, it just displays the visible part of the edit window, the scrollbar just disappears). And Mozilla is not working well, and real slow. So the easiest way to me is to write with no accents. And never edit pages with special characters.
I can't find a really satisfying option. It is not a huge problem on meta. But it definitly would make working on wikipedia articles a real pain. So please, explain what the real benefits are, and don't make the switch just a minor issue. At least on the french one. It won't be so bad on the english one, for you don't use special characters much, but likely many people will have to correct things after me. So, maybe I'll give up participating on the en.wiki.
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