From: Jaakko Hyvätti [mailto:jaakko.hyvatti@foreca.com]
I say just let's get over with it and do the change to UTF-8 now. There are no real problems with it, it's only comments, and it is not worth any extra pondering.
I agree, UTF-8 comments are a good idea; and, even though I'm in a Windows place, I also agree with not including the BOM. My only worry would be spec creep: it would be friendly to the End User if the names could be presented in all their accented glory within the UI and "everyone can handle Unicode filenames now, can't they" (quoth the guy writing the Req Spec - not me, honest). I foresee requests coming in (if they haven't already) that "the names of the cities are spelt correctly everywhere and as the file is UTF-8 it won't cause any problems..." Well, if the names of the Zones themselves started to appear in UTF-8 it would certainly cause my code a lot of pain... Can I suggest that a mechanism is added to allow the fully decorated region & city names to be added in UTF-8, along with a firm note that the names following the "Zone" keyword are 7-bit Ascii only? Perhaps, to avoid *having* to modify the parser inside every variant of 'zic', it could be done via a convention in the comments, such as "a comment immediately preceding a Zone declaration which starts with ##! is a UTF-8 form of the Zone's name" suitable for collection and display in a UI. This leaves a few things to be tweaked - eg, if we let multiple lines give alternate spellings should they be language tagged so the most appropriate one can be selected for display; or whether something clever needs to be done to cope with the fact that the aliases for different Zones that are in the same region (subdirectory) may not give the same spelling for the region... Regards, Stephen Goudge Transport R&D Petards Joyce-Loebl Gateshead, UK Private, Confidential and Privileged. This e-mail and any files and attachments transmitted with it are confidential and/or privileged. They are intended solely for the use of the intended recipient(s). The content of this e-mail and any file or attachment transmitted with it may have been changed or altered without the consent of the author. If you are not the intended recipient, please note that any review, dissemination, disclosure, alteration, printing, circulation or transmission of this e-mail and/or any file or attachment transmitted with it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail or any file or attachment transmitted with it in error please notify the IT Manager, Petards Joyce-Loebl Limited, 390 Princesway, Gateshead, NE11 0TU, telephone no: +44 191 4203000. Petards Joyce-Loebl Limited is registered in England under number 2170100 DISCLAIMER: Privileged / Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of my company shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. _____________________________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by Petards Joyce-Loebl. The service is powered by MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email. _____________________________________________________________________________________