Toshio Kuratomi (a.badger(a)gmail.com) said:
Today the Packaging Committee began a discussion of whether package
names
should be allowed to contain the full range of Unicode characters (encoded
as UTF-8) or be restricted to the ASCii subset.
This is a bit of a contentious issue with the Packaging Committee members
split but not yet set in stone about how to proceed.
The main arguments seem to be:
Pro Unicode:
* Upstream knows best what name is most appropriate for their users. For us
to change it locally in Fedora doesn't make much sense.
* We allow Unicode in every other piece of the spec so why not in the
package name?
* We should be shaking out bugs in the handling of Unicode in our software
rather than hiding issues with it.
Pro ASCII:
* Hard to type unicode package names, therefore it is a usability problem.
* Is there a limit? Even if European letters are fine what about Kanji or
Sanskrit?
* Some pieces of software won't handle unicode package names and will need
to be fixed.
The biggest issue I could see is that any issues in handling such a package
would need to be fixed *everywhere* that package is deployed, whether it
be current Fedora, earlier Fedora, or EPEL. It may not be practical to
deploy such fixes everywhere.
Bill