Summary of the 2008-03-11 Packaging Committee meeting

[Alan Cox]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 07:44:28AM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > One of the problems I have with "ban packages with unicode names" is 
> > that it doesn't consider what to do when a package name upstream is 
> > non-ASCii.
> Transliterate/translate them to ASCII.

Bad idea unless done very carefully.

1.	While its trivial to transliterate German there are many languages
where a naiive[1] transliteration causes a complete change of word meaning.

2.	In some cultural contexts transliteration of personal names (if they
end up in package titles) is considered rude.

3.	Transliteration of a trademarked package name should not be done
without consulting legal or specifically obtaining permission.

I don't think #2 and #3 will bite us but be careful of #1 as you can totally
confuse people if you get a transliteration wrong.


Alan
[1] Yes that should be i-double-dot but I'm transliterating to ascii for you.
Even English isn't supported by ASCII ;)