Re: [HACKERS] Implications of multi-byte support in a distribution

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Oliver Elphick wrote:
> I have had a request to add multi-byte support to the Debian binary
> packages of PostgreSQL.
>
> Since I live in England, I have personally no need of this and therefore
> have little understanding of the implications.
>
> If I change the packages to use multi-byte support, (UNICODE (UTF-8) is

I consider Unicode as a compromise, and as such, it is the worst case. I
don't know anyone who need Unicode directly. Russian users need koi8 and
win1251, Chineese, Japaneese and other folks need their apropriate
encodings (BIG5 and all that).
Don't know what should be reasonable default; in any case installation
script should ask about user preference and run initdb -E with user
encoding to set default.

> suggested as the default), will there be any detrimental effects on the
> fairly large parts of the world that don't need it? Should I try to
> provide two different packages, one with and one without MB support?

But of course. Many people do not want MB support out of distributive.
Suspicious sysadmin should reject such package, if (s)he do not understand
what/where/why MB - and it is right.
Suporting two different packages is hard, but support only MB-enabled
package will led to many demands "please provide smaller/better/faster
PostgreSQL package".

Oleg.
----
Oleg Broytmann http://members.xoom.com/phd2/ phd2(at)earthling(dot)net
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.