4 ms·

It's not just programs. And it's not just semantics of all-numeric username. It's also whether you want usernames that you cannot type, nor possibly even render

It's not just programs. And it's not just semantics of all-numeric username. It's also whether you want usernames that you cannot type, nor possibly even render. Definitely you can't spell it to someone else. Who owns that file? Oh, it's right-to-left non breaking space smiley snowman Chinese sign for water, I love that guy!

abigail95 2y ago
If people want to set up a Debian environment where people are mixing RTL and Hanzi I see no reason for that to be prohibited. Debian has opinions but I disagree that they should extend that far. If my employee Zalgo-fies everything. I don't file a bug report with Debian. I just fire them.
- Muromec 2y ago
  >If my employee Zalgo-fies everything. I don't file a bug report with Debian. I just fire them. Which such clearly north American attitude you can as well use ASCII for everything.
Izkata 2y ago
> Who owns that file? Oh, it's right-to-left non breaking space smiley snowman Chinese sign for water, I love that guy! This reminds me, around 10 years ago on the chat app we used at work, we were able to change our nicknames and I made mine start with a combining character instead of a regular character. No one could ping me, it broke that part of the UI when they tried.
adrian_b 2y ago
This thread like also the parent thread is full of comments which are completely outdated, because there already exist standards for Unicode identifiers and obviously they forbid such cases. See e.g. RFC 8264. Only a restricted set of characters is permitted in identifiers, mostly letters and digits. This is enough to write any user name, without allowing "smiley snowman Chinese sign for water" or other such nonsense.
- knorker 2y ago
  Are you contradicting my extreme example, or all "non-ASCII" characters? I also cannot write something as ordinary as "ç", no more than I can write Chinese character for water. "ç" is a letter. As is "å". The latter is in no way whatsoever related to "a". Certainly there are people with a "ò" in their name, who will tell you that if you spell it "o" then "that's not my name". Your reference to RFC8264 also makes another good point. 38 pages of best practices, plus thousands of pages pulled in from references. Not exactly a case for saying it's feasible for all software to handle this correctly. I did a quick scan of RFC8264, and could not tell if "ç", "å", or "习" are "letters". Yes, that's due to not really trying, since "all I have to do" is read thousands of pages on unicode definitions. What exactly are you trying to say is already established, under the assumption that Unicode already defines identifiers? 7-bit ASCII letters & numbers mostly, or a broader definition of letters? In any case I don't think people are making "outdated" comments, but that they are disagreeing, possibly unicode specs be damned. E.g. see the article itself, where people say that anything that isn't colon or NUL byte should be allowed. > This is enough to write any user name, without allowing "smiley snowman Chinese sign for water" But not to have the username "习近平", right? Or am I misinterpreting by getting lost in references to references in unicode specs?

abigail95 2y ago

If people want to set up a Debian environment where people are mixing RTL and Hanzi I see no reason for that to be prohibited. Debian has opinions but I disagree that they should extend that far. If my employee Zalgo-fies everything. I don't file a bug report with Debian. I just fire them.

Muromec 2y ago
>If my employee Zalgo-fies everything. I don't file a bug report with Debian. I just fire them. Which such clearly north American attitude you can as well use ASCII for everything.

Izkata 2y ago

> Who owns that file? Oh, it's right-to-left non breaking space smiley snowman Chinese sign for water, I love that guy! This reminds me, around 10 years ago on the chat app we used at work, we were able to change our nicknames and I made mine start with a combining character instead of a regular character. No one could ping me, it broke that part of the UI when they tried.

adrian_b 2y ago

This thread like also the parent thread is full of comments which are completely outdated, because there already exist standards for Unicode identifiers and obviously they forbid such cases. See e.g. RFC 8264. Only a restricted set of characters is permitted in identifiers, mostly letters and digits. This is enough to write any user name, without allowing "smiley snowman Chinese sign for water" or other such nonsense.

knorker 2y ago
Are you contradicting my extreme example, or all "non-ASCII" characters? I also cannot write something as ordinary as "ç", no more than I can write Chinese character for water. "ç" is a letter. As is "å". The latter is in no way whatsoever related to "a". Certainly there are people with a "ò" in their name, who will tell you that if you spell it "o" then "that's not my name". Your reference to RFC8264 also makes another good point. 38 pages of best practices, plus thousands of pages pulled in from references. Not exactly a case for saying it's feasible for all software to handle this correctly. I did a quick scan of RFC8264, and could not tell if "ç", "å", or "习" are "letters". Yes, that's due to not really trying, since "all I have to do" is read thousands of pages on unicode definitions. What exactly are you trying to say is already established, under the assumption that Unicode already defines identifiers? 7-bit ASCII letters & numbers mostly, or a broader definition of letters? In any case I don't think people are making "outdated" comments, but that they are disagreeing, possibly unicode specs be damned. E.g. see the article itself, where people say that anything that isn't colon or NUL byte should be allowed. > This is enough to write any user name, without allowing "smiley snowman Chinese sign for water" But not to have the username "习近平", right? Or am I misinterpreting by getting lost in references to references in unicode specs?