Re: [PATCH] replace 0xA0 to whitespace in plain text files (part 2)

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> The ideal solution, given these limitations, is to maintain the
> illusion that there is effectively only one true encoding and charset
> (for "text" files, at least), just as Unix has always done,

I don't know what Unix you've been using, but I've certainly never had
any such "illusion".

The impression I've gotten from the Unices I've used is that files
don't _have_ encodings or charsets; those are imposed, if at all, by
the software (and sometimes hardware, eg, serial terminals) that
interprets the octet stream stored in the file.  Indeed, there isn't
even any notion of a text file per se, only tools that treat files - or
more often octet streams - as text (and others that don't, of course).

> The _sanest_ alternatives would be to add content-specifying metadata
> to the filesystem, and all the tools necessary to make sure it's
> always set and used as correctly as possible;

I dunno; I wouldn't call that sane; I'd call it diametrically opposed
to one of Unix's great strengths (that strength being a lack of
distinctions such as text vs binary or STREAM-LF vs fixed-length
records vs ISAM vs etc).

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