RFC: Newline conversion in log messages and special props

Hi all,

I'd like some feedback on the following proposal that would fix
usability and interop problems with "svn commit" and "svn propedit" on
non-Unix clients.

The problem is that many Windows editors -- notably the ubiquitous
Notepad -- don't play nicely with files with lines ending in anything
but CRLF. When "svn commit" starts the editor, the default message is
unreadable, because it only contains LFs. Now, while teaching svn to
generate correct line endings in the default text is quite easy, the sad
result is that you then get CRLFs in the log messages in the repository.
Since we take such pains convert the log messages to UTF-8, it seems a
bit inconsistent to allow mixed line endings.

    Proposal: When converting log messages to UTF-8, also convert line
    endings to LF. Conversely, when converting log messages to the
    locale encoding (for $EDITOR or for display purposes), also convert
    line endings to the native form.

I think some of the special properties should get similar treatment:

    * Line-based textual properties: svn:ignore, svn:externals
    * Whitespace-separated textual properties: svn:keywords

While we're at it, perhaps we should also strip all whitespace from
keyword-like properties: svn:eol-style and svn:mime-type. I seem to
recall that we already had problem reports because a newline found its
way into svn:mime-type.

I think that leaves svn:executable, which I don't care about so much. It
might make sense to only allow empty contents on that prop since it's a
boolean -- only its existence matters, not the contents -- but that's
more an aesthetic than a usability issue.

-- 
Brane Čibej   <brane_at_xbc.nu>   http://www.xbc.nu/brane/
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