Removing the --enable-utf8 flag

I'd like to remove the --enable-utf8 configuration option from
Subversion, even though HEAD of apr/apr-util doesn't have working i18n
at the moment. Here's how this would work:

Currently, subversion/libsvn_subr/utf.c has two compile-time
conditional code paths:

   * If --enable-utf8, then attempt conversion from/to native/utf8.
     If a conversion function returns error, then bomb out entirely.

   * Else if not --enable-utf8, then never attempt conversion, but
     just check for "illegal" chars in the data we would have
     converted. (Illegal here means eighth-bit set and non-whitespace
     control characters. See check_non_ascii() in utf.c.)

Here's how this would become a run-time decision:

   * Always attempt conversion. If the conversion fails (for example
     because the underlying xlation mechanism isn't working, as is
     currently the case), *then* check for non_ascii, and bomb only if
     there are illegal characters in the data. Otherwise, we proceed,
     effectively treating the data as if it were already UTF-8,
     because we know it's all safe ascii characters.

Thus we remove a compile-time option, become more robust, make
everyone's lives simpler, and fulfill our requisite ten hours of
mandatory asteroid mining per week.

Does anyone see any problems with this?

Even the shifted charset encodings use ESC or something to signal the
shift, so I feel pretty confident that check_non_ascii() will rarely
allow a false positive to pass. But i18n is a treacherous minefield
-- anyone who sees a hole in this plan, please speak up now.

-K

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Received on Thu Jul 18 22:41:48 2002