netdev - Re: [PATCH v2 00/40] Use ASCII subset instead of UTF-8 alternate symbols

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite for Android: free password hash cracker in your pocket

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <d2fed242fbe200706b8d23a53512f0311d900297.camel@infradead.org>
Date:   Wed, 12 May 2021 18:07:04 +0100
From:   David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>
To:     Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@...nel.org>,
        Linux Doc Mailing List <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>
Cc:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Mali DP Maintainers <malidp@...s.arm.com>,
        alsa-devel@...a-project.org, coresight@...ts.linaro.org,
        dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org, intel-gfx@...ts.freedesktop.org,
        intel-wired-lan@...ts.osuosl.org, keyrings@...r.kernel.org,
        kvm@...r.kernel.org, linux-acpi@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-edac@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org, linux-f2fs-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
        linux-hwmon@...r.kernel.org, linux-iio@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-input@...r.kernel.org, linux-integrity@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-media@...r.kernel.org, linux-pci@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-pm@...r.kernel.org, linux-rdma@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-sgx@...r.kernel.org, linux-usb@...r.kernel.org,
        mjpeg-users@...ts.sourceforge.net, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
        rcu@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 00/40] Use ASCII subset instead of UTF-8 alternate
 symbols

Your title 'Use ASCII subset' is now at least a bit *closer* to
describing what the patches are actually doing, but it's still a bit
misleading because you're only doing it for *some* characters.

And the wording is still indicative of a fundamentally *misguided*
motivation for doing any of this. Your commit comments should be about
fixing a specific thing, nothing to do with "use ASCII subset", which
is pointless in itself.

On Wed, 2021-05-12 at 14:50 +0200, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> Such conversion tools - plus some text editor like LibreOffice  or similar  - have
> a set of rules that turns some typed ASCII characters into UTF-8 alternatives,
> for instance converting commas into curly commas and adding non-breakable
> spaces. All of those are meant to produce better results when the text is
> displayed in HTML or PDF formats.

And don't we render our documentation into HTML or PDF formats? Are
some of those non-breaking spaces not actually *useful* for their
intended purpose?

> While it is perfectly fine to use UTF-8 characters in Linux, and specially at
> the documentation,  it is better to  stick to the ASCII subset  on such
> particular case,  due to a couple of reasons:
> 
> 1. it makes life easier for tools like grep;

Barely, as noted, because of things like line feeds.

> 2. they easier to edit with the some commonly used text/source
>    code editors.

That is nonsense. Any but the most broken and/or anachronistic
environments and editors will be just fine.

Download attachment "smime.p7s" of type "application/x-pkcs7-signature" (5174 bytes)