Debian Bug report logs - #160827
Standardize syntax of the name in the Maintainer control field

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Message #5 received at maintonly@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <maintonly@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: lintian: bad control headers

Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 21:11:22 -0400

Package: lintian
Version: 1.20.17
Severity: wishlist

lintian should check for non-RFC822-compliant control headers, like
Maintainer: fields with non-ASCII characters.

Message #10 received at 160827-maintonly@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Sean 'Shaleh' Perry <shalehperry@attbi.com>

To: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>, 160827-maintonly@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: lintian: bad control headers

Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 18:30:21 -0700

On Friday 13 September 2002 18:11, Clint Adams wrote:
> Package: lintian
> Version: 1.20.17
> Severity: wishlist
>
> lintian should check for non-RFC822-compliant control headers, like
> Maintainer: fields with non-ASCII characters.

and why shouldn't our Japanese friends be allowed to spell their name 
correctly?

Message #15 received at 160827-maintonly@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>

To: "Sean 'Shaleh' Perry" <shalehperry@attbi.com>

Cc: 160827-maintonly@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: lintian: bad control headers

Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 21:32:08 -0400

> and why shouldn't our Japanese friends be allowed to spell their name 
> correctly?

They should.  RFC2047 lets them do exactly that.

Message #22 received at 160827-submitter@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Josip Rodin <joy@gkvk.hr>

To: 160827-submitter@bugs.debian.org, control@bugs.debian.org

Cc: debian-policy@lists.debian.org

Subject: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 20:06:03 +0100

retitle 160827 syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field
reassign 160827 debian-policy
thanks

Hi,

Lintian's stanza-file parsing code already chokes on badly formatted files :)

What you want seems to be something that the Policy needs to regulate, I
don't want to make Lintian require all that =?iso_8859-2? stuff and thus
encourage people to use that. It's moot and the Policy doesn't explicitely
mandate the format of the name.

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.

Message #27 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>

To: Josip Rodin <joy@gkvk.hr>

Cc: 160827@bugs.debian.org, debian-policy@lists.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 23:07:45 -0500

> What you want seems to be something that the Policy needs to regulate, I
> don't want to make Lintian require all that =?iso_8859-2? stuff and thus
> encourage people to use that. It's moot and the Policy doesn't explicitely
> mandate the format of the name.

I still think it already does, in D.2.4.

Message #30 received at 160827-submitter@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe@orcus.priv.at>

To: 160827-submitter@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: 04 Dec 2002 22:25:08 +0100

Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org> writes:

> > What you want seems to be something that the Policy needs to regulate, I
> > don't want to make Lintian require all that =?iso_8859-2? stuff and thus
> > encourage people to use that. It's moot and the Policy doesn't explicitely
> > mandate the format of the name.
> 
> I still think it already does, in D.2.4.

Preserving would be useful if there were a lot of users or programs
taking the content of the maintainer field and stuffing it into a To
header. I know of no programs doing that and regarding users, I think
we'd rather deprecate the practice in favor of {packages,bugs}.d.o.

It's more common to simply display this data on the screen than to use
it in a mail. For display, the quoted-unreadable stuff is bad. I'd
rather aim for UTF8, which some environments already support.

Backward compatibility could be preserved by interpreting content
which is not valid UTF8 as latin1. This works for every maintainer
field in my "apt-cache dumpavail" output (101 packages by 18
maintainers have latin1 data in this field).

-- 
Robbe

Message #35 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>

To: Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe@orcus.priv.at>, 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 10:47:20 -0500

> Preserving would be useful if there were a lot of users or programs
> taking the content of the maintainer field and stuffing it into a To
> header. I know of no programs doing that and regarding users, I think
> we'd rather deprecate the practice in favor of {packages,bugs}.d.o.

One program that does that is jennifer (of katie fame).

Message #40 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe@orcus.priv.at>

To: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>, 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: 07 Dec 2002 20:28:04 +0100

Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org> writes:

> > Preserving would be useful if there were a lot of users or programs
> > taking the content of the maintainer field and stuffing it into a To
> > header.[...]
> 
> One program that does that is jennifer (of katie fame).

True. It could get away with tossing everything outside angulars or
inside brackets, though. The address can be mandated to stay 7bit for
now.

-- 
Robbe

Message #45 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>

To: Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe@orcus.priv.at>

Cc: 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 17:33:10 -0500

> True. It could get away with tossing everything outside angulars or
> inside brackets, though. The address can be mandated to stay 7bit for
> now.

At any rate, people shouldn't be putting raw Latin1 in these fields.

Message #50 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org>

To: 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 18:32:57 -0500

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On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 05:33:10PM -0500, Clint Adams wrote:
> > True. It could get away with tossing everything outside angulars or
> > inside brackets, though. The address can be mandated to stay 7bit for
> > now.
> 
> At any rate, people shouldn't be putting raw Latin1 in these fields.

Amen.  7-bit ASCII only.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |       Psychology is really biology.
Debian GNU/Linux                   |       Biology is really chemistry.
branden@debian.org                 |       Chemistry is really physics.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |       Physics is really math.

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Message #55 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Brendan O'Dea <bod@debian.org>

To: Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org>, 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 02:24:30 +1100

On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 06:32:57PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
>On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 05:33:10PM -0500, Clint Adams wrote:
>> > True. It could get away with tossing everything outside angulars or
>> > inside brackets, though. The address can be mandated to stay 7bit for
>> > now.
>> 
>> At any rate, people shouldn't be putting raw Latin1 in these fields.
>
>Amen.  7-bit ASCII only.

Given that the control file is 7-bit pseudo-822, and has the same issues
as mail headers (i.e.  presented before any C-T header) is there any
reason not to follow RFC2047 for the representation of non US-ASCII
maintiner names?

The alternative convention of a" or "a for ä is only really workable for
ISO latin.

--bod

Message #60 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>

To: "Brendan O'Dea" <bod@debian.org>, 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 12:03:17 -0500

[Branden removed from the Cc after much deliberation]

> Given that the control file is 7-bit pseudo-822, and has the same issues
> as mail headers (i.e.  presented before any C-T header) is there any
> reason not to follow RFC2047 for the representation of non US-ASCII
> maintiner names?

I think the objections on this front are that it's not directly
human-readable.  Of course, neither is Felix Kr�ger,
Dagfinn Ilmari Manns�ker, or R�mi Perrot, since I'm using UTF-8.
 
> The alternative convention of a" or "a for ä is only really workable for
> ISO latin.

It's ugly too.

Message #65 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Radovan Garabik <garabik@melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk>

To: Brendan O'Dea <bod@debian.org>, 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 10:41:35 +0100

On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 02:24:30AM +1100, Brendan O'Dea wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 06:32:57PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> >On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 05:33:10PM -0500, Clint Adams wrote:
> >> > True. It could get away with tossing everything outside angulars or
> >> > inside brackets, though. The address can be mandated to stay 7bit for
> >> > now.
> >> 
> >> At any rate, people shouldn't be putting raw Latin1 in these fields.
> >

Amen. Use UTF-8.

> >Amen.  7-bit ASCII only.

I have not been following the debate due to time constraints, so excuse
me for stepping in like this, but I have to tell it...

> 
> Given that the control file is 7-bit pseudo-822, and has the same issues
> as mail headers (i.e.  presented before any C-T header) is there any
> reason not to follow RFC2047 for the representation of non US-ASCII
> maintiner names?

My God. You really want to put this cr*p into debian/control?
Why can't we just use UTF-8? There is even (my) pending policy proposal
for this #99933, and consensus was that it should be accepted, there are
just few (pseudo)issues holding it back.
Remember it is just pseudo-822, not real 822, so we need not keep
compatibility (which is not even there) with 822 at any price.


-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabík http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__    garabik @ melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk     |
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Message #70 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>

To: Radovan Garabik <garabik@melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk>, 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 13:01:31 -0500

> Why can't we just use UTF-8? There is even (my) pending policy proposal
> for this #99933, and consensus was that it should be accepted, there are
> just few (pseudo)issues holding it back.

I've read #99933 and #143941, and I see very little that's relevant.
What are these (pseudo)issues?

Message #75 received at 160827@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Radovan Garabik <garabik@melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk>

To: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>, 160827@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#160827: syntax of the maintainer name in the Maintainer: field

Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 08:36:12 +0100

On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 01:01:31PM -0500, Clint Adams wrote:
> > Why can't we just use UTF-8? There is even (my) pending policy proposal
> > for this #99933, and consensus was that it should be accepted, there are
> > just few (pseudo)issues holding it back.
> 
> I've read #99933 and #143941, and I see very little that's relevant.

I had only the charset in mind, of course.

> What are these (pseudo)issues?

Citing Manoj Srivastava:

  Hmm. Seems like we want to support utf-8 for the future,
  though perhaps that can wait until we get tool support for
  that. dpkg-query should start supporting it soon. I guess we
  should shelve this until we have better support from the tool
  chain. (we do not have consensus, in any case)

well, the sentence about dpkg-query was misinformed, since
it handles utf-8 fine, Manoj was confused by dpkg-query's
author promising to add character conversion.

Otherwise, all dpkg related tools I can think of were working
with utf-8 well, now the appearance of new perl messed up things
a bit and there are bugs to be hunted. Nothing catastrophic in any
case, and once my new e-mail is sorted out, I am going to start
using diacritics in my name for Maintainer: field. In UTF-8,
of course.
	
Now that RedHat drastically switched itself into UTF-8, we may
expect much better upstream support for UTF-8 from different tools.

It is sad to be just following RH's way instead of leading it
ourselves, but well, that's the life :-)


-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabík http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__    garabik @ melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk     |
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Message #86 received at 160827-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Andrey Rahmatullin <wrar@debian.org>

To: 160827-done@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Closing

Date: Mon, 11 May 2015 13:28:30 +0500

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

The current Policy (since 3.8.1.0) says "All control files must be encoded
in UTF-8." and the current practice is to use UTF-8 in Maintainer: field
values.

-- 
WBR, wRAR

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