From: Edward Middleton <emiddleton@...>
Date: 2009-12-30T01:05:46+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby 1.9 hates you and me and the encodings we rode in on so just get  used to it.

Gary Watson wrote:
> I'm by no means knowledgeable about encodings, so take what I'm about to 
> say with a grain of salt.  It seems like the old way of handling 
> encodings was permissive but imprecise, and the new way is precise but 
> not always permissive.  I like the ability to be precise because before 
> that ability simply wasn't an option, however, since allot of people 
> seem to be confused by the default behavior why not make the default 
> behavior permissive and set it up so that IF YOU WANT to be precise you 
> can enable the proper encodings that ensure that behavior?  To me this 
> seems to fall in with the principal of least surprise.  (Sorry for 
> quoting it, I know it's over-quoted).

I guess the problem is that if you do this no libraries will make an
effort to support encodings and you will lose all the advantages of
proper encoding handling.  I have to say, I cringed when the idea of
handling encodings properly came up, because it is different from ruby
1.8 and the transition was going to be difficult.  Having said that, if
you are going to support encodings this is probably the best way to do
it, and in reality it is not that hard to get it right.

Edward