From: Benoit Daloze <eregontp@...>
Date: 2010-09-14T22:21:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Encoding error while installing rails on ruby 1.9.2

On 14 September 2010 14:53, Brian Candler <b.candler@pobox.com> wrote:
> kostas Bek wrote:
>> I changed it to 850 and it worked!!
>> So that was the problem..
>
> Or to give a different point of view: the problem is the fundamentally
> flawed design of ruby 1.9, which means that:
>
> (1) The same program, running on the same version of ruby and the same
> operating system, will work fine on one system but crash on another.
>
> (2) It is so complex that it is virtually impossible to build complete
> test coverage to prevent this sort of problem happening.
>
> Fortunately, there is an easy solution: use ruby 1.8.
> --

Well, that is rather pessimist.

AFAIK, with 1.8, he would just get unreadable characters in his
terminal, and would have to figure himself what to do to resolve it.
With 1.9, at least the error is shown and says the term's encoding is
not compatible.

But I agree, this kind of error just running `gem` is unexpected and
non user-friendly.
But he would anyway have to change one day to use other characters
than pure ASCII in his term.

P.S.: Why `gem` is trying to convert from UTF-16LE ?