Re: [Qemu-devel] qemu and configuration file?

[Jernej Simončič]

On Thursday, January 5, 2006, 1:28:36, Mike Kronenberg wrote:

> qemu "/Users/Jernej Simončič/Simončič_image_2.img" -m 128

> can be correctly declarated and stored in a XML file while its  
> generating problems with normal 8bit text files.

You do realize, that Qemu could easily declare that it's config files are in
utf8? (Though, from my experience with Linux filesystems, the file names
there are just stream of characters, and it's entirely up to the program how
those characters will be presented to the user - the programs/OS doesn't
care if the filename can't be properly displayed with the current user
settings, as long as the name is valid, it can be accessed).

IMHO, XML and charset encodings are beyond Qemu's scope - it just needs to
read in the file, change it's settings accordingly and go it's way. Parsing
XML or dealing with encodings adds too much code for way too little benefit.

> Not necessarily on  
> the creators system, but maybe on another users system, if you share  
> the config file and the image with somebody...

Depends on what you use to share the config - many network protocols and
archive formats don't care about the charsets either, and in the worst case
scenario, you'll have to edit the config file and do a bit of
search-and-replace (or simply use iconv) before the file will be usable
(then again, I normally avoid naming my files using national characters -
too many problems with that).

> It's already fun to exchange "normal" textfiles" between Mac  
> (Macroman) and windows and linux(utf-8/iso-8950-x).

UTF8 is pretty universal, and should be supported on just about any OS (on
Windows 2000 eg. the simple Notepad opens and saves utf8 files just fine).

-- 
< Jernej Simončič ><><><><>< http://deepthought.ena.si/ >

It's a good thing money can't buy happiness. We couldn't stand the commercials.
       -- Gerrold's Fundamental Truth