Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 2/4] qjson: do not save/restore contexts

[Fam Zheng]

On Tue, 11/24 12:18, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
> 
> On 24/11/2015 11:50, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> > You
> > (the generic you) can't expect me (the generic me) to read Kanji,
> > Sanskrit, Thai script, Cyrillic script, and so on, even if your name is
> > written in that language natively. You come up with an approximation in
> > Latin script, and use that.
> > 
> > Is your purpose to feel pleased about the faithful representation of
> > your name in the commit message (that the international community is
> > unable to read, not even approximately), or is your goal to allow the
> > community to read your (approximate) name?
> > 
> > Specifically about the commit you mention, the email of the reporter is:
> > 
> >   address@hidden
> > 
> > I'm absolutely sure that "zuozhi" is the official Pinyin transliteration
> > of the reporter's name (or a part of it). Now, while Pinyin has its own

Yes, it's the Pinyin of 祚至, his given name. It's a peculiar and literary
choice of name. :)

> > separate pronunciation rules, I *can* (and occasionally do) look up
> > those rules. So Pinyin allows me to *work* with the name with relative
> > safety, and it even gives me a fleeting chance at getting the
> > pronunciation right, should we meet.
> 
> I think this is getting into dangerous territory. :)
> 
> Chinese language and names are very different from ours and it's
> possible that a person for some reason is very attached to the
> particular hanzi (kanji is Japanese :)) that are used for their name.
> (Fam, correct me if I'm wrong).
> 
> I've also seen people who have adopted an alternative English name and
> still want to include the Chinese name somewhere, at which point it's
> understandable that they write the latter with hanzi.
> 
> Certainly it's better if you get something like these:
> 
>    Signed-off-by: Gong Li (巩俐) <address@hidden>
>    Signed-off-by: 巩俐 (Gong Li) <address@hidden>
> 
> but if the email is understandable I have no problem with
> 
>    Signed-off-by: 巩俐 <address@hidden>
> 
> or in the case of an English name any of
> 
>    Signed-off-by: Jane Li (巩俐) <address@hidden>
>    Signed-off-by: 巩俐 (Jane Li) <address@hidden>
>    Signed-off-by: 巩俐 (Jane Li) <address@hidden>
> 
> where in the last case the email doesn't give the full Chinese name, but
> there is an alternative for people who cannot read Chinese characters.
> 
> For some reason this almost never happens with Japanese developers, but
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Difficulty_of_reading_names
> suggests that they may also appreciate using kanji for their names in
> commit messages.

The problem for using Pinyin is, even I as a Chinese can't tell which is the
last name out of a two-syllable name such as "Gong Li", because of obvious
reasons.

Having hanzi together with Pinyin helps a lot, in that it tells me how to call
it, should we meet. Not just in "which is the family name", but also which
tone to use. In Chinese, you're not calling one's name if not using the right
tone. For example "zuozhi" can be "左之" or "祚至" or one of other 100
combinations, which vary in tones. Personally I don't feel very comfortable
when a Mandarin speaker calls me with a wrong tone. And I know that will happen
from time to time if I stick to Pinyin rather than Fam.  Thinking from the
other way round, that may be a reason why they use hanzi.

All in all, in my opinion, only something like

     Signed-off-by: 巩俐 <address@hidden>

, from which you can't easily infer the pronunciation, is apparently
inconsiderate in an English context. Otherwise I think we should tolerate the
usage of non-latin characters even if it means we have to copy&paste.

Fam