Re: character encoding in .desktop files

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org> writes:

> On 24Aug2001 05:46PM (-0400), Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > 
> > Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com> writes:
> > > How can we change .desktop files to use UTF-8 encoding? What encoding do they
> > > currently use? What compatibility concerns will there be if we change the encoding
> > > between GNOME 1 and GNOME 2?
> > 
> > Check out the desktop file spec on freedesktop.org; they are currently
> > in Legacy-Mixed encoding, should be in UTF-8. They can be changed one
> > at a time.
> > 
> > To convert, I would suggest:
> >  - make sure the GNOME 2 .desktop code always saves in UTF-8
> >  - load them using that code, which should convert to 
> >    UTF-8, then save them again
> > 
> 
> I think most of GNOME's .desktop files are now translated using
> xml-i18n-tools, which means they should come out as proper UTF-8 as
> long as all the .po files are converted to use UTF-8. I don't know
> who's working on making sure .po files get converted. I can make
> XML-i18n-tools try to add the Encoding field. Is that appropriate only
> for .desktop files per se, or also for other files with the same
> general format (.directory and .soundlist are the ones I see supported
> currently)?

.directory files are standardized by the desktop file spec. 
There's been no discussion about this for INI-files in general;
If there isn't a significant body of existing files out there,
it may be easier to just say that they _are_ in UTF-8.

Regards,
                                        Owen