On Monday 04 April 2011 10:46:46, Roel van Dijk wrote:
I propose a few solutions:
A - Choose a single encoding for all source files.
This is wat GHC does: "GHC assumes that source files are ASCII or UTF-8 only, other encodings are not recognised" [2]. UTF-8 seems like a good candidate for such an encoding.
If there's only a single encoding recognised, UTF-8 surely should be the one (though perhaps Windows users might disagree, iirc, Windows uses UCS2 as standard encoding).
B - Specify encoding in the source files.
Start each source file with a special comment specifying the encoding used in that file. See Python for an example of this mechanism in practice [3]. It would be nice to use already existing facilities to specify the encoding, for example: {-# ENCODING <encoding name> #-}
An interesting idea in the Python PEP is to also allow a form recognised by most text editors: # -*- coding: <encoding name> -*-
C - Option B + Default encoding
Like B, but also choose a default encoding in case no specific encoding is specified.
default = UTF-8 Laziness makes me prefer that over B.
I would further like to propose to specify the encoding of haskell source files in the language standard. Encoding of source files belongs somewhere between a language specification and specific implementations. But the language standard seems to be the most practical place.
I'd agree.
This is not an official proposal. I am just interested in what the Haskell community has to say about this.
Regards, Roel