[pmwiki-users] Defaulting PmWiki to utf8

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 05:00:09PM +0000, Hans wrote:
> > So, what I'm seeing at the moment is that if we switch to using
> > utf8 by default, admins of existing sites have to be notified 
> > somehow that the default has changed and told how to configure
> > the site to continue using iso-8859-1, or given a procedure to
> > somehow convert the site's pages to utf8.  And once someone
> > starts the utf8 conversion, it can get a bit messy to try to
> > convert back.
> > 
> > Any thoughts on the overall process, how much of an impact a move
> > like this might have on existing sites, or how we might go about this?
> 
> I don't know what is involved to configure a wiki to iso-8859-1,
> but could an upgrade be smart enough to see that the wiki is using
> this standard and switch to it, without an admin having to do
> anything? 

I agree this would be best, but I haven't figured out a nice
reliable way to do it.  Part of the challenge is that the choice
of utf-versus-iso needs to happen before many other configuration or
recipe items take place.  Ideally it should occur even before
farmconfig.php is loaded.

> Also a new install should allow the option to use iso or utf.

Well, certainly -- all new installs always allow the option
to choose any language or feature.  The question is simply
which should be the default, and if there's a way to manage it,
I'd prefer that all new installs simply default to utf8, and
not confront a newbie admin with a choice they aren't likely
to understand.  Besides, I expect that very few new sites will
consciously choose iso-8859-1 over utf8 -- the main reason it's
an issue now is because of the need to support existing 
installations.

Pm