[pmwiki-users] UTF-8 in page names

[Petko Yotov]

On 09/02/2023 17:27, Hans Bracker wrote:
> If UTF-8 is enabled for the wiki, are there reasons not to use UTF-8
> characters in page names? PmWiki page names are used as file names,
> but file names are commonly also utf-8 nowadays.
> Or am I missing something?

Yes, people may have reasons to use plain letters instead of 
international ones.

Some people prefer to have plain URLs, especially if the language mostly 
uses the Latin alphabet.

So instead of:
   your-wiki-org/Fran%C3%A7ais/Champs-%C3%89lys%C3%A9es

they have the URL:
   your-wiki-org/Francais/Champs-Elysees

Today there shouldn't be many problems in using international characters 
in page and file names. But if some day you change servers or operating 
systems, especially between modern/standard and old systems, or between 
MacOSX and something else, plain Latin letters are more portable and 
there is less risk that something breaks.

Some people use different systems at home and on the server. When they 
mount the server as remote folder via FTP, occasionally some file names 
may appear broken. If in such a case you want to bulk upload files, or 
to backup the wiki, filenames with international characters may require 
manual fixing.

PmWiki automatically converts page text and metadata between encodings, 
but at the moment cannot automatically rename page files and 
attachments.

If you already have international characters in file names (page names, 
uploads), it is not recommended to just enable scripts/xlpage-utf-8.php 
and leave. If you do, do it carefully and review your wiki pages and 
links - you may need to rename some of the files on the server.

For example, if before you had Attach:Champs-Élysées.jpg that was 
correctly linked, it may break if you just enable xlpage-utf-8.php.


Petko