Bug 84779

Summary:	Switch default encodings to Unicode?
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Tim Landscheidt <tim>
Component:	postgresql	Assignee:	Andrew Overholt <overholt>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	8.0	CC:	mitr
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	FutureFeature
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Enhancement
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2003-03-27 22:23:08 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Tim Landscheidt 2003-02-21 10:41:32 UTC

It seems that by default the Postgresql server and frontend use the SQL_ASCII 
encoding. Given the Red Hat quest for Unicode "domination" :-), wouldn't it be 
better to switch defaults to Unicode? 
 
Besides, a utf-8 terminal and a psql using SQL_ASCII encoding do not get along 
very well :-(. 
 
Suggestions: 
 
- Switch initdb's default encoding to Unicode. 
- For psql, either: 
  - have a /etc/skel/.psqlrc with "\encoding utf-8" (does not affect existing 
users :-() 
  - add some magic to psql to determine whether the controlling tty has 
Unicode capability and set encoding accordingly (quick hack: check if LANG 
ends with ".UTF-8"?)

Comment 1 Andrew Overholt 2003-03-04 16:44:25 UTC

I will think about this.  Thanks for the suggestions.

Comment 2 Andrew Overholt 2003-03-27 22:23:08 UTC

For the time being (to maintain regression test passes, among other reasons), I
am going to keep the default encoding the way it is.  Client encoding can be
changed in dotfiles as you suggest.  Databases can be initialized with other
default encodings using `initdb --encoding=<encoding> -D <location of data
directory>`.