[cups.general] Chinese users, use UTF-8, or at least GB18030

[Michael Sweet]

Ambrose Li wrote:
> On 15/09/06, Bob Rosenberg <askbob at rarpsl.com> wrote:
>> >We're not going to change our message filters, sorry.
> 
> I am not telling you to change your message filters. No need to be sorry.
> 
> My point is, your assumption is that because you are "not doing
> business with China", GB2312 is safe to block. But you failed to
> realize that because Chinese users are on the CUPS mailing list, there
> are legitimate mails in the GB2312 charset.

Before we started blocking GB2312 messages, the CUPS mailing list was
flooded with spam from China.  We don't have the resources to moderate
thousands (yes, thousands!) of messages each day that were posted and
caught by Mailman (not subscribed), especially when we can't even read
most of those messages to even tell if they *are* spam!

Chinese users can still post through the web interface if they can't,
for whatever reason, configure their mail/news software to use a
supported character set.

> This sounds to be as exactly the same mindset when you talked about
> stopping the print queue because your users treat "not losing the
> print job" as the definition of "reliable printing", but failing to
> realize that for some people, this kind of behaviour is exactly the
> definition of "unreliable printing".

We can't please everyone, and the users that are paying for CUPS (and
as a business, those are the people we listen to most) REQUIRE the
default behavior in CUPS to stop the printer so they don't lose a
print job.  That is *their* definition of reliable printing.

That said, you can *configure* that behavior in the current CUPS
releases, specifically because we have listened to you and other open
source users as well.

> When I first knew about CUPS, I thought all the formal specs were very
> impressive. But the more I use it, the more I feel that despite these
> formal specs, there seem to be more and more of a disconnect between
> CUPS and the users.

If CUPS doesn't do what you want, modify it, request changes through
the Bugs & Features page, and/or write your own replacement.  Nobody
is forcing you to use CUPS.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com