Re: Confusion over encodings, utf-8, etc.

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jonas Trollvik wrote:
> Im experiencing troubles with nfs charset conversion too.
> Files with swedish characters doesnt show up correctly on my macbook
> when mounting over nfs. I've set up the nfsd as explained in freebsd
> manuals. Is there a way to set the charset conversion?
>
> //Jonas


Lots of easy-to-find info on NFS about locking and such, but it took some 
googling to find 'clear and definitive' character-encoding info:

RFC 3010 snippet:

1.1.3.  File System Model

   The general file system model used for the NFS version 4 protocol is
   the same as previous versions.  The server file system is
   hierarchical with the regular files contained within being treated as
   opaque byte streams.  In a slight departure, file and directory names
   are encoded with UTF-8 to deal with the basics of
   internationalization.


UTF-8 should provide transparency across National Languages, but only IF it was 
actually used by whomever named the file(s) in question.

Elsewhere, previous versions are descibed as using ascii, with NULL forbidden, 
and the '/' reserved to delimit directories.

Given that NFS4 has been around for 5 or 6 years, but has not entirely displaced 
NFS3, I guess the first thing to do is confirm which version is in use - ascii 
or UTF-8.

The next thing is to keep in mind that ascii is (almost) a perfect sub-set of 
UTF-8. Or so it was intended...

For sure, a UTF-8 environment is not going to reject, crticize, or alter ascii 
submitted to it.

That indicates to me that a likely cause of the problem you cite is simply that 
of other folks storing files with names that appear to the host to be ascii, but 
that were actually created on a system (WinWoes?) that used a National Language 
code-page that differs from the one(s) you are using.

IOW - other users are simply oblivious to UTF-8.

If you think Swedish is a 'challenge' in this respect, you should try to deal 
with Chinese, where a typical browser of Win-setup menu lists 5 to 7 encodings - 
fewer than half of the 20-odd options that actually exist.

;-)