Re: Fucking Mulål

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <[email protected]> writes:

>     Hrvoje> The only Mule thing it does is a tiny hack that allows it
>     Hrvoje> to set the coding system based on the PO file's
>     Hrvoje> Content-Type.
>
> Sounds like it's somehow getting that wrong,

I'm having a hard time figuring out a scenario where it could go wrong
and produce this kind of result.  Note that my default coding system
is Latin 2 *anyway*, so failure to guess anything would still result
correct behavior.

> although you're one of the few people I'd trust to get it right (I
> hate coding cookies...).

I've never quite figured out what your problem was with the coding
cookies, but I know that I prefer them over Japanese ISO 2022 noone
else in the world understands or cares about.  (I don't hold any great
love for UTF8 for that matter.)

>     Hrvoje> It would be hard to make it a formal test because this
>     Hrvoje> thing happens so rarely.  If I could pinpoint when it
>     Hrvoje> happens, I could probably get to the where and why.
>
> True, but if it stops happening, I can take credit.

My point was that it's hard to gauge when it has "stopped happening",
as it does not happen often.

> Also, if something weird happens to change Mule's idea of the right
> coding system, there's a good chance latin-unity will notice.  Eg,
> if you save, and work, and save, and work, and save, and ... oops, a
> buffer popped up saying "your default coding system iso-8859-15
> can't save this buffer", that might help localize things a bit.

Good point.  I'll try using the unity thing.

> autosave handling of coding systems has always been and probably
> still is a little bit broken.  Did you do any recover-files?

As a matter of fact, I did.  And I was surprised to find it working
perfectly.  (But that might have been due to my default coding
system.)  Maybe it is broken in a more subtle way, which corrupts the
file when it's saved much later?

>     Hrvoje> It's an old version of `po-mode', hacked for my own use.
>     Hrvoje> But as I said, that code is largely unaware of Mule (as
>     Hrvoje> it should be), so I don't think upgrading `po-mode' will
>     Hrvoje> help.
>
> Well, given the way that Mule developers have historically paid
> attention to their own defined APIs (== not), it's hard to say what's
> happening without looking at the code.

As I said, the code is not doing anyhting Mule-specific.  It is
blissfully unaware of Mule, except for the bit with determining the
coding system and the bit I added with composing mail buffers.

>     Hrvoje> I still claim that Mule is pure overengineering for Croatian.
>
> Well, of course it is.  But it's not over-engineering for a Croatian
> working in Germany

Wanna bet?  All the umlauts are present in Latin 2.

I have now reverted to actively discouraging my friends and colleagues
from using Mule.  If I cannot prevent this kind of breakage, it would
be unfair to recommend the product to non-experts.  I consider Mule
alpha-grade software, at least as far as Croatian is concerned.

>     Hrvoje> When Ben wrote about "Hrvoje's weird font mapping
>     Hrvoje> tricks," I started to compose a long response, but gave
>     Hrvoje> up because I just knew he wouldn't understand.
>
> I really don't think anybody will.

What is that supposed to mean?  Trust me that I am not a liar I tell
you it's the standard way of doing things when nothing better is
offered.  Mule is now farther than it ever was in convincing me that
it classifies as better.