Re: [Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#391717: gender in /etc/passwd

Hi,

I think it's a great idea to find a way to use gender in i18n. I think it
makes the system much more user-friendly and I fully support the idea.

I'm not sure if /etc/passwd and GECOS is the proper way to handle that,
anyway. I wouldn't really like a gender field used for anything else than
i18n. For example I think it would be a horrible idea to have the user's
gender appear in finger reports. I repeat that I wouldn't like having a gender
field for anything else than i18n.

I don't know what the best technical solution is, but I like the idea of being
able to have my system referring to me in feminine for a change, and I guess
many female users whould thank that too. Thanks for bringing this topic.

Regarding the discussion about other possible enum values than feminine,
masculine or undefined, I don't really think they make sense in this context,
because linguistically most transgendered people tend to identify themselves
with one of those labels. It would be useless.

Greetings,
Miry

 --- Robert Millan <[email protected]> escribió:

> Well, there are some constructions (even in English, although much less
> common)
> that can only be made with assumption on the user's gender.  For example in
> Catalan (and probably most latin languages) you can't ask "Are you sure you
> want
> to xxxxx?" (a pretty common question in computing) without assuming the user
> is
> male or female.  Usualy the former is assumed, but I find this a bit
> disrespectful, specialy since making debian more friendly to the female
> public
> [1] is a common concern in our community nowadays.
> 
> [1] Which reminds me debian-women might want to be CCed..



		
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