[TriLUG] Email: Character Encoding

[Matias D'Ambrosio]

Haha Don't worry! I guess my previous email wasn't clear about it
being all in good humour. I'm used to having my name spelt wrong, and
I almost never use the accent on my first name (even when
hand-writing). In fact in my national ID back in Argentina it doesn't
have the accent (because the person who wrote it down was borderline
illiterate, I'm guessing), so I took to writing it that way for fun.
It only really bothers me when I'm required to write it exactly the
same as in system X (this typically happens with credit card
authentication, CCs being one of the really bad offenders). I just use
the key to the right of the semi-colon in a normal US English keyboard
to write my last name.

The fact that a completely normal character that is present in ASCII
and doesn't even require a modifier key to be typed in a US keyboard
can't be used in a name shows how bad the situation is. I'm a big fan
of UTF-8 because it's the only way to *mix* scripts, something that is
often not mentioned, in the past if you want to write Russian and
Chinese side by side you had to 'change the font'.