[sword-devel] Anger on mailing list (was Re: AmTract Encoding)

[peter]

Dear all,

I am not part of the core developer team and probably have little right
to speak up here, but could I ask you to consider that the anger
displayed by several in the debate above is probably quite misplaced?

Encoding is a technical subject, but it appears to me that several
contributors have taken technical differences as personal affront - not
just on this exchange of views, but quite frequently in the last few weeks.

I think if we want to continue to work God's work and particularly if we
want to make advance onto areas where Christianity is poorly represented
(increased number of non-Western language modules, internationalisation
of the software etc)  then we a) have to be united and b) should we be
aware that we will be subject to stresses which could break Crosswire
apart.

This is not just a technical or scholarly undertaking but has at least
in parts become a spiritual battle. Fighting between us will result in
defeat.

On a practical note, would it be useful to convert the remaining non
UTF-8 modules into UTF-8? If so, I am happy to do the actual work over
the next few weeks. I would probably need some advise, but could do the
actual foot work. I am not at all suggesting this should be done, I have
no clue, whatsoever. I presume though that users of very old modules and
very old software will have a large degree of overlap. People who want
to write new front ends and do not want to support old modules could
then probably simply add a test ?UTF-8 and advise the user to update the
module. People who can try out new software will have access to new
modules update too.

Yours in Him

Peter