On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 09:19:12AM +0000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Make no mistake, this sort of simple-minded stripping of accents and
diacritics is an extremely ham-fisted thing to do.
Make no mistake, this sort of simple-minded stripping of accents and
diacritics is an extremely ham-fisted thing to do.
I used to live on a street called Calle Col?n, so I'm aware of the
dangers of stripping diacritics:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col?n
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colon
... although in that particular case, there's a degree of poetic justice
in confusing Crist?bal Col?n / Cristopher Columbus with the back end of
a digestive tract:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day
Joking aside, there is a legitimate use for asciifying text in this way:
creating unambiguous identifiers.
For example, a miscreant may create the username 'm?guel' in order to
pose as another user 'miguel', relying on other users inattentiveness.
Asciifying is one way of reducing the risk of that.
-[]z.
