Re: [platform-core-dev] file encoding proposal

[Bob Foster <bob@xxxxxxxxxx>]

1. Just because you don't see the need for a per-file encoding attribute 
doesn't mean you should make it impossible an IContentInterpreter to 
have one (or other levels of granularity). The fileEncoding parameter 
should be changed in name and semantics to "String uri". (Not a "file 
path" or you'll be committing another kind of sin.)

2. The extension (which should be a URI) doesn't seem to be passed to an 
IContentInterpreter. ???

3. How does a plugin or user override the platform-provided 
"implementations of IContentInterpreters for xml and other popular file 
formats"? Not that we don't trust you, but we don't want to exchange one 
hard-coded scheme for another.

4. The UI Changes section seems to allude to features not described 
elsewhere in the document. Project encoding? What does it mean? The 
paragraph identified (5) below makes me very nervous.

5. The third "scenario" is not a use case. It is an inconclusive note 
about how to set encodings for newly created files. Several sentences in 
this paragraph are either incorrect or worrying. a. Every file (not just 
a new file) should get an encoding from an IContentInterpreter in the 
process of being saved. But you have boxed yourself in by allowing only 
inputstreams to be considered. For output, you need a method that 
accepts a Reader. b. All *.xml files do NOT have a UTF-8 encoding. They 
should always have the encoding in the xml/encoding declaration, if one 
is present.

6. You do not specify error handling for cases when the encoding used 
for input or output is detected to be wrong or insufficient. The user 
should at least be warned.

7. Where is this stuff actually used? I checked the obvious 
documentprovider classes in M7 and didn't see it.

Bob

Rafael Chaves wrote:
> A new revision of the improved file encoding proposal has been made 
> available off the Platform/Core web page:
>
> http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/platform-core-home/dev.html#plan_current 
>
>
> Comments are welcome and should be made on the Platform/Core development 
> list (platform-core-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx) or the corresponding Bugzilla PR 
> (#37933).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rafael