Re: [PATCH v7 0/7] convert: add support for different encodings

> And from that point of view, perhaps w-t-e attribute is somewhat
> misdesigned.
> 
> In general, an attribute is about the project's contents in the
> manner independent of platform or environment.  You define "this
> file is a C source" or "this file has JPEG image" there.  What exact
> program you use to present diffs between the two versions of such a
> file (external diff command) or what exact program you use to
> extract the textual representations (textconv filter) is environment
> and platform dependent and is left to the configuration mechanism
> for each repository.
> 
> To be in line with the above design principle, I think the attribute
> ought to be "the in-tree contents of this path is encoded in ..."
> whose values could be things like UTF-8, ShiftJIS, etc.  What
> external encoding the paths should be checked out is not a
> project-wide matter, especially when talking about cross platform
> projects.  Perhaps a project in Japanese language wants to check
> out its contents in EUC-jp on Unices and in ShiftJIS on DOS derived
> systems.  The participants all need to know what in-repository
> encoding is used, which is a sensible use of attributes.  They also
> need to know what the recommended external encoding to be used in
> the working tree is for their platforms, but that is more like what
> Makefile variable to set for their platforms, etc., and is not a
> good match to the attributes system.