[Aptitude-devel] Bug#1067704: #1067704 -- aptitude source code need to be updated for UTF-8

[Osamu Aoki]

Hi,

As I checked more, this is a fixed bug in master branch.
0cb1886f ("ui: Default README encoding to UTF-8", 2020-08-03)

Yes, 6 yeas ago.  As I checked master-branch more, I see many more old i18n
fixes around this fix.:

e6c87719 ("help-zh_TW.txt: Convert to UTF-8", 2020-08-03)
d6545a5b ("mine: Convert fi and fr help files to UTF-8", 2020-08-03)
0cb1886f ("ui: Default README encoding to UTF-8", 2020-08-03)
220290f2 ("Convert remaining ISO-Latin files to UTF-8", 2020-08-18)

(This may not be the complete list of desirable commits to be cherry-picked.)

I don't know why but Debian upstream tagged content is not on master-branch.  I
suppose the current Debian maintainer wanted to use binary file removed contents
for upstream tarball.  Since then, Debian package kept using old upstream
content and addressing only issues such as compiler version etc. ignoring
changes made in master branch.

I don't know the rationale behind this odd packaging practice but it is high
time to at least important bugs fixed by cherry-picking master changes.

Osamu

On Sat, 2026-02-14 at 21:50 +0100, H.-R. Oberhage wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On 14.02.2026 17:28, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I find the same problem quite annoying, too.
> > 
> > Very simple patch as below solved this problem for the most annoying 
> > part of
> > this bug.
> 
> thanks!
> 
> > But as I see the source, there are few more places to be fixed and also 
> > change
> > encoding of text data.
> > 
> > help-zh_TW.txt is not in UTF-8 (help-zh_CN.txt is in UTF-8)
> > help-de.txt is latin1
> 
> For "unstable" help-de.txt has already been converted to UTF-8.
> [aptitude 0.8.13-8]
> 
> And here are files converted by "recode" to UTF-8:
>   o mine-help-fi.txt mine-help-fr.txt
> 
> I did the same for
>   o help-zh_TW.txt
> 
> but am not able to tell, if this is correct or meaningful
> text.
> 
> > I don't see any one working on this on salsa.
> > https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/aptitude/-/merge_requests
> > 
> > 
> > Let me make a fork and send MR via salsa when I find a time.
> > 
> > ---
> > 
> > Description: README is UTF-8
> >  aptitude (0.8.13-7.1) unstable; urgency=medium
> >  .
> >    * Non-maintainer upload.
> >    * UTF-8
> > Author: Osamu Aoki <osamu at debian.org>
> > 
> > --- aptitude-0.8.13.orig/src/ui.cc
> > +++ aptitude-0.8.13/src/ui.cc
> > @@ -1181,13 +1181,13 @@ static void do_help_readme()
> >    // Look up the translation of README.
> >    // TRANSLATORS: You can translate README and set the filename here.
> >    std::string readme_file = ssprintf(HELPDIR "/%s", P_("Localized
> > file|README"));
> > -  const char *encoding    = P_("Encoding of README|ISO_8859-1");
> > +  const char *encoding    = P_("Encoding of README|UTF-8");
> > 
> >    // Deal with missing localized docs.
> >    if(access(readme_file.c_str(), R_OK)!=0)
> >      {
> >        readme_file = HELPDIR "/README";
> > -      encoding    = "ISO_8859-1";
> > +      encoding    = "UTF-8";
> >      }
> > 
> >    setup_fileview(readme_file,
> 
> Thanks again, and all the best,
>   Ruediger Oberhage