Re: initdb in 8.3

[Tim Tassonis <timtas(at)cubic(dot)ch>]

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 23. April 2008 schrieb Tim Tassonis:
> > My question is: Why then is --locale=C not the default for initdb, as I
> > do regard it as a rather big annoyance that a default installation on
> > probably almost any modern linux distribution results in a UTF-8 only
> > cluster, fixable only by dropping all databases, rerun initdb and the
> > reimporting them again.
>
> Because the vast majority of users prefers UTF-8 encoded databases over C 
> locale databases.

Ok, let me put it in another way. If UTF-8 is chosen at initdb, only 
UTF-8 databases can be created, if C is chosen, you can specify 
different encodings (UTF-8, LATIN1 etc) for each database.

As I understood now, sorting will then still be in C style and not in 
the locale specific way. Which leads me to the following questions:

If specifying a characterset different from the default locale for a 
database is such a bad idea, why is it possible at all?

From how I understand you, if I wanted a postgres server machine 
supporting databases with different charsets, I'm advised to initialise 
one cluster per locale.

If specifying a characterset different from the default locale for a 
database is not a bad idea, why does the default install forbid me to do 
exactly this?

Regards
Tim