> I can't quickly refer to a price in £ or € or ¥? Or that it's 90°F out? I can't talk about my fiancée? I can't even use “proper quotes”?
Those are all totally argument-for-the-sake-of-argument nit-picks, in my opinion.
To be honest, I rarely enough need to refer to UK pounds, Euro, or Yen - that I'd much more likely just type it out like that instead of try to remember/experiment what the magic key combination to produce them properly is. There is no a single English speaker in the world that wouldn't understand "fiancee" - even with non "proper" quotes around it.
> In 2020, why are you going out of your way to prevent people from ...
That argument seems to me to inevitable end with some combination of 4chan-ish image boards (because "people want to communicate in memes") or Snapchat-ish 100% video content (because "people want to communicate in video"). If you want those things - go use those things.
The OP is trying something different. You call it "exclusionary", and claim it's a decision based on zero good technical reasons. I suspect it's better described as "intentionally constrained" and a social experiment.
(And thinking bigger picture, there are totally "benefits" to using http and dial-up or slower bandwidth in some places. I have a pile of ESP32/LoRaWAN boards sitting here. If I want to maximise the range the LoRa radios can achieve, I'm looking at 27kbps or so throughput. If I want to use these on 433MHz where I live, I can't legally operate them at more than 1% duty cycle (due to .au restriction on the 433MHz ISM band and digital transmissions). I don't have enough CPU to do TLS, I don't have much more than about 255 bits per second of bandwidth. I could _probably_ use the OP's software under those limitations, and build a mesh based messaging network that'd work for anyone within ~ 3-20km of you. Totally niche application, but also possibly useful. Imagine a pocket sized battery powered non cellular non wifi multi mile range comms device that'll mesh with the ones your friends are carrying - at a festival where cellular is crushed or not available. Text messaging style social network gadgets for your camp at Burningman, for less then $40 per user? I'd build that...)
> To be honest, I rarely enough need to refer to UK pounds, Euro, or Yen - that I'd much more likely just type it out like that instead of try to remember/experiment what the magic key combination to produce them properly is.
The description says 'english only', not 'US only'. There are quite a few english speaking people all over the world. Not to mention that Britain, which I'd consider pretty english, definitely needs the pound sign quite often. And European keyboards produce the €-sign with ease, I even have it explicitly marked.
I can see your point about intensional constraints and social experiments, but I fully disagree with your point that a lack of UTF-8 is a 'nit-pick' or that is is unneeded for english conversation. You can work around it, sure, but that does not make it great.
> That argument seems to me to inevitable end with some combination of 4chan-ish image boards (because "people want to communicate in memes") or Snapchat-ish 100% video content (because "people want to communicate in video"). If you want those things - go use those things.
Including images or videos is a feature with quite some overhead, while romanizing UTF-8 input is putting in extra work just to disallow it. So this goes in quite a different direction.
Those are all totally argument-for-the-sake-of-argument nit-picks, in my opinion.
To be honest, I rarely enough need to refer to UK pounds, Euro, or Yen - that I'd much more likely just type it out like that instead of try to remember/experiment what the magic key combination to produce them properly is. There is no a single English speaker in the world that wouldn't understand "fiancee" - even with non "proper" quotes around it.
> In 2020, why are you going out of your way to prevent people from ...
That argument seems to me to inevitable end with some combination of 4chan-ish image boards (because "people want to communicate in memes") or Snapchat-ish 100% video content (because "people want to communicate in video"). If you want those things - go use those things.
The OP is trying something different. You call it "exclusionary", and claim it's a decision based on zero good technical reasons. I suspect it's better described as "intentionally constrained" and a social experiment.
(And thinking bigger picture, there are totally "benefits" to using http and dial-up or slower bandwidth in some places. I have a pile of ESP32/LoRaWAN boards sitting here. If I want to maximise the range the LoRa radios can achieve, I'm looking at 27kbps or so throughput. If I want to use these on 433MHz where I live, I can't legally operate them at more than 1% duty cycle (due to .au restriction on the 433MHz ISM band and digital transmissions). I don't have enough CPU to do TLS, I don't have much more than about 255 bits per second of bandwidth. I could _probably_ use the OP's software under those limitations, and build a mesh based messaging network that'd work for anyone within ~ 3-20km of you. Totally niche application, but also possibly useful. Imagine a pocket sized battery powered non cellular non wifi multi mile range comms device that'll mesh with the ones your friends are carrying - at a festival where cellular is crushed or not available. Text messaging style social network gadgets for your camp at Burningman, for less then $40 per user? I'd build that...)