Amarok patch for local encoded ID3 tags

[Jeff Mitchell]

Peter Zhou wrote:
> I don't think the patch would work for most cases since many people have 
> tracks with non-UTF-8 encoding and yet UTF-8 locale for their system.
> 
> I wonder if we should check the encoding by looking up the encoding 
> table provide by QT(http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/qtextcodec.html). If 
> you think this is yet too complicated, how about just let the users to 
> set their default encoding if it is not UTF-8.
> 
>     This is the classical case of MP3s containing incorrect info.  The
>     reason that a patch like this can't go directly into TagLib is that
>     TagLib doesn't link against Qt and as such doesn't have the huge tables
>     of encodings that Qt does.

Not knowing much about text encodings, I don't really follow this too 
well.  To me, the patch looks like it's doing what Peter says it's not 
doing :-(

I guess I'd like input on the following from you (and I can send you a 
test file if you'd like):

1) Does the patch have the possibility of hurting anything (including 
undesired encoding behavior for other people)?
2) Can the patch be improved to work for everyone?
3) Is a better answer something like "Tell people to switch to UTF-8 
already" (better as in, would this let it work with TagLib without the 
need for wonky patches, and for all programs using TagLib).

I'd like to defer to expert opinion on this one.

--Jeff