[dwheeler]

I agree, I think having a CONFIGURABLE option in the kernel where admins can decide "what is allowed" would be a big step forward. (1) Enable requiring UTF-8 encoding, and (2) list what bytes are allowed/forbidden at the beginning, the middle, and the end. Then you could have a local policy like "UTF-8 only", "no control chars", "no dash at beginning", and "no space at the end".

[einhverfr]

This also means that programmers can document what they require, and eventual standards can emerge, which would be a good thing.