initdb in 8.3

[Tim Tassonis <timtas@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi

I just recently compiled and installed 8.3.1 on a System that has UTF-8 
as the default characterset in the environment. Copied the binaries, run 
initdb without parameters, the usual stuff.

As you probably are all aware of, this results now in a cluster that 
will only allow you to create UTF-8 databases. I have read some posts 
regarding this topic where it is explained that allowing LATIN1 on a 
cluster initialized with UTF-8 will give you problems anyway etc and you 
have to use locale=C to be able to create databases with different 
charactersets.

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.

Apart from that I'd of course like to restate that postgresql is a 
wonderful software which I like very much.

Bye
Tim