[Python-Dev] PEP 263 considered faulty (for some Japanese)

[SUZUKI Hisao]

> > Please note that
> > u'<whatever-in-ascii>' is interpreted just literally and we
> > cannot put Japanese characters in string literals legally for
> > now anyway.
> 
> Would you like to be able to?  The PEP will allow this -- that's its
> whole point!

Yes, I would.  And I wish that the PEP would
(1) allow once-and-for-all transition to the new scheme
    (if the default encoding will be UTF-8 in the far future and
    encoding spedifications will lose their significance someday,
    I'd rather like to use UTF-8 as the default for now), and
(2) not break any legal code, unless the breaking is reasonably
    tolerable one.

> > It sounds very nice.  I understand that the default data
> > encoding will be applied to what from file objects.  It must be
> > the only(?) satisfying solution if the default source encoding
> > is to be set in site.py.
> > # Or else we should give up the default encoding for data...
> 
> I would strongly encourage the latter.  Are you really sure that there
> isn't a better way to avoid having to type the encoding name all the
> time?  E.g. define your own helper functions?

Certainly there would be.  Anyway in that Martin v. Loewis
advised me on the danger of using UTF-16 as the default encoding
in the _current_ Python, we will do up things.

# Though currently we do not meet severe problems luckily.  If
# there is danger, I wonder it might be a bug of the current
# Python.

> > I'm sorry for the ambiguity.
> > I proposed ASCII as the _minimum_ request.  I'd _hope_ UTF-8.

> I will ignore the rest of your message, which is just repeating
> age-old arguments why we should use UTF-8.  We have considered this
> carefully in the past, and rejected the idea.  I see nothing new in
> your argument.

> And yes, using ASCII is unfair to all non-English speakers.  But
> Python uses English keywords anyway; I don't think we should strive
> for total cultural relativism, and it's certainly not a fight I feel
> the desire to fight for now.

I see, though it is regrettable.

Personally speaking, _I_ have been using the same source files
written in UTF-8 among the various environments at home as a
hobby: BeOS, MacOS X, GNU/Linux and Windows Me/XP.  They run
very well for now without any encoding conversion.

# In fact the "pypage" Web server referred in my reply to Martin
# v. Loewis is such one.  It runs very well on the current
# Python almost everywhere because it does not treat strings as
# Unicode at all for now.

Strictly speaking, they are illegal and I have no right to
insist for them at all.  Yes, I will put either the magic
comment or UTF-8 BOM on all of them.

# In fact I will use the magic comment because I want to make my
# program runnable in many versions of Python as possible.

--
SUZUKI Hisao <suzuki@acm.org> <suzuki611@okisoft.co.jp>