[I18n-sig] Re: [Python-Dev] Unicode debate

[Just van Rossum]

At 10:53 AM -0400 02-05-2000, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> As I've explained before, such encoding issues are silent by nature.
>> There's *nothing* you can ever do about it. The silent errors caused by
>> defaulting utf-8 are far worse.
>
>Which why I no longer argue for it.

Yay, progress!

>> 1. Currently utf-8 is the default. Many of us trying to dissuade you of
>> this bad idea.
>
>I agree.
>
>> 2. You propose to *not* provide a default encoding for characters >= 128
>
>Correct.
>
>> 3. Many of us trying to dissuade you of this bad idea.
>
>So far you're the only one -- I haven't seen other responses to this
>idea yet.

Well, you're proposal is very new, and as quite a few others have been
backing the Latin-1 proposal, for now I assume they agree with me... But
you're right, we'll have to wait and see what they say.

>> That depends on the definition of truth: it you document that 8-bit strings
>> are Latin-1, the above is the truth. Conceptually classify all other 8-bit
>> encodings as binary goop makes the semantics chrystal clear.
>[and later]
>> Oops, I meant of course that "\377" == u"\377" is then the truth...
>
>I can document that 1==2 but that doesn't make it true.

But that's not what I'm proposing! I propose that 1 == 1 and you propose
that 1 != 1. See the difference? ;-)

>Think about it once more.  Why do you really want Latin-1?

Because it's the only logical 8-bit subset of Unicode? Providing the least
surprises?

IHMO you're taking the western-centric argument way over the top: Python is
western centric, Unicode is western-centric. These are simple facts of life
that we'll just have to accept. You seem to want to make an (in my view)
unneccesary comprimise *only* to appear teensy weensy bit more politically
correct. As I've written before, choosing Latin-1 almost unite 8-bit and
unicode strings. I tend to think that's a good thing. And let's face it,
Latin-1 is the ASCII of today.

Just