[I18n-sig] Python and Unicode == Britain and the Euro?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Andy Robinson wrote:
> 
> This reminds me a lot of another debating going on close to home :-)
> 
> - people who are in favour assume everyone else is, and that the only
> question is how to get there
> - people who are against are just plain worried but can't say why
> - the government stays very quiet and avoids asking for a referendum
> 
> I want to re-ask the big question:  is it desirable that the
> standard string type should become a Unicode string one day?

Note that we are not moving to *one* new string type, but instead
make use of object orientation and fit the current use of strings
into different subclasses of a binary string type:

                  binary data string *)
                         |
                         |
                  text data string 
                    |           |
                    |           |
         Unicode string      encoded 8-bit string (with encoding 
           *)                                      information !)

*) these are implemented in Python 1.6-2.1.

The basic idea here is to differentiate between text data and
binary data.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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