Patch 100899 [Unicode compression] (was RE: [Python-Dev] 2.0 Release Plans)

[Tim Peters]

[Jeremy Hylton]
> I would like to see some compression in the release, but agree that it
> is not an essential optimization.  People have talked about it for a
> couple of months, and we haven't found someone to work on it because
> at various times pirx and /F said they were working on it.
>
> If we don't hear from /F by tomorrow promising he will finish it before
> the beta release, let's postpone it.

There was an *awful* lot of whining about the size increase without this
optimization, and the current situation violates the "no compiler warnings!"
rule too (at least under MSVC 6).  That means it's going to fail to compile
at all on *some* feebler system.  We said we'd put it in, so I'm afraid I
think it falls on PythonLabs to finish it if /F can't.