[Python-Dev] Encodings

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> > Please... toss the changeable default. If everybody knows the default
> > encoding is "ascii" and they want something else, then they know what to do.
> > But when the default can change, then it can't be relied on. The coder is
> > going to have to do an explicit encoding anyways. So why have a default?
> 
> I couldn't have said it better.  It's okay for now to have it
> changeable at the C level -- with endless caveats that it should be
> set only once before any use, and marked as an experimental feature.
> But the Python access and the reliance on the environment should go.

Sorry, but I'm really surprised now: I've put many hours of
work into this, hacked up encoding support for locale.py,
went through endless discussions, proposed the changable default
as compromise to make all parties (ASCII, UTF-8 and Latin-1) happy
... and now all it takes is one single posting to render all that
work useless ???

Instead of tossing things we should be *constructive* and come
up with a solution to the hash value problem, e.g. I would
like to make the hash value be calculated from the UTF-16
value in a way that is compatible with ASCII strings.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/