[Python-Dev] Encodings

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

M.-A. Lemburg writes:
 > 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

  My recollection was that the purpose of the changable default was so
that we could experiment with different defaults more easily, not that
we'd keep it changable.
  I'm not an expert on these issues and have tried to stay out of the
way on the discussion, but the idea of a changable default just seems
like we're asking for trouble.
  I'm sorry that you feel your efforts have been wasted; I don't think
anyone tried to spend your time without careful consideration, but it
is important that we all understand what we have gained from this
experiment.
  Before you implemented the changable default, we all had the
opportunity to presume to know how things would work with it, and
could bitch or plead about it as we felt appropriate.  Now that it's
been tried, we have a little more real experiance with it, and can
point to the evidence that's been presented here as we each make our
arguments on the topic.
  So I'd have to say that your efforts have *not* been wasted; we now
have a very good idea of what's involved and whether "it works."  I,
for one, am glad that the experiment was done (and expecially that it
was done by someone who knows more about this than me!).

 > 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.

  This may be the right thing for the hash value; I don't know.  But I
think this is in some ways separate from the changable defaults
question.  This approach can be taken for getting hash values right
without having a changable default encoding.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at beopen.com>
BeOpen PythonLabs Team Member