[Python-Dev] Python API version & optional features

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> > > Hm, the "u" argument parser is a nasty one to catch.  How likely is
> > > this to be the *only* reference to Unicode in a particular extension?
> >
> > It is not very likely but IMHO possible for e.g. extensions
> > which rely on the fact that wchar_t == Py_UNICODE and then do
> > direct interfacing to some other third party code.
> >
> > I guess one could argue that extension writers should check
> > for narrow/wide builds in their extensions before using Unicode.
> >
> > Since the number of Unicode extension writers is much smaller
> > than the number of users, I think that this apporach would be
> > reasonable, provided that we document the problem clearly in the
> > NEWS file.
> 
> OK.  I approve.

Great ! I'll go ahead and fix unicodeobject.h.
 
> > Hmm, that would probably not make UCS-4 builds very popular ;-)
> 
> Do you have any reason to assume that it would be popular otherwise?
> :-) :-) :-)

Oh, I do hope that people try out the UCS-4 builds. They may not
be all that interesting yet, but I believe that for Asian users
they do have some advantages.
 
> > > These warnings should use the warnings framework, by the way, to make
> > > it easier to ignore a specific warning.  Currently it's a hard write
> > > to stderr.
> >
> > Using the warnings framework would indeed be a good idea (many older
> > extensions work just fine even with later API levels; the warnings
> > are annoying, though) !
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> I'm not going to make the change, but it should be a two-liner in
> Python/modsupport.c:Py_InitModule4().

I'll look into this as well.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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