[Python-ideas] Fix default encodings on Windows

[Chris Barker - NOAA Federal]

> There also seems to be an undercurrent in the discussions we're having
> now that using bytes paths and not unicode paths is somehow The Right
> Thing for unix-like OSes,

Almost -- from my perusing of discussions from the last few years,
there do seem to be some library developers and *nix affectionados
that DO think it's The Right Thing -- after all, a char* has always
worked, yes? But these folks also seem to think that a •nix system
with no way of knowing what the encoding of the names in the file
system (and could have more than one) is not "broken" in any way.

A note about "utf-8 everywhere": while maybe a good idea, it's my
understanding that *nix developers absolutely do not want utf-8 to be
assumed in the Python APIs. Rather, this is all about punting the
handling of encodings down to the application level, rather that the
OS and Library level. Which is more backward compatible, but otherwise
a horrible idea. And very much in conflict with Python 3's approach.

So it seems odd to assume utf-8 on Windows, where it is less ubiquitous.

Back to "The Right Thing" -- it's clear to me that everyone supporting
this proposal is vet much doing so because it's "The Pragmatic Thing".

But it seems folks porting from py2 need to explicitly convert the
calls from str to bytes anyway to get the bytes behavior. With
surrogate escapes, now you need to do nothing. So we're really
supporting code that was ported to py3 earlier in the game - but it
seems a bad idea to cement that hacks solution in place.

 And if the file amen in question are coming from a byte stream
somehow, rather than file system API calls, then you really do need to
know the encoding -- yes really! If a developer wants to assume utf-8,
that's fine, but the developer should be making that decision, not
Python itself. And not on Windows only.

-CHB



> and that breaking it (in whatever way) on
> windows causes code that Does The Right Thing on unix to require extra
> work to port to windows. That's seemingly both the rationale for the
> proposal itself and for the objections.
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