PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings

[Ian Parker]

In article <9jmp05$47j$1 at animus.fel.iae.nl>, Carel Fellinger
<cfelling at iae.nl> writes
>M.-A. Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:
>...
>>        5. variable names and other identifiers will be reencoded into
>>           8-bit strings using the file encoding to assure backward
>>           compatibility with the existing implementation
>
>>           ISSUE: 
>
>>               Should we restrict identifiers to ASCII ?
>
>Me being stupid, I wonder how I'm going to access goodies hidden in
>foreign alfabet scripts.  Say GooodyScript.py is encoded in Japanese
>and I'm to use the classes and functions in them that have Japanese
>names, how am I supposed to call them in my Dutch encoded script?
>Is there a fool proof conversion from Dutch to Japanese spelling?
>And is it easy to find the proper transcriptions of those Japanese
>names, or do I have to start some external program to transcribe
>that Japanese script?
>
>Sorry if all this are standard questions related to utf etc, I haven't
>found the time to read up on this yet.

Well I haven't quite managed to get to grips with the PEP yet and there
are three issues that concern me:
1) the issue Carel raises above. 
2) relating to work I'm just about to commence:  will I be able to
include Japanese unicode strings in my normal (ascii) python scripts?
3)  if I were to be cutting and pasting chunks of code from different
source files, would things get somewhat confused if the encodings are
different?

I certainly wouldn't want my whole program to look rather odd, or is
there simply no impact on the ascii text?

However, I'm since I'm still unclear on the PEP, maybe these are non-
issues?

Regards

Ian

-- 
Ian Parker