PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings

Tue Jul 17 13:05:03 EDT 2001

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> ....
> 
> If I understood correctly, Python will soon switch to "unicode-only"
> strings, as Java and Tcl did. (This is of course disaster for some Python
> usage areas such as fast text-processing, but...)

No, this is not likely to happen "soon". Maybe before the death of Sol
but not in the next year. 

>...
> 
> I think non-literal data must be in ASCII.

I agree. Allowing "funny characters" in names is not something we have
much call for yet and it may break many tools that have ASCII-only
assumptions.

>...
> 
> May be just put something like ''# <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC''
> at the beginning...

If you want an XML-style declaration, a more compact syntax could be:

#?python encoding="..."

> Or, even greater idea occured to me: allow some XML
> with meta-information (not only encoding) somehow escaped.

I think we should be wary of overcomplicating a relatively simple idea. 

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