PEP 263 comments

[Jason Orendorff]

I've been following this rather closely and thinking a lot about it,
and concluded that this is too big a headache to be believed.

Ideally, from the programmer's perspective:

 * All my existing Python code should continue to run.
 * I shouldn't have to understand what Unicode is, if all I want
   is to bang out a quick script to say "hello world" in my native
   language.
 * I should be able to send Python files to other people in
   other countries, and they should run fine there too.
 * I should be able to use 'print' on strings and unicode strings
   and get sensible output (I'll know it when I see it <wink>).
 * Comments shouldn't affect the meaning of code.
 * Random binary garbage in comments should be ignored, just like
   it is today.

Unfortunately it's all impossible.  I think MvL's proposal comes
about as close as anyone can today, but it's still yucky, and it's
*definitely* an abuse of Emacs's "-*- coding: -*-" magic (my main
objection).

I'm still holding out for an impossible ideal (or at least *clean*)
solution.  But of course it's not my opinion that matters <wink>...

## Jason Orendorff    http://www.jorendorff.com/