Multibyte Character Surport for Python

[John Roth]

"Chris Liechti" <cliechti at gmx.net> wrote in message
news:Xns920B1EE5D2091cliechtigmxnet at 62.2.16.82...
> "John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote in
> news:udol0hpg2g9gf7 at news.supernews.com:
>
> > "Martin v. Loewis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote in message
> > news:m3wuucbjlb.fsf at mira.informatik.hu-berlin.de...
> >> Erno Kuusela <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> writes:
> >>
> >> > | You mean, non-english-speaking people are prevented from using
> > FORTRAN
> >> > | and C? Can you name someone specifically? I don't know any such
> > person.
> >> >
> >> > i don't know such people either. but since many people only know
> >> > languages that aren't written in ascii, it seems fairly probable
> > that
> >> > they exist.
> >>
> >> I really question this claim. Most people that develop software (or
> >> would be interested in doing so) will learn the latin alphabet at
> >> school - even if they don't learn to speak English well.
> >
> > The trouble is that while almost all of the languages used in the
> > Americas, Australia and Western Europe are based on
> > the Latin alphabet, that isn't true in the rest of the world, and
> > even then, it gets uncomfortable if your particular language's
> > diacritical marks aren't supported. You can't do really good,
> > descriptive names.
> >
> > And good, descriptive names are one of the bedrocks of
> > good software.
>
> true, but how i'm supposed to use the nice chinese module which uses
class
> names i can't even type on my keyboard?
>
> [...]
> > 3. There must be a complete set of syntax words in each
> > supported language. That is, words such as 'and', 'or', 'if', 'else'
> > All such syntax words in a particular module must come from the
> > same language.
>
> uff, this sounds evil to me. this means i could write "wenn" for an
"if" in
> german etc.? that would effectively downgrade python to a beginners
only
> language because the diffrent addon modules you find on the net are
just a
> chaotic language mix, unusable for a commercial project.

Not what I meant at all. The compiled byte code would be identical,
and presumably the compiler would recognize each of the sets, so you
could use any module you found anywhere.

> many modules on the net would not work in your language or if they
would at
> least execute you would still unable to look at the sourcecode, extend
it,
> understand it (ok it would solve the obfuscated code questions that
show up
> from time to time ;-).

Translating a module's syntax words from one language to
another is dead easy. If it's an issue (and I agree that it most
likely will be one) a syntax aware editor should do it on the fly.

> we like open source, don't we? but if there were such many language
> variants it became very difficult to work together.
>
> if you say now that if one intends to make a module public, one could
aways
> choose to write it in english, i don't think thats a good argument.
many
> modules start as a private project, a quick hack etc. but then they're
made
> public. look at Alex's post for more good arguments...
>
>
> > 4. All syntax words are preceeded by a special character, which
> > is not presented to the viewer by Python 3.0 aware tools. Instead,
> > the special character is used to pick them out and highlight them.
> > The reason for this is that the vocabulary of syntax words can then
> > be expanded without impacting existing programs - they are
> > effectively from a different name space.
>
> goodbye editing with a simple editor... of course you would also like
to
> introduce the possibility to write from the right to left and
vertical.
>
> i can see your good intention but i doubt that this leads to a better
> programming language.
>
> chris
>
> --
> Chris <cliechti at gmx.net>
>