Multibyte Character Surport for Python

[Alex Martelli]

David LeBlanc wrote:
        ...
> Yes, by all means, use english to describe programs; the built-in syntax,
> variable names and program documentation, but enable and encourage the use
> of national languages to communicate between the program and the user.
        ...
> Sorry if this sounds contradictory - it's not meant to be at all.

Doesn't sound contradictory to me.  I want programs easy to localize for
operation in any of several locales (language is not the only issue...),
though that is un-trivial enough to be a typical characteristics of
"professional" programs.  But the technical side of things should be
accessible to technically-trained personnel from anywhere in the world,
and it's reasonable (actually more or less inevitable) to include some
nodding acquaintance with English as part of the prereq's for being
"technically trained personnel" in programming.  Adding the ability to
tell tens of thousands of glyphs apart from each other is NOT at all
reasonable -- and yet this will be indispensable to make head or tails
out of programs in the "brave new world" dreamed of by people who want
non-ASCII letters in identifiers.  I can't stop them; I can just hope
they'll get retribution one day, by needing to, and being unable to,
alter or maintain a program entirely using whatever huge set of ideograms
they find most impossibly hard to use.  By then it will be too late to
do anything about it, of course, but maybe I'll get the bitter satisfaction
of being able to say "I told you so"...


Alex