Python's 8-bit cleanness deprecated?

[Scott David Daniels]

OK, the suggestion about the proper encoding format was mine.
As I am a vi-bigot, I chose the non-vi standard in part to
demonstrate that I was advising, "choose someone elses's
standard, don't invent your own."

The reason we want it in the file is that we want your script,
when e-mailed to a Japanese user, to still run "correctly."
Remember that we want to check for multiple encodings: the
encoding will be source-file specific so an "import" is pretty
much a bad idea to solve it(since the imported file may be in
another format).  This should allow you to use modules built
in several different encodings in the same program, rather than
having to translate every source code you get to your encoding.

Imagine the problem of a "CPAN"-like code repository with people
editting and checking in code from different source code
environments.

-Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org