Why tuples use parentheses ()'s instead of something else like <>'s?

[Jeff Shannon]

John Roth wrote:

>
> "Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote in message 
> news:roy-BECFA1.11081829122004 at reader1.panix.com...
>
>> If Python had originally been invented in a unicode world, I suppose we
>> wouldn't have this problem.  We'd just be using guillemots for tuples
>> (and have keyboards which made it easy to type them).
>
>
> I suppose the forces of darkness will forever keep Python from
> requiring utf-8 as the source encoding. If I didn't make a fetish
> of trying to see the good in everybody's position, I could really
> work up a dislike of the notion that you should be able to use
> any old text editor for Python source.


It's not so much the desire to be able to use any old text editor that 
keeps Python in ASCII, it's the desire to use any old *hardware*.  
Keyboards with guillemots are not exactly a worldwide norm, and needing 
to remember and type some arcane alt-keycode formula to be able to do 
basic scripting would be obnoxious, to say the least.  Most keyboards 
worldwide provide decent support for the ASCII character set (though 
some add a few extra national characters).  Perhaps things will change 
when a majority of the world's programmers use a non-Roman alphabet / 
character set, but even then there's a significant weight of historical 
reasons to overcome.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International