Python's handling of unicode surrogates

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> IMHO what is really needed is a bunch of high level methods like
> .graphemes() - iterate over graphemes
> .codepoints() - iterate over codepoints
> .isword() - check if the string represents one word
> etc...

This doesn't need to come as methods, though. If anybody wants to
provide a library with such functions, they can do so today.

I'd be hesitant to add methods to the string object with no proven
applications.

IMO, the biggest challenge in Unicode support is neither storage
nor iteration, but it's output (rendering, fonts, etc.), and,
to some degree, input (input methods). As Python has no "native"
GUI library, we currently defer that main challenge to external
libraries already.

Regards,
Martin