PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[sjdevnull at yahoo.com]

On May 18, 1:47 pm, "Javier Bezos" <see_below_no_s... at yahoo.es> wrote:
> >> This question is more or less what a Korean who doesn't
> >> speak English would ask if he had to debug a program
> >> written in English.
>
> > Perhaps, but the treatment by your mail/news software plus the
> > delightful Google Groups of the original text (which seemed intact in
> > the original, although I don't have the fonts for the content) would
> > suggest that not just social or cultural issues would be involved.
>
> The fact my Outlook changed the text is irrelevant
> for something related to Python.

On the contrary, it cuts to the heart of the problem.  There are
hundreds of tools out there that programmers use, and mailing lists
are certainly an incredibly valuable tool--introducing a change that
makes code more likely to be silently mangled seems like a negative.

Of course, there are other benefits to the PEP, so I'm only barely
opposed.  But dismissing the fact that Outlook and other quite common
tools may have severe problems with code seems naive (or disingenuous,
but I don't think that's the case here).