PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Paul Boddie]

On 15 May, 15:57, Stefan Behnel <stefan.behnel-n05... at web.de> wrote:
>
> But the positions are clear, I think.

Amongst the small group of people responsible for pumping out almost
200 messages on the subject.

> Open-Source people are against it, as they expect hassle with people sending
> in code or code being lost as it can't go public as-is.

Amongst the small sample here, perhaps that's true. I'm more a Free
Software person than an open source person and I can perfectly well
see the benefits in having identifiers in a broader range of
characters than just the subset of ASCII currently permitted. That's
because I can separate the issues of being able to express concepts in
one's own  writing system and being able to share work with other
people, familiar or otherwise with that writing system.

> Teachers are for it as they see the advantage of having children express
> concepts in their native language.

Yes, because it allows them to concentrate on fewer "new things"
simultaneously.

> In-house developers are rather for this PEP as they see the advantage of
> expressing concepts in the way the "non-techies" talk about it.

Yes, but this point can be stretched too far. I've worked in
environments with English plus another language in use, as well as
just a non-English language in use, and in all of them there's been a
tendency to introduce English or English-like terms into systems,
often to the detriment of dedicated, officially recommended non-
English terms. But I can see the potential benefit of just letting
people get on with it - again, it's possible to separate the social
issues from the technical ones.

> That's about all I could extract as arguments.

>From a relatively small group of people where an even smaller group of
participants seem intent on amplifying their arguments on the subject.

> To me, this sounds pretty much like something people and projects could handle
> on their own once the PEP is accepted.

Yes, of course. But what I'd like to see, for a change, is some kind
of analysis of the prior art in connection with this matter. Java has
had extensive UTF-8 support all over the place for ages, but either no-
one here has any direct experience with the consequences of this
support, or they are more interested in arguing about it as if it were
a hypothetical situation when it is, in fact, a real-life situation
that can presumably be observed and measured.

Paul