[Web-SIG] Request for Comments on upcoming WSGI Changes

[Alan Kennedy]

[Alan]
>> Is there a real need out there?

[Armin]
> In python 3, yes.  Because the stdlib no longer works with bytes and the
> bytes object has few string semantics left.

Why can't we just do the same as the java servlet spec? I.E.

1. Ignore the encoding issues being discussed
2. Give the programmer (possibly mojibake) unicode strings in the WSGI
environ anyway
3. And let them solve their problems themselves, using server
configuration or bespoke middleware

[Alan]
>> Java programmers just tolerate this, although they may curse the
>> developers of the servlet spec for not having solved their specific
>> problem for them.

[Armin]
> Many Java apps are also still using latin1 only or have all kinds of
> problems with charsets.

My point exactly.

Many web developers simply never have to deal with these issues,
perhaps a majority.

The ones that do have to sort it out for themselves.

To do so, the publishers of the various containers give them
(non-standard) options to control the decoding of the incoming request
and all of its component parts: you cited the Tomcat approach above.
Other containers do it differently. Which means that i18n knowledge is
not portable between containers.

It would be nice if we could avoid such a situation with i18n and WSGI.

But I suppose I'm a little dubious that this group can out-do the
enormous java community, and the enormous financial resources that
Sun, IBM, Oracle, etc, etc, plough into it. And still failed to solve
this complex problem satisfactorily.

Alan.