[Python-3000] Support for PEP 3131

[Terry Reedy]

""Martin v. Löwis"" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote in message 
news:464FFD04.90602 at v.loewis.de...
| I'm not aware of an algorithm that
| can do transliteration for all Unicode characters.

Were you proposing to allow all Unicode characters in Python names?-)

| Therefore, I cannot add transliteration into the PEP.

Non sequitor.  How I read this is "Because I do not know how to do 
something that does not need to be done, I cannot do something that could 
be done."  So it strikes me as another red-herring dismissal that seems to 
ignore the actual content of what I proposed, which was to do something 
that I believe can be done and which would be useful to do.

My proposal was that the Unicode characters allowed in Python identifiers 
be limited to those with a transliteration, either current or to be 
developed by those who want to use a particular character set.  So if, for 
instance, one or more people wanted to program in Klingon in its 'native' 
characters, they would need to provide the mapping (which I suspect already 
exists).  Transliterations more or less official do exist, I believe, for 
the major languages that we are seriously concerned with.  And for just 
readablity purposes, I would leave the accented latin chars alone, and even 
let them be available as part of an extended target set.  So while I might 
be wrong, I *think* that we could get 99% use-case coverage.

While the PEPs acceptance as-is (for which I congratulate you for your 
persistence) makes transliteration moot as an acceptibility enhancement, it 
does not change its desireability for use purposes.  To repeat: without it, 
national character identifiers will tend to ghettoize code.  While this 
might be a minor issue for Chinese, it will be a bigger issue for people 
writing in Thai or Ibo or other languages with small pioneering groups of 
Python programmers.

Terry Jan Reedy