[SciPy-user] Docstring standards for NumPy and SciPy

[Robert Kern]

Ivan Vilata i Balaguer wrote:
> Robert Kern (el 2007-01-20 a les 07:10:21 -0600) va dir::
> 
>> There's another thing we should standardize that's related to docstrings:
>> encoding. Many names of authors of modules as well as authors of papers I want
>> to cite in the docstrings have non-ASCII characters. Let's standardize on a
>> UTF-8 encoding for all files that have non-ASCII characters.
> 
> Wouldn't it be safer and more cross-platform friendly to use Unicode
> docstrings with escape sequences where needed, instead of hard-wiring
> the UTF-8 encoding into docstrings?  This would keep the files ASCII,
> and I guess there won't be a need for that many non-ASCII characters
> (occasionaly for author names, as you pointed out).    ::

Well, most of the point is to be able to read names as they actually are. If you
submit a module, I want to see

  Copyright 2007 Cárabos Coop.

not

  Copyright 2007 C\xe1rabos Coop.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco