[Python-3000] PEP 3131 - the details

[Jason Orendorff]

On 5/17/07, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> That is my reasoning, too. People seem to want to be conservative,
> so it's safer to reject formatting characters for the moment.
> If people come up with a need, they still can be added.

How about this: *require* the LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK after
every sequence of RTL characters outside a string or
comment; and *forbid* all other Cf characters.

This is just as conservative, but supports RTL-language
identifiers better. It prevents all the "stupid bidi tricks"
I know of (abc = cba and so forth).

It pins the cost of maintaining bidi sanity on writers rather
than readers of code.  For all existing code, this is no cost
at all, of course.  For RTL languages this is a nontrivial
burden, but Python can't fix that--it's a fact of bidi life.

-j