[Python-Dev] Removing Non-Unicode Support?

Jeff Rush jeff at taupro.com
Mon Feb 20 10:36:09 CET 2006


Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On 2/19/06, Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
> [Quoting Neal Norwitz]
> 
>>>I've heard of a bunch of people using --disable-unicode.  I'm not sure
>>>if it's curiosity or if there are really production builds without
>>>unicode.  Ask this on c.l.p too.
>>
> Do you know of any embedded platform that doesn't have unicode support
> as a requirement? Python runs fine on Nokia phones running Symbian,
> where *everything* is a Unicode string.

1. PalmOS, at least the last time I was involved with it.  Python on a Palm 
is a very tight fit.


2. "GM862 Cellular Module with Python Interpreter"
       http://tinyurl.com/jgxz

These may be dimishing markets as memory capacity increases and I wouldn't 
argue adding compile flags for such at this late date, but if the flags are 
already there, perhaps the slight inconvenience to Python-internal 
developers is worth it.

Hey, perhaps dropping out Unicode support is not a big win - I just know it 
is useful at times to have a collection of flags to drop out floating point, 
complex arithmetic, language parsing and such for memory-constrained cases.

-Jeff


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