Hi Inada,

Thank you for submitting PEP 597 (Add optional EncodingWarning). The Steering Council is happy with the PEP, and hereby accepts it. The SC is of the opinion that we should move towards making UTF-8 the default encoding, and this PEP will make it easier to do so, and mitigate some of the confusion around the default encoding in the meantime.

That being said, the SC would like to invite you and others with interest to work on a PEP for a long term plan to, in fact, change the default encoding to UTF-8. We don't want to make irrevocable decisions until we have a clear, viable plan with a good upgrade path and with community support, but we do believe we need to make that decision sooner rather than later.

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