Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> writes: <snip/>
My ASCII proposal is a compromise that tries to be fair to both uses for strings. Introducing byte arrays as a more fundamental type has been on the wish list for a long time -- I see no way to introduce this into Python 1.6 without totally botching the release schedule (June 1st is very close already!). I'd like to be able to move on, there are other important things still to be added to 1.6 (Vladimir's malloc patches, Neil's GC, Fredrik's completed sre...).
For 1.7 (which should happen later this year) I promise I'll reopen the discussion on byte arrays.
I think I hear a moderate consensus developing that the 'ASCII proposal' is a reasonable compromise given the time constraints. But let's not fail to come back to this ASAP -- it _really_ narcs me that every time I load XML into my Python-based editor I'm going to convert large amounts of wide-string data into UTF-8 just so Tk can convert it back to wide-strings in order to display it! ht -- Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh W3C Fellow 1999--2001, part-time member of W3C Team 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440 Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/