This is the simplest if each codec really is likely to be implemented in a separate module. But just look at the data! All the iso-8859 encodings need identical functionality, and just have a different mapping table with 256 elements. It would be trivial to implement these in one module. And the wide variety of Japanese encodings (mostly corporate or historical variants of the same character set) are again best treated from one code base with a bunch of mapping tables and routines to generate the variants - basically one can store the deltas.

So the choice is between possibly having a lot of almost-dummy modules, or having Python modules which generate and register a logical family of encodings.

I may have some time next week and will try to code up a few so we can pound on something.

I see no problem with having a lot of near-dummy modules if it simplifies the architecture. You can still do code sharing. Files are cheap; APIs are expensive. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

This is the simplest if each codec really is likely to be implemented in a separate module. But just look at the data! All the iso-8859 encodings need identical functionality, and just have a different mapping table with 256 elements. It would be trivial to implement these in one module. And the wide variety of Japanese encodings (mostly corporate or historical variants of the same character set) are again best treated from one code base with a bunch of mapping tables and routines to generate the variants - basically one can store the deltas.

So the choice is between possibly having a lot of almost-dummy modules, or having Python modules which generate and register a logical family of encodings.

I may have some time next week and will try to code up a few so we can pound on something.

I see no problem with having a lot of near-dummy modules if it simplifies the architecture. You can still do code sharing. Files are cheap; APIs are expensive. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)