Guido already said it all: Python is going Unicode in 1.6 and things are moving fast into that direction. But... to make the integration rock solid, I need your participation: please test the patch in every way you can so that I can get it ready for prime time as soon as possible. I am most interested in hearing about its behaviour in mixed string/Unicode situations. The idea behind the implementation is that strings and Unicode should inter- operate to the greatest extent possible. Note that the patch also includes a completely new core feature: the codec APIs and registry. You can write stackable streams, data converters, etc. in a generic way and use them throughout Python. This should be especially interesting for people in the web business who want to provide content using many different encodings, e.g. Latin-1, UTF-8, etc. Encryption and compression codecs should also be possible using the new APIs. To make things more convenient for you, I'll also put a complete Python source distribution on the web page for you to download -- this eliminates the need to patch the CVS sources. Thanks, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/