Andy originally sent this just to me... I replied in kind, but saw that he sent another copy to python-dev. Sending my reply there... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 04:00:38 -0800 (PST) From: Greg Stein <gstein@lyra.org> To: andy@robanal.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] Internationalization Toolkit [ note: you sent direct to me; replying in kind in case that was your intent ] On Wed, 10 Nov 1999, [iso-8859-1] Andy Robinson wrote:

... Let me tell you why you would want to have an encoding which can be set: ...snip: two examples of how "print" fails...

Neither of those examples are solid reasons for having a default encoding that can be changed. Both can easily be altered at the Python level by using an encoding function before printing. You're asking for convenience, *not* providing a reason.

Java solves this (and we could too) using Writer classes which are created as wrappers around an output stream and can take an encoding, but you lose the flexibility to just print.

Not flexibility: convenience. You can certainly do: print encode(u,'Shift-JIS')

I think being able to change encoding would be useful. What I do not want is to auto-detect it from the operating system when Python boots - that would be a portability nightmare.

Useful, but not a requirement. Keep the interpreter simple, understandable, and predictable. A module that changes the default over to 'utf-8' because it is interacting with a network object is going to screw up your app if you're relying on an encoding of 'shift-jis' to be present. Cheers, -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/