[C++-sig] Some thoughts on py3k support

[Hans Meine]

On Donnerstag 19 März 2009, Matthew Scouten (TT) wrote:
> Ok, Fine. But I want the ability to specify an encoding ONCE and have
> use that unless I change it or override a specific conversion.

I would want such a thing, too.  (Assuming that all 8-bit strings *do* use the 
same encoding, which will be true in most, but not all cases - just as an 
example, ID3v2 tags come to my mind.)

> I also 
> want there to be a reasonable default so that if I forget to specify
> anything, it will work for the majority of cases.

I don't think this can be done.  "The majority" has used ASCII in the past, 
then latin-1, then (maybe) latin-15, now *maybe* UTF-8 (probably not yet, 
e.g. I am still using latin1).

Whatever.  My worries are probably not very constructive; I just wanted to 
prevent the same mistake made all those decades (assuming a specific, single, 
non-unicode encoding) be made again, several years into the third millenium.

OTOH, it will necessarily still be up to each and every programmer to care 
about the *correct* conversions in his/her program (/BPL extension module).

Ciao, /  /                                                    .o.
     /--/                                                     ..o
    /  / ANS                                                  ooo
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