[I18n-sig] Python Support for "Wide" Unicode characters

[Guido van Rossum]

I agree with everything I deleted from the quoting below!

> > Given its name I think it should be TOPCHAR, even if unichr() accepts
> > larger values.
> 
> Maybe there is a virtue in having a way to both ask for the largest
> *legal* Unicode character and the largest character that will fit into a
> Python character on the platform. I mean in theory the maximum Unicode
> character is constant but that doesn't mean I want to declare it in my
> programs explicitly.
> 
> unicodedata.maxchar => always TOPCHAR
> sys.maxunicode => some power of 2 - 1
> 
> I'm not entirely happy that we call a thing "sys.maxunicode" and then
> tell people how to generate larger values. How about sys.maxcodeunit .
> (or we could remove the whole surrogate building stuff :) )
> 
> Do you want to rule on this or call it an open issue?

Leave it open; personally I'd be happy with the heuristic "if
sys.maxunicode >= 2**16 then a unicode character can store 32 bits".

> What are the open issues in your mind...I'm not clear on what things
> you've expressed an opinion on and what things you've ruled on.

Sorry.  I meant that there were two open issues listed earlier in the
PEP, and one of those was repeated here, so I wasn't sure if this was
intended to be a summary and you missed one, or it was intended to be
additional open issues and you had a duplicate.  Either way is fine
but I think you should make up your mind. :-)

> When I hear from you I'll update it.

Go ahead!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)