[Python-3000] Unicode IDs -- why NFC? Why allow ligatures?

[Andrew McNabb]

On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 06:50:57PM -0400, Jim Jewett wrote:
>  On 6/7/07, Andrew McNabb <amcnabb at mcnabbs.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 07:06:05PM -0400, Jim Jewett wrote:
> > > (There were mixed opinions on Technical symbols, and no one has spoken
> > > up yet about the half-dozen Croatian digraphs corresponding to Serbian
> > > Cyrillic.)
> 
>  If the digraphs were converted to compatibility characters, would
>  that be good, bad, or no big deal?
> 
>  I'm not entirely certain which letters Stephen was talking about, but
>  believe they are the (upper, lower, and titlecase) digraphs for LJ, NJ,
>  DZ, DŽ (DZ caron)
> 
>  Would it be acceptable if (only in identifier names, not normal text)
>  python treated those the same as the two-character sequences LJ, NJ,
>  DZ, and DŽ?

I speak Serbian as a second language (and lived in Serbia for a few
years), and my opinion is that a Serbian/Croatian speaker would expect
the digraphs to be treated the same as the two-character sequences.

The issue doesn't seem to come up too often, but people using
typewriters have been typing the digraphs as separate characters for
years.  The place I noticed the issue most frequently was if there was a
vertical sign, such as a storefront.

A sign saying "bookstore" would like like this:

K
nj
i
ž
a
r
a

or:

K
nj
i
ž
a
r
a

The following would be incorrect:

K
n
j
i
ž
a
r
a

But even many native speakers make this mistake.

Other than that, nj is practically indistinguishable from nj, and the
other Croatian digraphs have the same behavior.

I hope this helps in the discussion.

-- 
Andrew McNabb
http://www.mcnabbs.org/andrew/
PGP Fingerprint: 8A17 B57C 6879 1863 DE55  8012 AB4D 6098 8826 6868
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