[Python-3000] PEP 3131 accepted

[Ka-Ping Yee]

On Tue, 22 May 2007, Leonardo Santagada wrote:
> > Today, if a non-English speaker asks you how to learn Python, you can
> > answer that question.  You can explain Python's syntax and semantics,
> > and tell them they need to know the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet.
> Have you ever explained that to someone? "You need to know only the
> 26 letters of the alphabet, plus _+=-{}[]()_0123456789!@#%^*><,./?\"
> Really? And i probably missed a lot of stuff in there.

Except for those with disabilities, every Python programmer today can
easily recognize, read, write, type, and speak every character in the
syntax character set.

Python fits your brain.  Let's keep it that way.

> > PEP 3131 will also cause problems for code review.  Because many
> > characters have indistinguishable appearances, there will be no
> > mapping between what you see when you look at code and what the code
> > actually says.
>
> This was already discussed, if your font has the same symbol for
> different characters it is not a problem with python, but with the
> font. Then there is the different chars in unicode that are really
> suposed to be the same, then you need to know the context of the
> expression to know their meaning and then again this is not a python
> problem, maybe a unicode problem, I like to think this is a cultural
> problem, and we have to learn to live with it.

Assigning blame elsewhere will not make the problem go away.  We do
not incorporate buggy libraries into the Python core and then absolve
ourselves by pointing fingers at the library authors; we should not
incorporate the complicated and unsolved problems of international
character sets into the language syntax definition, thereby turning
them from problems with Unicode to problems with Python.


-- ?!ng