[Python-3000] PEP 3131 accepted

[Ka-Ping Yee]

On Thu, 24 May 2007, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> I'll tell you why Ka-Ping's argument is a strawman.  First, one only
> *needs* to be able to distinguish those characters that one can read.
> It's nice to be able to admire the rest, of course, but you don't need
> to see them as a speaker of that language would.  You just use a font
> you like for the characters you can read, and the rest can be any old
> dog.

The problem is that you don't know *when* you'll need to distinguish
those characters.

Situations where things are not obviously incorrect, but only subtly
incorrect, are a common source of practical problems.  Choosing the
full set of Unicode identifier characters as the identifier character
set for everyone puts nearly all Python users in that situation.

That's what the issue is here: defining correct practice to be
something sufficiently difficult that almost everyone's regular
practices are subtly wrong in ways they don't fully understand.
That's a recipe for bugs, vulnerabilities, confusion, etc.

The loadable table that you proposed, and Jim proposed, really sounds
like the best way to go here.  Those that are ready and able to handle
the added complexity can voluntarily adopt it, and those who don't (or
don't even know about it) won't have to deal with it.


-- ?!ng