[Python-Dev] Support for "wide" Unicode characters

[Paul Prescod]

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> This needn't go into the PEP, I think, but I'd like you to say something
> about what you expect the end result of this PEP to look like under
> Windows, where "rebuild" isn't really a valid option for most Python
> users.  Are we simply committing to make two builds available?  If so,
> what happens the next time we run into a situation like this?

Windows itself is strongly biased towards 16-bit characters. Therefore I
expect that to be the default for a while. Then I expect Guido to
announce that 32-bit characters are the new default with version 3000
(perhaps right after Windows 3000 ships) and we'll all change. So most
Windows users will not be able to work with 32-bit characters for a
while. But since Windows itself doesn't like those characters, they
probably won't run into them much.

I strongly doubt that we'll ever make two builds available because it
would cause a mess of extension module incompatibilities.
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