[Python-Dev] The C API and wide unicode support

[Michael Hudson]

Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> writes:

> OTOH, Michael, is this really something you cannot live with?  Or is
> it simply a surprise?

Here's where the problem came up.

A user posted to pygame-users saying that when he tried to import
pygame.event, along the lines of PyUnicodeUCS2_Unicode undefined.
This obviously made a light go on in my head, and I asked where he'd
got his Python and his pygame.  He'd got his Python from the Redhat
7.3 RPM and his pygame from pygame.org.  I suggested building pygame
from source, which he did and everything worked[*].  

Prediction: this is going to cause pain.  For instance, if this user
decides that he wants to upgrade to 2.2.1, he might download Sean's
RPMs from python.org which are narrow unicode builds -- and then his
extensions will break.  The problem here is that the kind of users
this is going to trouble are exactly the users who will not know
what's going on.

We can't prevent this sort of thing totally, but I think it should be
possible to carry out simple unicode manipulations (like this example
of returning a buffer) without incurring this kind of binary
compatibility worry.  Maybe a "safe" api, plastered with warning signs
in the docs about poking into the internal structure of the objects.

I wonder why Redhat distribute wide unicode builds?  That's the
immediate cause of the problem.  Maybe we could ask them...

Cheers,
M.
[*] actually, I think pygame might break with a wide unicode build.

-- 
  For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple,
  neat, and wrong.                                    -- H. L. Mencken