[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 263 - Defining Python Source Code Encodings

[Martin v. Loewis]

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

> > If the PEP is implemented, IDLE will be able to honor the encoding
> > declarations. As a side effect, this will allow you to edit UTF-8
> > files in IDLE.
> 
> Who's gonna make the necessary changes to IDLE?

I am. idlefork patch #508973 implements most of that, but doesn't
support UTF-8 signatures. It also doesn't give good diagnostics if the
user did not declare an encoding but uses non-ASCII.

> > Allowing arbitrary Unicode in identifiers is no challenge, either,
> > except that __dict__ dictionaries may suddenly find Unicode as keys.
> > I'm not sure what other implications this would have, so it definitely
> > is a separate issue.
> 
> As long as the only use of 8-bit strings is to contain pure ASCII,
> this shouldn't be a problem.

I thought we were talking about non-ASCII in identifiers.

> > Another issue with allowing Unicode is that a good definition of
> > "letter" must be given (it clearly should not depend on the
> > locale). The Unicode consortium gives guidelines, but those depend on
> > the Unicode version.
> 
> I'd just use the isalpha() method of Unicode string objects.

That might vary across platforms (which I consider a bug) and across
Python releases.

Regards,
Martin