[Python-Dev] PEP 263 considered faulty (for some Japanese)

[Atsuo Ishimoto]

Hello,
I'm also a long-time Japanese Python user.

> Thanks for writing!  I promise you that we won't hurry to check in the
> PEP until we have thoroughly examined your objection.  Since encodings
> are much more important for your country than for most western
> countries, it would be a mistake if we added a feature that had the
> opposite effect for you as intended!
> 

In this case, I don't think you made a mistake. While Suzuki screamed
around the Japanese Python mailing list about this topic, I cannot
recall messages agree with him.

> For this reason, I find it hard to believe that people really set the
> Python default encoding in site.py to "utf-16".  Maybe I'm wrong -- or
> maybe you're talking about a different default encoding?

This point was told in the Japanese mailing list, but no one cared about
this. It can cause a problem, but I don't think it really happens.

> >    From my experiences, inserting the '-*- coding: <coding name>
> > -*-' line into an existing file and converting such a file into
> > UTF-8 are almost the same amount of work.
> 
> Yes, for those people who have a UTF-8 toolchain set up.  I expect
> that many Europeans don't have one handy, because their needs are met
> by Latin-1.
> 

Many Japanese don't have such tools, also.

> > We will be glad if Python understands Japanese (and other)
> > characters by default (by adopting, say, UTF-8 as default).
> 
> I think that in the future, we be able to change the default to
> UTF-8.  Picking ASCII as the "official" default has the advantage that
> it will let us switch to UTF-8 in the future, when we feel that there
> is enough support for UTF-8 in the average computer system.
> 

Agreed, we will be able to move to UTF-8 someday, but not today.

--------------------------
Atsuo Ishimoto
ishimoto@gembook.org
Homepage:http://www.gembook.jp