[Python-Dev] Adding Japanese Codecs to the distro

[Guido van Rossum]

> Hisao SUZUKI has just recently uploaded a patch to SF which
> includes codecs for the Japanese encodings EUC-JP, Shift_JIS and
> ISO-2022-JP and wants to contribute the code to the PSF.
> 
> The advantage of his codecs over the ones written by Tamito
> KAJIYAMA (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~rd6t-kjym/python/)
> lies in the fact that Hisao's codecs are small (88kB) and
> written in pure Python. This makes it much easier to adapt
> the codecs to special needs or to correct errors.
> 
> Provided Hisao volunteers to maintain these codecs, I'd like
> to suggest adding them to Python's encodings package and making
> them the default implementations for the above encodings.
> 
> Ideal would be if we could get Hisao and Tamito to team up
> to support these codecs (I put him on CC).
> 
> Adding the codecs to the distribution would give Python a very
> good argument in the Japanese world and also help people working
> with XML or HTML targetting these locales.
> 
> Thoughts ?

Assuming the code is good, this seems the right thing from a technical
perspective, but I'm worried what Tamito will think about it.

Also, are there (apart from implementation technology) differences in
features between the two?  Do they always produce the same results?

Would this kill Tamito's codecs, or are those still preferred for
people doing a lot of Japanese?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)