[Python-Dev] international python

[Antoine Pitrou]

> This does make me think of the interesting prospect of an internationalised 
> string literal, though (e.g., _"This an il8n string"). I'm not sure it would 
> be enough of a win over the status quo though,

I don't think so either. i18n doesn't require its specific string
notation (in addition, dropping "_()" may make it harder to interface
with standard gettext tools). On the hand, international support in
Python apps will benefit from:
  - seamless unicode support: how about making the default Python
charset utf-8 instead of ascii ? right now, someone (say an American or
English) who does not design his app with non-ascii characters in mind
may have a surprise when users enter those characters in customizable
fields: for example, debug print statements which end up crashing the
app with an UnicodeException on the user's machine, without even a way
to diagnose this when the app is a GUI app and stdout is not shown ;))
  - simple formatting syntax (the current "%" operator is quite fine in
that regard)

As for seamless unicode support, there are also problems sometimes with
filenames and filepaths: see e.g.
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=1283895&group_id=5470&atid=105470

Regards

Antoine.