[Python-Dev] urllib.quote and unquote - Unicode issues

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Nobody's been
> assigned to look at it and it hasn't been given a priority, even though
> we all agree it's a bug (though we disagree on how to fix it).

This I can explain (I think). Nobody is assigned to look: we usually
don't do assignments of bugs or patches, except when there is a specific
maintainer for the code in question. urllib has no maintainer.

It hasn't been given priority: There are currently 606 patches in the
tracker, many fixing bugs of some sort. It's not clear (to me, at least)
why this should be given priority over all the other things such as
interpreter crashes.

We all agree it's a bug: no, I don't. I think it's a missing feature,
at best, but I'm staying out of the discussion. As-is, urllib only
supports ASCII in URLs, and that is fine for most purposes. URLs
are just not made for non-ASCII characters. Implement IRIs if you
want non-ASCII characters; the rules are much clearer for these.

As it stands, a committer would have
- to agree it's an important problem
- to agree the patch is correct
- to judge it is not a new feature, as we are in beta already
- implicitly accept maintenance of that change, and take all
  the blame that it might produce in the coming years

Regards,
Martin