[Python-Dev] readd u'' literal support in 3.3?

[Laurence Rowe]

On Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:27:20 +0100, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

> On Dec 08, 2011, at 11:01 AM, Vinay Sajip wrote:
>
>> Well, if 3.2 remains in use for a longish time, then it is relevant, in  
>> the
>> broader context, isn't it?  We know how conservative Linux  
>> distributions can
>> be with their Python releases - although most are still releasing 2.x as
>> their system Python, this could change at some point in the future.  
>> Even if
>> it doesn't, there might be a fair user base of people stuck with 3.2  
>> for any
>> number of reasons, and to support them, the change you propose won't  
>> help,
>> because some variant of a package will still have to use u() and b(),  
>> just
>> for 3.2 support.
>
> Case in point: Ubuntu 12.04 is a long term support release, meaning 5  
> years of
> official support on both the desktop and server.  It will ship with  
> Python 2.7
> and 3.2 only.

 From a Plone perspective, Python 3 support is something that I don't see  
becoming important for maybe 5 years, so support for 3.2 is simply not an  
issue for us. Before Plone can consider a move to Python 3 we first need  
support in the libraries we depend on. For those libraries under active  
development it seems that compatibility with both 2.x and 3.x is the best  
way to go. Adding support for u'' to Python 3.x certainly looks like it  
would cut down the amount of work required for libraries like the Zope  
Toolkit which already use unicode extensively.

Laurence