[Python-ideas] Visually confusable unicode characters in identifiers

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ben Finney writes:

 > I've shown several LaTeX-comfortable people IBus on GNOME and/or KDE
 > (for GNU+Linux), and they were very glad that it has a LaTeX input
 > method.

I'm happy to be proved wrong!

 > > AFAICS it's not available on my Mac.
 > 
 > That's a shame. Maybe some OS vendors don't want to support users
 > extending the OS functionality? Or maybe your OS does have such a thing
 > available. I haven't been motivated to look for it.

I have looked for it; if it's available on Mac OS X, it's not easy to
find.  I suspect the same is true for Windows.

 > Agreed. Which is why I advocate installing such an input method in one's
 > OS input method engine, so that input method is available for all
 > applications.

Whatever makes you think I don't?  That's *exactly* why I live in
XEmacs, because it provides me with a portable environment for mixing
English and math with a language whose orthography puts Brainf*ck
syntax to shame.

But pragmatically speaking, Unicode support is a sore point for
Python.  "Screw you if you don't know how to conveniently input
integral signs on your OS" is not a message we want to be sending.