[Python-ideas] Proposal for default character representation

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 07:21:48AM +0200, Mikhail V wrote:

> I'll explain what I mean with an example.
> This is an example which I would make to
> support my proposal. Compare:
> 
> if "\u1230" <= c <= "\u123f":

For an English-speaker writing that, I'd recommend:

if "\N{ETHIOPIC SYLLABLE SA}" <= c <= "\N{ETHIOPIC SYLLABLE SHWA}":
    ...

which is a bit verbose, but that's the price you pay for programming 
with text in a language you don't read. If you do read Ethiopian, then 
you can simply write:

if "ሰ" <= c <= "ሿ":
    ...

which to a literate reader of Ethiopean, is no harder to understand than 
the strange and mysterious rotated and reflected glyphs used by Europeans:

if "d" <= c <= "p":
    ...

(Why is "double-u" written as vv (w) instead of uu?)



> and:
> 
> o = ord (c)
> if 100 <= o <= 150:

Which is clearly not the same thing, and better written as:

if "d" <= c <= "\x96":
    ...


> So yours is a valid code but for me its freaky,
> and surely I stick to the second variant.
> You said, I can better see in which unicode page
> I am by looking at hex ordinal, but I hardly
> need it, I just need to know one integer, namely
> where some range begins, that's it.
> Furthermore this is the code which would an average
> programmer better read and maintain.

No, the average programmer is MUCH more skillful than that. Your 
standard for what you consider "average" seems to me to be more like 
"lowest 20%".

[...]
> I feel however like being misunderstood or so.

Trust me, we understand you perfectly. You personally aren't familiar or 
comfortable with hexadecimal, Unicode code points, or programming 
standards which have been in widespread use for at least 35 years, and 
probably more like 50, but rather than accepting that this means you 
have a lot to learn, you think you can convince the rest of the world to 
dumb-down and de-skill to a level that you are comfortable with. And 
that eventually the entire world will standardise on just 100 
characters, which you think is enough for all communication, maths and 
science.

Good luck with that last one. Even if you could convince the Chinese and 
Japanese to swap to ASCII, I'd like to see you pry the emoji out of the 
young folk's phones.



[...]
> It is not about speed, it is about brain load.
> Chinese can read their hieroglyphs fast, but
> the cognition load on the brain is 100 times higher
> than current latin set.

Citation required.



-- 
Steve