[Python-ideas] Support WHATWG versions of legacy encodings

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 10 Jan 2018 16:24:33 -0800
Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 11:04 AM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> 
> > I don't believe it's a good strategy to create the confusion that
> > WHATWG is introducing by using the same names for non-standard
> > encodings.
> >  
> 
> agreed.
> 
> 
> > Python uses the Unicode Consortium standard encodings or
> > otherwise internationally standardized ones for the stdlib.
> >
> > If someone wants to use different encodings, it's easily
> > possible to pip install these as necessary.
> >
> > For the stdlib, I think we should stick to standards and
> > not go for spreading non-standard ones.
> >
> > So -1 on adding WHATWG encodings to the stdlib.
> >  
> 
> If the OP is right that it is one of the most widely used encodings in the
> world, it's kinda hard to call it "non-standard"

Define "widely used".  If web-XXX is a superset of windows-XXX, then
perhaps web-XXX is "used" in the sense of "used to decode valid
windows-XXX data" (but windows-XXX could be used just as well to
decode the same data).  The question is rather: how often does web-XXX
mojibake happen?  We're well in the 2010s now and you'd hope that
mojibake doesn't happen as often as it used to in, e.g., 1998.

Regards

Antoine.