Multibyte Character Surport for Python

[Jacob Hallen]

In article <yfsy9em4xyn.fsf at black132.ex.ac.uk>,
A.Schmolck <a.schmolck at gmx.net> wrote:
>People might be willing to do this if FOO is a really big thing in their lives
>but not if they just think FOO sounds like an interesting thing and they want
>to learn about it, or FOO might help them with some other problems.
>
>Would you tell an American kid interested in learning FOO to go and learn
>Chinese first? Even if FOO had nothing to do with China and Chinese culture as
>such?

Yes, I would for a large subset of FOO. If I took up some FOO myself that
required knowing Chinese, I would go to the effort of learning enough
Chinese to be able to do FOO.

If I thought I could write a worthwhile Peking Opera, I think it would be
inefficient and wasteful that everyone wanting to take part of my
script would have to learn Swedish (or get it translated). It would also
make little sense to translate all the classics to Swedish for my benefit.
Of course I could maintain my little island of interoperability with all
the 3 other Swedish speaking lovers of Peking Opera, but this just adds
to the insular character of human endeavour. If we are to reduce barriers
to communication and have any chance of reducing organized conflict in
the world, we need to get rid of barriers. I think we can do that without
losing cultural identity.

Jacob Hallén
--