Multibyte Character Surport for Python

[Mark Jackson]

pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard) writes:
> [Erno Kuusela]
> 
> > In article <j4y9euwxq7.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de>,
> > loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin v. Löwis) writes:
> 
> > | So far, it appeared that there is wide agreement that identifiers in
> > | Python should be ASCII only. Do you disagree, i.e. do you *really*
> > | want to use non-ASCII identifiers?
> 
> > what would be the advantage in preventing non-english-speaking people
> > from using python?

Restricting Python identifiers to the ASCII charset does not prevent
non-english-speaking people from using Python.

> You know, there is a background irritation at not being able to program
> in my own language, this irritation is permanent and never fades out --
> a bit like the fossile radiation after the big bang! :-) I surely like
> Python a lot, but I would like it even more if it was on the side of
> programmers of all nations, and not forcing everyone to wide portability:
> there are many cases where planetary portability is just not a concern.

Having lived in France and worked in French (doing physics, not
programming) some years ago, I believe I am not entirely unaware of the
difficulty you are having.  Still, if you feel so strongly about this
that you are prepared to write code that would, in fact, be unusable
outside your own locale:  whyever do you think the larger community
should undertake the task of enabling you to do this?

-- 
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
    The Enron scandal calls into question the integrity of the
    entire capitalist system, which previously we assumed was based
    on honest, straightforward greed.		- Joel Achenbach