PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Eric Brunel]

On Tue, 15 May 2007 21:07:30 +0200, Pierre Hanser  
<hanser at club-internet.fr> wrote:
> hello
>
> i work for a large phone maker, and for a long time
> we thought, very arrogantly, our phones would be ok
> for the whole world.
>
> After all, using a phone uses so little words, and
> some of them where even replaced with pictograms!
> every body should be able to understand appel, bis,
> renvoi, mévo, ...
>
> nowdays we make chinese, corean, japanese talking
> phones.
>
> because we can do it, because graphics are cheaper
> than they were, because it augments our market.
> (also because some markets require it)
>
> see the analogy?

Absolutely not: you're talking about internationalization of the  
user-interface here, not about the code. There are quite simple ways to  
ensure users will see the displays in their own language, even if the  
source code is the same for everyone. But your source code will not  
automagically translate itself to the language of the guy who'll have to  
maintain it or make it evolve. So the analogy actually seems to work  
backwards: if you want any coder to be able to read/understand/edit your  
code, just don't write it in your own language...
-- 
python -c "print ''.join([chr(154 - ord(c)) for c in  
'U(17zX(%,5.zmz5(17l8(%,5.Z*(93-965$l7+-'])"