Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection

Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Date	2014-06-07 21:34 -0700
References	(16 earlier) <7b3543f6-6f62-49c5-abdc-e2783fd6d629@googlegroups.com> <87oay7tnxt.fsf@elektro.pacujo.net> <mailman.10755.1401991925.18130.python-list@python.org> <87tx7z5hvw.fsf@elektro.pacujo.net> <5390f715$0$29978$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com>
Message-ID	<545ec7b2-635e-462e-91a2-520de5f2f782@googlegroups.com> (permalink)
Subject	Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection
From	rurpy@yahoo.com

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On 06/05/2014 05:02 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>[...]
> But Linux Unicode support is much better than Windows. Unicode support in 
> Windows is crippled by continued reliance on legacy code pages, and by 
> the assumption deep inside the Windows APIs that Unicode means "16 bit 
> characters". See, for example, the amount of space spent on fixing 
> Windows Unicode handling here:
> 
> http://www.utf8everywhere.org/

While not disagreeing with the the general premise of that page, it 
has some problems that raise doubts in my mind about taking everything 
the author says at face value.

For example

  "Q: Why would the Asians give up on UTF-16 encoding, which saves 
      them 50% the memory per character?"
  [...] in fact UTF-8 is used just as often in those [Asian] countries. 

That is not my experience, at least for Japan.  See my comments in 
  https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2012-June/015429.html
where I show that utf8 files are a tiny minority of the text files 
found by Google.

He then gives a table with the size of utf8 and utf16 encoded contents
(ie stripped of html stuff) of an unnamed Japanese wikipedia page to 
show that even without a lot of (html-mandated) ascii, the space savings 
are not very much compared to the theoretical "50%" savings he stated:

  "             Dense text (Δ UTF-8)
   UTF-8   ...     222 KB (0%)
   UTF-16  ...     176 KB (−21%)"

Note that he calculates the space saving as (utf8-utf16)/utf8.
Yet by that metric the theoretical saving is *NOT* 50%, it is 33%.
For example 1000 Japanese characters will use 2000 bytes in utf16
and 3000 in utf8.

I did the same test using
  http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B9%94%E7%94%B0%E4%BF%A1%E9%95%B7
I stripped html tags, javascript and redundant ascii whitespace characters
The stripped utf-8 file was 164946 bytes, the utf-16 encoded version of
same was 117756.  That gives (using the (utf8-utf16)/utf16 metric he used 
to claim 50% idealized savings) 40% which is quite a bit closer to the 
idealized 50% than his 21%.

I would have more faith in his opinions about things I don't know
about (such as unicode programming on Windows) if his other info
were more trustworthy.  IOW, just because it's on the internet doesn't 
mean it's true.

Thread

Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-05-31 17:10 +0100
  Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-05-31 22:55 +0300
  Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-01 02:26 +0000
    Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-01 12:43 +1000
    Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> - 2014-06-02 08:54 +1000
      Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-02 01:14 +0000
        Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> - 2014-06-02 12:23 +1000
          Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-01 19:46 -0700
        Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Wolfgang Maier <wolfgang.maier@biologie.uni-freiburg.de> - 2014-06-02 07:45 +0000
        Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> - 2014-06-02 19:02 +1000
        Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-02 19:14 +1000
        Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-06-02 12:10 +0100
          Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-03 16:34 +0000
            Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-04 02:43 +1000
        Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-06-02 17:34 -0400
          Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2014-06-03 17:16 +1200
            Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-06-03 02:21 -0400
            Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-06-03 15:18 +0100
              Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-04 13:08 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2014-06-05 14:01 +1200
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-05 10:16 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 17:30 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-05 11:05 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 18:36 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-05 12:53 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-06-05 05:43 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-06-05 14:50 -0400
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-05 23:21 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-06-05 18:09 -0400
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-05 23:13 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-06 02:30 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 09:39 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-06-05 22:08 -0400
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2014-06-05 20:47 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-05 08:34 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-05 12:41 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 06:37 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-05 17:45 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-05 15:33 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 02:12 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 09:54 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 03:36 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-05 19:52 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 03:28 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 15:35 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 08:52 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 20:11 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 13:20 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 20:32 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Akira Li <4kir4.1i@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 12:03 +0400
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-06-05 16:37 +0100
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-05 16:16 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 01:50 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-06-05 17:17 +0100
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-05 16:32 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2014-06-06 07:40 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 03:14 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 11:16 -0600
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-06-05 14:11 -0400
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-05 21:30 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-05 23:02 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-06 02:21 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-06 12:15 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-06 16:00 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection rurpy@yahoo.com - 2014-06-07 21:34 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2014-06-06 06:24 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-06 17:10 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 09:02 -0600
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-06 18:32 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-07 01:50 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-06 20:02 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 10:13 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-07 03:26 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-06-06 11:03 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Denis McMahon <denismfmcmahon@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 21:18 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-07 08:18 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-06-06 15:57 +0000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 09:21 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-07 02:48 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-06-06 10:04 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-07 03:12 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-06 20:11 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-07 03:16 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-06-06 20:18 +0300
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2014-06-06 13:33 -0400
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-07 01:25 +1000
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-06-06 08:44 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-06-06 08:48 -0700
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-06-06 12:56 +0100
                Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Akira Li <4kir4.1i@gmail.com> - 2014-06-05 06:49 +0400
            Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-06-04 00:25 +1000
            Re: Python 3.2 has some deadly infection Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-06-03 14:22 -0400

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