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Re: python for everyday tasks

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Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> writes:

> (Fifteen years. It's seventeen years since Unicode 2.0, when 16-bit
> characters were outmoded. It's about time _every_ modern language
> followed Python's and Pike's lead and got its Unicode support right.)

Most languages that already have some support for Unicode have a
significant amount of legacy code to continue supporting, though. Python
has the same problem: there're still heaps of Python 2 deployments out
there, and more being installed every day, none of which do Unicode
right.

To fix Unicode support in Python, the developers and community had to
initiate – and is still working through – a long, high-effort transition
across a backward-incompatible change in order to get the community to
Python 3, which finally does Unicode right.

Other language communities will likely have to do a similar huge effort,
or forever live with nearly-right-but-fundamentally-broken Unicode
support.

See, for example, the enormous number of ECMAScript deployments in every
user-facing browser, all with the false assumption (§2 of ECMA-262
<URL:http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm>)
that UTF-16 and Unicode are the same thing and nothing outside the BMP
exists.

And ECMAScript is near the front of the programming language pack in
terms of Unicode support — most others have far more heinous flaws that
need to be fixed by breaking backward compatibility. I wish their
communities luck.

-- 
 \         “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may |
  `\          hear from others twice as much as we speak.” —Epictetus, |
_o__)                                                      _Fragments_ |
Ben Finney

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python for everyday tasks koch.mate@gmail.com - 2013-11-22 15:59 -0800
  Re: python for everyday tasks Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-11-23 02:01 +0000
    Re: python for everyday tasks wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2013-11-25 02:12 -0800
      Re: python for everyday tasks Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-11-25 13:33 +0000
      Re: python for everyday tasks Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2013-11-25 08:11 -0700
        Re: python for everyday tasks wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2013-11-25 08:17 -0800
      Re: python for everyday tasks Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-11-26 02:38 +1100
      Re: python for everyday tasks Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2013-11-26 10:35 +1100
      Re: python for everyday tasks Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-11-26 11:09 +1100
    Re: python for everyday tasks Pavel Volkov <negaipub@gmail.com> - 2013-11-27 22:05 +0400
    Re: python for everyday tasks Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2013-11-27 11:15 -0700
    Re: python for everyday tasks Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-11-28 10:11 +1100
  Re: python for everyday tasks Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2013-11-22 18:32 -0800
  Re: python for everyday tasks Dan Stromberg <drsalists@gmail.com> - 2013-11-22 22:28 -0800
  Re: python for everyday tasks Dan Stromberg <drsalists@gmail.com> - 2013-11-22 22:36 -0800
  Re: python for everyday tasks Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-11-23 18:25 +1100
    Re: python for everyday tasks koch.mate@gmail.com - 2013-11-23 16:54 -0800

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