Re: Blog "about python 3"

From	Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu>
Subject	Re: Blog "about python 3"
Date	2014-01-05 17:48 -0500
References	(14 earlier) <roy-1820F1.08551004012014@news.panix.com> <mailman.4905.1388845063.18130.python-list@python.org> <3519f85e-0909-4f5a-9a6e-09b6fd4c312d@googlegroups.com> <mailman.4915.1388875627.18130.python-list@python.org> <d8438ee4-1429-4855-9d78-b833f4f2748f@googlegroups.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Message-ID	<mailman.4980.1388962139.18130.python-list@python.org> (permalink)

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On 1/5/2014 9:23 AM, wxjmfauth@gmail.com wrote:

> My examples are ONLY ILLUSTRATING, this FSR
> is wrong by design,

Let me answer you a different way. If FSR is 'wrong by design', so are 
the alternatives. Hence, the claim is, in itself, useless as a guide to 
choosing. The choices:

* Keep the previous complicated system of buggy narrow builds on some 
systems and space-wasting wide builds on other systems, with Python code 
potentially acting differently on the different builds. I am sure that 
you agree that this is a bad design.

* Improved the dual-build system by de-bugging narrow builds. I proposed 
to do this (and gave Python code proving the idea) by adding the 
complication of an auxiliary array of indexes of astral chars in a 
UTF-16 string. I suspect you would call this design 'wrong' also.

* Use the memory-wasting UTF-32 (wide) build on all systems. I know you 
do not consider this 'wrong', but come on. From an information theoretic 
and coding viewpoint, it clearly is. The top (4th) byte is *never* used. 
The 3rd byte is *almost never* used. The 2nd byte usage ranges from 
common to almost never for different users.

Memory waste is also time waste, as moving information-free 0 bytes 
takes the same time as moving informative bytes.

Here is the beginning of the rationale for the FSR (from 
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0393/ -- have you ever read it?).

"There are two classes of complaints about the current implementation of 
the unicode type: on systems only supporting UTF-16, users complain that 
non-BMP characters are not properly supported. On systems using UCS-4 
internally (and also sometimes on systems using UCS-2), there is a 
complaint that Unicode strings take up too much memory - especially 
compared to Python 2.x, where the same code would often use ASCII 
strings...".

The memory waste was a reason to stick with 2.7. It could break code 
that worked in 2.x. By removing the waste, the FSR makes switching to 
Python 3 more feasible for some people. It was a response to real 
problems encountered by real people using Python. It fixed both classes 
of complaint about the previous system.

* Switch to the time-wasting UTF-8 for text storage, as some have done. 
This is different from using UTF-8 for text transmission, which I hope 
becomes the norm soon.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy

Thread

Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-30 19:41 +0000
  Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-30 20:49 +0000
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-30 21:29 +0000
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2013-12-30 14:38 -0800
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-31 12:09 +1100
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-31 04:38 +0000
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-12-31 15:44 +1100
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2013-12-30 20:33 -0800
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-31 04:59 +0000
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-31 08:22 +0000
      Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-31 20:53 +1100
        Re: Blog "about python 3" Antoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net> - 2013-12-31 14:13 +0000
          Re: Blog "about python 3" Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-12-31 10:41 -0500
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-01 02:54 +1100
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-12-31 15:55 +0000
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-01-02 17:36 +0000
              Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-01-03 15:49 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-03 04:01 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-01-03 02:10 -0800
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-03 21:24 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2014-01-03 08:56 -0800
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-01-03 12:28 +0000
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-01-03 09:57 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-04 02:32 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-03 17:00 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-01-04 04:04 +0000
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-01-04 08:55 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-05 01:17 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-01-04 11:10 -0800
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-04 17:46 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-01-05 06:23 -0800
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2014-01-05 10:20 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-05 17:14 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-01-07 05:34 -0800
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-07 09:54 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Tim Delaney <timothy.c.delaney@gmail.com> - 2014-01-08 09:38 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-07 19:02 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-01-08 01:59 -0800
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-08 14:26 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-01-08 20:04 +0000
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-05 17:48 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-05 10:28 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2014-01-04 12:51 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-01-05 13:27 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-05 13:32 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> - 2014-01-05 02:41 +0000
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-01-04 22:20 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-01-05 10:12 +0530
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-01-05 00:11 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-01-05 17:28 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2014-01-05 14:05 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-05 15:01 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-01-05 11:34 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-06 03:51 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-01-05 12:09 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-01-06 11:42 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-05 17:56 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-06 10:59 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-01-06 12:23 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-06 12:54 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-01-06 05:53 +0000
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Devin Jeanpierre <jeanpierreda@gmail.com> - 2014-01-05 00:00 -0800
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-01-05 23:28 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-05 23:48 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-01-05 11:10 -0500
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2014-01-05 13:51 -0500
            Re: Blog "about python 3" David Hutto <dwightdhutto@gmail.com> - 2014-01-02 13:25 -0500
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-01-02 13:37 -0500
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Antoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net> - 2014-01-02 23:57 +0000
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-01-03 10:32 +0000
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-01-03 11:14 +0000
              Re: Blog "about python 3" wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-01-04 05:52 -0800
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-01-05 13:41 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-01-05 13:54 +1100
                Re: Blog "about python 3" wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-01-05 02:39 -0800
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com> - 2014-01-03 11:37 +0000
            Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-01-04 07:30 +0000
        Re: Blog "about python 3" Johannes Bauer <dfnsonfsduifb@gmx.de> - 2014-01-05 13:14 +0100
          Re: Blog "about python 3" Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2014-01-05 14:55 +0100
        Re: Blog "about python 3" Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-01-05 13:10 +0000
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-12-31 20:04 +1100
    Re: Blog "about python 3" Devin Jeanpierre <jeanpierreda@gmail.com> - 2013-12-30 20:25 -0800

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