[Python-3000] Support for PEP 3131 (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Sat May 26 08:53:47 CEST 2007

Jim Jewett writes:

On 5/25/07, BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:

If Python required a switch for such a program to run, then this feature would be totally wasted on them. They might use an IDE, program in notepad.exe and dragging the file to the python.exe icon or not even know about cmd.exe or what a command line switch is. An error message, even an informal one, isn't easy to understand if you don't know English.

This can be handled with wrappers, at install time. Ugly, but workable. Jim's idea is very suggestive, though:

How about a default file, such as

"on launch, python looks for pyidchar.txt ... if you want to override this default file do XYZ"

This still doesn't help to address the "fine-grained" (per-module or per-file) control issue, right? Unless you complexified the syntax. You could allow includes (from a site library of character set definitions, not arbitrary files), inline table definitions, and a file or module to table mapping.

Since this would a under control of the site (distriubtions could supply examples, but not install them where Python would pick them up), maybe such complexity would be OK? I believe most people's file would be

[DEFAULT]

000000-1FFFFF   # intersection of the full Unicode range and PEP
                # 3131-permitted characters

(where DEFAULT is a special table used by default for files not mapped to another table).

How about per-user overrides?

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