[Python-Dev] PEP 461 Final? (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Mon Jan 20 08:10:40 CET 2014

Ethan Furman writes:

This argument is specious.

I don't think so. I think it's a good argument for the future of Python code.

I agree that restricting bytes '%'-formatting to ASCII is a good idea, but you should base your arguments on a correct description of what's going on. It's not an issue of representability. It's an issue of "we should support this for ASCII because it's a useful, nearly universal convention, and we should not support ASCII supersets because that leads to mojibake."

Then you could have your text /and/ your numbers be in your own language.

My language uses numerals other than those in the ASCII repertoire in a rather stylized way. I can't use format for that, because it depends on context, anyway. Most of the time the digits in the ASCII set are used (especially in tables and the like). I believe that's true for all languages nowadays.

Lots of features can be abused. That doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about the intended use cases and encourage those.

I only objected to claims that issues of "representability" and "what I can do with format" support the preferred use cases, not to descriptions of the preferred use cases.

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