[e-lang] Source code character sets and Unicode

[Mark S. Miller]

Ka-Ping Yee wrote:
> Hi, all.
> 
> I've been thinking and arguing a lot about Unicode issues lately
> because of a recently accepted proposal to allow non-ASCII
> identifiers in the next version of Python (see references below).
> 
> So I thought I'd ask: what are E's policies concerning
> 
>   - the character encoding of E source files
>   - non-ASCII in comments
>   - non-ASCII in string or string-like literals
>   - non-ASCII in identifiers

The current draft attempts at a policy for E are stated at
http://www.erights.org/data/common-syntax/baking-chars.html
and
http://www.erights.org/data/common-syntax/wysiwyg-ascii.html


> and how, if at all, are these policies likely to change?

I have been thinking of requiring something like a

     pragma.charset("unicode")

before allowing non-ascii characters. This discussion is probably an opportune 
time to decide on this matter.


> [3] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2007-May/thread.html#7744
>     The thread ensuing from [2]

I especially liked your message
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2007-May/008015.html
which I recommend people read. The pragma above would be much like the 
proposed coding directive, but without the BOM override hazard.


-- 
Text by me above is hereby placed in the public domain

     Cheers,
     --MarkM