[Zope3-dev] i18n, unicode, and the underline

[Gary Poster]

Stephan Richter wrote:
> On Thursday 10 April 2003 18:19, Gary Poster wrote:
> 
>>As far as shortening _(u"...") to _("..."), that is my vote, at least. :-)
> 
> 
> I really hope I can veto this, since this is a typical English-speaker's 
> answer (no personal offense intended). 

None taken. ;-)

> I do not even want to give people the 
> choice to mix _(u"...") and _("...")! Every string that is intended for the 
> end user has to be unicode and declared as such. Period.
> 
> For example, someone might write a product that is for his company only and so 
> it is not internationalized. However, unicode is still enforced throughout 
> Zope, so the developer would be confused, because _("...") works, but "..." 
> does not?

My only rebuttal is that _(...) is a declaration itself, and its meaning 
is something we define.  If part of its definition is that 7-bit ascii 
strings are converted to unicode, then great.  Yay, explicit.  Yay, 
easier for common case (and yes, I will thrust my neck out and propose 
7-bit ascii as Python's common case).

And I like Fred's comments too.  :-)

Gary