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

[Tim Peters]

[Guido]
>> python -U does this.  It even passes most unit tests. :-)

[Shane Hathaway]
> Whoa, cool.  Unfortunately, "python -h" does not seem to reveal
> that option.

It's not meant to be used -- Marc-Andre put it in for internal testing
purposes.  Some things "don't work" when -U is specified, and nobody has had
time to dig into all that.

> Then may I make the next (probably obvious) suggestion: let's require
> that Zope 3 be run with python -U, and fix what's broken with *that*,

That would have to start by fixing -U breakage in Python, so would require
using Python 2.3 at earliest (and even then assuming we went on a -U crusade
immediately, so that -U actually worked in 2.3).  My hope was that, having
added -U, Marc-Andre (and the other Python developers who helped implement
Unicode) would track down and repair the glitches when using it.  Alas, that
hope hasn't been met, and it's been a few years, and the original Unicode
implementers appear to have moved on to other things.  So, at this point, I
see no good reason to believe it will get done.

> rather than remain in Unicode transition limbo.  ZODB and the TCP
> servers probably need some corrections (since they are at the I/O
> layer), but other than that, I bet we're already in pretty good shape to
> go full Unicode.

I don't know how badly broken Python is under -U.  On my box just now, it
failed to import site.py, so it didn't get very far <wink/sigh>.