I agree totally on giving options. The users have the option to either use PHP 5 (non-unicode) or PHP 6 (PHP 5 + unicode)..
So essentially we're just forking here, nothing special about that. (just that it happens inside the project, between two major versions) --Jani p.s. Andi, the outsiders like myself value people on what they actually commit, everything you do behind the curtains means nothing to us. On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 20:52 -0700, Andi Gutmans wrote: > I very much agree with Rasmus that giving our users the option is > extremely valuable. > > Unicode support is useful to some people but I think it's a mistake to > force it down everyone's throat. Forget the fact that it will be > considerably slower and eat up more memory than PHP 5 & 4, but there > will also be some serious BC issues and idiosyncrasies which a huge part > of our community (arguably over 90%) just don't care about. > > Some people here said that we weren't successful in keeping BC between > PHP 5 and PHP 4. Whoever said that must not have migrated applications > between the versions. It took very little effort to do so. Most people I > know did it in a matter of hours for sizeable code bases and in fact > most time was spent on regression testing which would need to be done > anyway. > > I also think that the fact that we *do* still support PHP 4 is a > strength and not a weakness of the PHP project (as much as I'd like > everyone to migrate to PHP 5). Sure maybe that gave less incentive to > upgrade which is a bit of a PITA for the PHP eco-system. On the other > hand look at technologies who didn't do that. Microsoft with VB, DNA, > DCOM and some of their other technologies are good examples. Every > version their users would suffer time and time again, often having to > completely migrate their investment because they were not officially > supported anymore. Look at how Microsoft are looking to ditch XP early > in the process. I don't think we want to follow that path. The fact that > we do our best not to break BC and are very careful when doing it is a > HUGE plus for us. Not to mention still doing security and critical fixes > for PHP 4. > > Btw, on the "if (UG(unicode)" issue. That's really a bunch of BS. > There'll be no problems once we get into optimizing Unicode mode to make > sure we take good advantage of CPU branch predicition (with compilers > help). We are intentionally not trying to do premature optimizations > right now but rather make sure we get the end result that we want from a > functionality point of view, and the optimize according to what the real > bottlenecks are. I have always been against premature optimizations and > I can pretty much promise that the "if (UG(unicode))" is not going to be > an issue. It's a bit more code yes. But I think it's worth it. > > We had a lot of discussions on this issue within the core development > team and I think there was a strong enough case to keep things this way. > If we are proven wrong down the road then there's always PHP 6.5 or 7 > where we can nuke the 8bit mode. But my guess is that at least 80%+ of > PHP 6 users will not run in Unicode mode. For many there's just not > sufficient reason to do so. > > Andi > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Rasmus Lerdorf [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 9:05 AM > > To: Jeremy Privett > > Cc: internals@lists.php.net > > Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] What is the use of "unicode.semantics" > > in PHP 6? > > > > Jeremy Privett wrote: > > > But, let's look at this situation from another angle. What if > > > unicode.semantics becomes the next magic_quotes or > > safe_mode, and is > > > ALWAYS OFF in 95%+ of PHP installations? All of the work you did to > > > add unicode support was WASTED on this presumption that if > > you don't > > > have BC, no one's going to use it. Whereas the opposite is clearly > > > true, in this case. If you have BC, it'll get used simply > > because it > > > works with old code, but the main thing that changed about the > > > language will never be touched. > > > > I actually don't have a problem with 95% of PHP 6 > > installations turning off Unicode support and this being the > > default setting for ISP's. > > > > Full Unicode support in an application is a big commitment > > and it will take quite a bit of work. I just don't think > > that many people will invest the time and effort into doing > > this, but at the same time there will be large applications > > and services that have full control over their server > > settings that will make use of it. Think Flickr, Yahoo, > > Facebook, etc. > > > > If enough people think it is a good idea to remove the switch > > we can do it, but we have to realize that everything we > > improve in PHP 6 will mostly be for the benefit of these > > large dedicated applications and the regular Joe User on a > > shared server will never see these them. > > > > -Rasmus > > > > -- > > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To > > unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > > > > -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
