Emanuele D'Arrigo wrote:
Greetings everybody,
some time ago I saw a paper that used an XSL transformation sheet to
transform (if I remember correctly) a Chinese xml file (inclusive of
Chinese-script XML tags) into an XHTML file.
More recently you might have all heard how the ICANN has opened up the
way for non-latin characters in domain names, so that we'll soon start
seeing URLs using Russian, Asian and Arabic characters.
In this context I was wondering if there has ever been much thought
about a mechanism to allow the localization not only of the strings
handled by python but also of its built-in keywords, such as "if",
"for", "while", "class" and so on.
There have been various debates and discussions on the topic. There has
been slow movement away from ascii-only in user code. (But not in the
stdlib, nor will there be there.)
1. Unicode data type.
2. Unicode allowed in comment and string literals.
This required input decoding and coding cookie. This lead, I believe
somewhat accidentally, to
3. Extended ascii (high bit set, for other European chars in various
encodings) for identifiers.
4 (In 3.0) unicode allowed for identifiers
Here is a version of the anti-customized-keyword position. Python is
designed to be read by people. Currently, any programmer in the world
can potentially read any Python program. The developers, especially
Guido, like this. Fixed keywords are not an undue burden because any
educated person should learn to read Latin characters a-z,0-9. and
Python has an intentionally short list that the developers are loath to
lengthen.
Change 4 above inhibits universal readability. But once 3 happened and
str became unicode, in 3.0, it was hard to say no to this.
A 'pro' argument: Python was designed for learning and is good for that
and *is* used in schools down to the elementary level. But kids cannot
be expected to know foreign alphabets and words whill still learning
their own.
> For example, the following English-
based piece of code:
class MyClass(object):
def myMethod(self, aVariable):
if aVariable == True:
print "It's True!"
else:
print "It's False!"
would become (in Italian):
classe LaMiaClasse(oggetto):
def ilMioMetodo(io, unaVariabile)
se unaVariabile == Vero:
stampa "E' Vero!"
altrimenti:
stampa "E' Falso!"
I can imagine how a translation script going through the source code
could do a 1:1 keyword translation to English fairly quickly but this
would mean that the runtime code still is in English and any error
message would be in English.
This is currently seen as a reason to not have other keywords: it will
do no good anyway. A Python programmer must know minimal English and the
keywords are the least of the problem.
I can imagine that there could be a mechanism for extracting and
replacing error messages with translations, like there is for Python
code, but I do not know if it will even happen with haphazard volunteer
work or will require grant sponsorship.
I can also imagine that it should be
possible to "simply" recompile python to use different keywords, but
then all libraries using the English keywords would become
incompatible, wouldn't they?
In this context it seems to be the case that the executable would have
to be able to optionally accept -a list- of dictionaries to internally
translate to English the keywords found in the input code and at most -
one- dictionary to internally translate from English output messages
such as a stack trace.
What do you guys think?
I would like anyone in the world to be able to use Python, and I would
like Python programmers to potentially be able to potentially read any
Python code and not have the community severely balkanized. To me, this
would eventually mean both native keywords and tranliteration from other
alphabets and scripts to latin chars. Not an easy project.
Terry Jan Reedy
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