[Python-Dev] readd u'' literal support in 3.3?

Fri Dec 9 17:36:40 CET 2011

On 2011年12月08日 13:27:20 +0100, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Dec 08, 2011, at 11:01 AM, Vinay Sajip wrote:
>>> Well, if 3.2 remains in use for a longish time, then it is relevant, in 
>> the
>> broader context, isn't it? We know how conservative Linux 
>> distributions can
>> be with their Python releases - although most are still releasing 2.x as
>> their system Python, this could change at some point in the future. 
>> Even if
>> it doesn't, there might be a fair user base of people stuck with 3.2 
>> for any
>> number of reasons, and to support them, the change you propose won't 
>> help,
>> because some variant of a package will still have to use u() and b(), 
>> just
>> for 3.2 support.
>> Case in point: Ubuntu 12.04 is a long term support release, meaning 5 
> years of
> official support on both the desktop and server. It will ship with 
> Python 2.7
> and 3.2 only.

 From a Plone perspective, Python 3 support is something that I don't see 
becoming important for maybe 5 years, so support for 3.2 is simply not an 
issue for us. Before Plone can consider a move to Python 3 we first need 
support in the libraries we depend on. For those libraries under active 
development it seems that compatibility with both 2.x and 3.x is the best 
way to go. Adding support for u'' to Python 3.x certainly looks like it 
would cut down the amount of work required for libraries like the Zope 
Toolkit which already use unicode extensively.
Laurence