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Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:30:47 -0700
Message-ID: <698DE66518E7CA45812BD18E807866CE64794E@us-ex1.zend.net>
Thread-Topic: [PHP-DEV] What is the use of "unicode.semantics" in PHP 6?
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To: "Andi Gutmans" <andi@zend.com>,
	"Antony Dovgal" <antony@zend.com>,
	"Andrei Zmievski" <andrei@gravitonic.com>
Cc: "Stas Malyshev" <stas@zend.com>,
	<internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] What is the use of "unicode.semantics" in PHP 6?
From: andi@zend.com ("Andi Gutmans")

I was thinking a bit more about this yesterday. Even if I'd agree with
this discussion (which I don't at this point in time) I think it is
being had far too early. We currently have a very big problem with
ability to upgrade to PHP 6 and making decisions without people actually
getting their feet wet and seeing what the issues are is not a good
idea. Purist decisions tend to fail when they meet the real world.

What I really think we need to do for this release, which we haven't
been good at doing in the past, is build a PHP Compatibility Team which
tries to port many applications to PHP 6 and finds the issues in doing
this port (both with unicode_semantics=3Don/off). We can then learn from
this experience and have good documentation on how to upgrade to both
modes and in some cases, like we have done in the past 2-3 weeks, tweak
PHP 6 to not break backwards compatibility. It is possible in many
cases.

It's something we are willing to spend time on and as I mentioned
already started to do but it would really require a larger amount of
volunteers to pick various apps and do it.

This kind of information would be far more valuable to the project at
this point than a prolonged thread about a piece of software which isn't
finish (and would also give more information for a discussion like the
one we've been having). No one really knows how good/bad of a situation
we are at right now. I know from my end it doesn't look great yet.

Andi

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andi Gutmans [mailto:andi@zend.com]=20
> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 7:39 PM
> To: Antony Dovgal; Andrei Zmievski
> Cc: Stas Malyshev; internals@lists.php.net
> Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] What is the use of "unicode.semantics"=20
> in PHP 6?
>=20
> The large amount of the dual IS_UNICODE/IS_STRING will need=20
> to stay in the code base anyway as we will be supporting=20
> binary strings in PHP 6.
> So it's not accurate that all these maintance issues will be=20
> resolved by not supporting unicode_semantics=3Doff.
>=20
> I believe unlike what Andrei said, for a large community of=20
> ours (probably the majority) default unicode_semantics=3Don=20
> will not be of interest (we don't live in a purists world).=20
> Many won't want to run it because it's going to be=20
> significantly slower and will be harder for them to work=20
> with. This community will be best served to be able to run in=20
> native 8bit mode and having some Unicode functionality=20
> available if/when needed. Having dual mode in PHP 6 is not=20
> the same as forking two code bases. There is still like=20
> namespaces automatically reach both audiences.
>=20
> If we're talking from a pure "what is most useful to the=20
> majority of our users" I'd actually argue that explicit=20
> Unicode strings would be the most convenient, i.e. instead of=20
> doing b"8bitstring" you'd do U"unicodestring". Other=20
> languages do the same and there are reasons for that. As=20
> we've decided on a more aggressive (and risky) approach, I=20
> think having this dual mode is extremely important. It will=20
> also make the upgrade path easier.
>=20
> Btw, I don't know how many of you have actually tried to port=20
> PHP 5 apps to PHP 6 but it's quite a disaster. We made some=20
> fixes in the past 2-3 weeks and its getting better but it=20
> still requires a lot of work. If we don't make this easy then=20
> this is all not worth too much.
>=20
> This project has never been a purists project which is why=20
> it's been so successful, let's not start now...
>=20
> Andi
>=20
> --
> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To=20
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>=20
>=20