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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] POSIX regex
From: webmaster@keryx.se (Keryx Web)

Zeev Suraski wrote:

 > Other than the theological views some people on this list have 
(either very pro-BC or anti-BC), what did keeping BC cost us?

Hey that must be me he is talking about - as I am a real theologian!

So for a theologians 2c on Unicode:

1. Teaching unicode and PHP

As stated elsewhere I am *working* as a teacher. I follow this list for 
one *main* purpose and that is I am trying to remedy the extremely sad 
situation when it comes to books and other teaching material about PHP 
in Sweden. All books we have got by Swedish authors are so bad that I 
actively discourage people from reading it!

I am trying to write an "advanced newbie" book that will focus on PHP 6 
(+ some HTML 5, CSS 3 and JS 2), with an emphasis on best practice.

In Sweden we can do nicely with iso-8859-1 (we do not even need the 
stinkin' euro-symbol!) But I have students that have developed websites 
in Arabic, Kurdish and Hindi!

I am appalled to see some comments even seemingly questioning if Unicode 
is worthwhile at all. That's a no brainer! i18n is the next big move on 
the web. But what technique would be easier to grasp when it comes to 
"switching" it on or off? Considering that PHP:s main strength always 
has been its low entry barrier, I think this is a reasonable 
consideration. And maybe I am the only one on this list that deals daily 
with newbies...?

 From this POV I would definitely say that it would be easier to teach 
that in PHP 6 unicode is always on and in PHP 5 it's N/A. I do however 
find the arguments compelling that such an ideal would be impractical.

My second best option would be something that can be turned on or off 
within the scripts, i.e. with ini_set or per directory with .htaccess

 From the low end user perspective I think this would be great from 
another POV. Let's imagine for a second that Wordpress will only work 
with unicode semantics off and that phpBB will only work with the switch 
  "on". What if someone would want to run both on a shared server?

But as my "commit karma" is zero I do not know if this is feasible at all.

2. User base.

There is not one voice on this list as far as I can tell that is from 
the CJK-language hemisphere. Is it part of the PHP way to Europe/America 
ethnocentric?

I think it would be a noble thing to actively try to engage PHP 
developers from Asia in this discussion. (Well, besides the Israeli 
ones... who *are* doing a great job!)

3. Adoption rate.

When PHP 5 was new we got two books in Sweden claiming to teach this 
version. When I read them there was so little PHP 5 in there that it was 
scary. Even today most resources that newbies read tend to teach PHP 4. 
Most discussion fora - at least in Sweden - discuss PHP 4 solutions to 
peoples problems.

This spring I actually taught my students PDO - but then my wife got ill 
and had a heart transplant. When I got back to school and started 
grading my students work, all but two had switched to the mysql 
extension. I asked why, and all said that they had found tutorials and 
help in a discussion forum, all teaching the old way.

I undertook a study: All four totally dominant sites in Sweden where a 
young developer would turn, all teach PHP 4. (Two of them also teach 
table-based-layout, unsemantic, inaccessible, proprietary HTML and 
obtrusive browser-sniffing old school DHTML.)

Conclusion: Every advance in PHP internally has to be communicated to us 
who teach PHP and the easier something is, the more likely it is that it 
will be picked up.


Lars Gunther