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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] why we must get rid of unicode.semantics switch ASAP
From: tstarling@wikimedia.org (Tim Starling)

Antony Dovgal wrote:
> 6 reasons why we must to get rid of The Switch ASAP
> ----------------------------------------------------
> 1) it gives users false sense of "compatibility" when no compatibility is even planned;
>
> 2) it's supposed to mean compatibility, but can be changed only in php.ini, which 
> means users would still have to maintain 2 versions of their software: 
> one for On and second for Off.
>   

+1, I'm not looking forward to implementing support for both values in 
MediaWiki.

As for PHP 6 generally: there needs to be a solid migration path, such 
as forwards-compatible syntax introduced to PHP 5. MediaWiki has 
extensive support for unicode in PHP 5, including a pure PHP 
implementation of NFC, cross-script and confusable character checks, 
extensive parsing of UTF-8 text using regexes both with and without /u, 
and megabytes of localisations in the form of PHP source files with 
UTF-8 string literals.

Porting all this to a UTF-16-based environment would be a hassle, and we 
don't gain anything from it in terms of features for our users. I'd hate 
to end up in an adversarial situation, where developers working in PHP 
are forced to boycott or fork PHP 6. That's why a simple migration path 
is important.

-- Tim Starling