Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:34929
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain keryx.se designates 208.69.121.33 as permitted sender)
Message-ID: <4799F71C.1060708@keryx.se>
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:50:04 +0100
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Windows/20071031)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <698DE66518E7CA45812BD18E807866CE0124CA03@us-ex1.zend.net> <005901c85c91$590963a0$c6fc1f3e@foxbox> <479544F0.4060608@zend.com> <007701c85c96$585a45a0$c6fc1f3e@foxbox> <698DE66518E7CA45812BD18E807866CE0124CA73@us-ex1.zend.net>
In-Reply-To: <698DE66518E7CA45812BD18E807866CE0124CA73@us-ex1.zend.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Thoughts on the switch from a semi-lurker
From: webmaster@keryx.se (Keryx Web)

Andi Gutmans skrev:
> I think the current core development team will definitely need help from all the lurkers on this list.

Abstract:

 From the view of someone whose *main* job with PHP is teaching it to 
absolute beginners, with little or no previous programming experience, 
and who are relatively unaware of encoding issues as well...

And who is Swedish, where we daily use å, ä and ö. And who has students 
immigrated from all over Europe as well as from Asia (think French and 
Spanish cedillas, Cyrillic, Arabic, Kurdish and Hindi...)

PHP 5.3 Invest as much as possible in it!
PHP 6.0 Release with no switch. Default either way, but no switch, IMHO!

Maybe, just maybe, release 6.0 defaulting to ISO as a transitional 
release, and then 6.1 defaulting to Unicode...

Argument:

(Having read every single mail in this thread as a lurker...)

There are benefits to both sides. No switch makes for a more homogeneous 
environment, but defaulting to Unicode will be troublesome as well. 
However, teaching three settings (PHP 5, 6/off, 6/on) will be the worst 
nightmare: "This is a string, BTW, it might be Unicode, it might not be... "

Changing default from ISO to Unicode in a point release is a much easier 
concept to teach, than having two settings in php.ini. Not to mention my 
nightmare of having students working at school on the server I control, 
which might have a different setting from the server they experimentally 
have set up at home, or from a server on a web hotel they are using, 
because someone they know, or someone who answered in a forum 
recommended it...

Besides teaching I also have my own libraries. My main problem with 
those will not be maintaining different versions. I will chose to work 
only with web hotels that have the setting I prefers.

I also work on a Swedish language project that currently sits (and I 
have no say in this) on a patched PHP 4.1.7 server. However, upgrading 
that project to Unicode is a much smaller issue than upgrading to the 
object model in PHP 5.

<rant>
Lester Caine skrev:
 > ACTUALLY - how many people use more than the 127 character set in
 > English anyway. I'd be more than happy to force UTF8 mode as standard 
 > and get away from 'code page hell'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juOQhTuzDQ0
</rant>


Lars Gunther

Who is also against MS for inserting a stupid metatag switch in IE8.
I'd never thought that I in a single week would disagree with both 
Jeffrey Zeldman and Rasmus Leerdorf! What is the world coming to?