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Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 17:48:28 +0100
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To: Tomas Kuliavas <tokul@users.sourceforge.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Removal of unicode_semantics
From: scott@macvicar.net (Scott MacVicar)

Tomas Kuliavas wrote:
>> We've discussed this a few times in the past and it's time to make a
>> final decision about its removal.
>>
>> I think most people have agreed that this is the way forward but no
>> one has produced a patch. I have a student working on unicode
>> conversion for the Google Summer of Code and this would help make it
>> simpler.
> 
> unicode_semantics=on breaks backwards compatibility in scripts that have
> implemented multiple character set support in current PHP setups.
> 
> If setting is removed, instead of maintaining at least some bits of
> backwards compatibility and doing some additional work, you force massive
> code rewrites in scripts that depend on working charset support and more
> work for people, who use interpreter.
> 
> Every time somebody proposes removal of this setting, they claim that
> majority agreed on it when there is no agreement on anything. People only
> defended own positions and we had other flame about unicode_semantics.
> 

There has been agreement by the people that actually contribute towards 
the development of PHP.

It certainly doesn't give backwards compatability, you are able to turn 
it off in php.ini and its going to mean that developers will need to 
maintain two versions. One for it off and the other for on.

My biggest concern is the 2 code bases that need to be maintained by the 
PHP developers, you need to have two branches for handling unicode and 
native strings.

To sum it up, unicode_semantics is in the exact same vain as 
ze1_compatability and it was a complete failure.

Before any developers decide they need to port things to PHP 6 we need 
to just make it Unicode only.

Scott