Re: ruby-mode : ruby-mode-set-encoding

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Stefan Monnier writes:

 > > To avoid "arbitrarily" breaking software systems and development
 > > environments that target other character sets.
 > 
 > Sorry, I meant "didn't" instead of "don't": these are recent programming
 > languages, and since Java was able to do it why couldn't Python do it?

You're showing your age, Stefan, to call these "recent" programming
languages!  And I think your memory may be going, because IIRC Java
did nothing of the kind.  Java supported only Unicode from the get-go
IIRC.  So in that respect Java had no backward compatibility problem.
Python started earlier, when "8-bit clean" code was considered a major
advance and it wasn't clear that Unicode was going to beat ISO 2022.

 > Nice theoretical problem, but I think that Java proves it to be
 > a non-issue in practice.  Anyway, it's too late now,

Actually, the theoretical people (including me) were all in favor of
the One True Encoding approach.  It was the practical people (ie,
people who earn their living programming in Python) who shot it down.