[wxPython-users] 2.7 And Unicode Questions

[Kevin Ollivier]

Hi Andrea,

On Aug 11, 2006, at 1:31 PM, Andrea Gavana wrote:

> Hello NG,
>
>    I'm still using 2.6.3.3 at the moment, and I am thinking about
> switching to 2.7 pre-release in the near future (I hope). In the
> meanwhile, I would also try to switch to Python 2.5, if I can find all
> the dependencies updates for Python 2.5 (Numpy, py2exe, Pythonwin and
> so on). I obviously have to forget VTK :-D
>
> BTW, I have a couple of questions:
>
> 1) Is there anyone using 2.7 with Python 2.5 that can please share
> some comments about it? Did you encounter any problem?
>
> 2) As with other versions when they first came out, 2.7 broke PyAUI.
> It doesn't work anymore. I know, I know, PyAUI is dead, I should use
> the wrapped wx.aui from wxPython. However, the development version of
> PyAUI has some nice whistles and bells that I would have liked to
> keep. But I can live with wx.aui without problems :-D
>
> 3) Unicode: well, it seems to me that ANSI versions of wxPython have
> to be forgotten. Ok, have anyone encountered problems in using Unicode
> versions in place of ANSI? I know absolutely *nothing* about unicode,
> and doing a lot of I/O operations in my apps, I could end up in
> rewriting big parts of code.

It really depends on the case. If you're dealing only with ANSI/ascii  
data, there's really not much to be concerned about. Issues mainly  
arise when you have non-ascii/ANSI characters and need to load/save  
data, because wxPython will convert data to Unicode behind the scenes  
whenever you do a Set, etc. and you can't save non-ANSI Unicode text  
to disk "as-is" - you'll need to convert it to utf-8 or some other  
encoding. Also note that when you do u"My unicode text" + "My non- 
unicode text", the "My non-unicode text" string gets 'up-converted'  
to Unicode using the default locale, and will raise an error if it  
couldn't convert all the characters successfully. Sometimes this  
behavior is just fine, and won't require any/many changes for an app  
to work, but other times, you need more control over the process. For  
example, consider saving a file on one computer, and loading it on  
another (with a different default locale). The default locale will  
not match the encoding used for the data, so characters will not be  
converted or converted incorrectly, and you have garbled text.

However, to be clear, that only applies to reading/writing to disk -  
i.e. persistent data and external data formats. Usually, wxPython  
deals with things correctly when sending text back and forth between  
wxPython and Python. You're more likely to run into the annoying  
problem where the Python "default encoding" is set to ascii, even  
when the OS locale is not ascii, and in fact might be Unicode- 
aware. ;-/ wxPython (IIRC) uses the OS encoding, but you may have  
problems again when doing a myPythonString + myWxPythonString where  
myPythonString contains non-ascii chars.

In any case, the transition is usually quite manageable. Usually, the  
biggest hurdle is the initial learning curve of becoming aware of  
encodings and why they're important, and finding out in what areas of  
your app they are important. ;-) Hopefully this was more helpful than  
confusing! ;-P

Regards,

Kevin

> Thank you very much for any hint.
>
> Andrea.
>
>
> -- 
> "Imagination Is The Only Weapon In The War Against Reality."
>
> http://xoomer.virgilio.it/infinity77/
>
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