Re: Removal of unicode_semantics

On 04.05.2008 20:34, 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.

That is correct, removing The Switch does cause some backward compatibility breakage. But The Switch does NOT fix it, that's the problem: you would still have to fix your applications to work with unicode_semantics both OFF and ON, i.e. it causes _2x more_ trouble.

Every time somebody proposes removal of this setting, they claim that majority agreed on it when there is no agreement on anything.

The majority of active developers have agreed that the switch would cause more harm than good. That's the fact. -- Wbr, Antony Dovgal