[Dev] Re: Text vs Bytes

[Brian Kirsch]

Hi Ted,
I have to write the busy developers guide for I18n. I will be doing this 
soon as I finish my newly assigned .6 bugs :)

To sum up:

Text  == a Python unicode object. It can also accept 7bit ascii but not 
8bit charsets.
Bytes == a Python str object which can accept any 8bit value.

Bytes was intended for developer level  tasks in which using a unicode 
object would be overkill.
 
There are some inconsistencies in the schema currently in terms of where 
Bytes are used. This will be remedied in the early stages of .7.

In fact with the change Andi made recently to Text to accept 7bit ascii 
as well as unicode I am pretty sure I will be getting rid of Bytes in 
.7. If a developer needs 8bit the Lob type is available. For .6  
however, this is where we stand.



Hope this helped,
Brian

Brian Kirsch - Email Framework Engineer
Open Source Applications Foundation
543 Howard St. 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 946-3056
http://www.osafoundation.org



Ted Leung wrote:

> Hi Brian,
>
> Is there something that I can read that would help me understand when  
> to use Text vs Bytes?
>
> Ted
>