Re: [Docutils-develop] I/O uses default encoding argument

[Adam T. <aat...@ou...>]

> However, in cases of user-supplied input, this is an API change.
> We can fix the cases in the tests now but need due process for cases where
> changes may lead to different behaviur for users.

> Suggestion:

> * backport Python 3.11 behaviour to docutils.io:
>   “use locale encoding when encoding="locale" is passed”.

> * announce change of default encoding to UTF-8

> * keep encoding attribute unspecified for now when reading input
>   specified by users or 3rd-party code.

This seems a sensible way forwards. The updated patch set does (1) and (2) and warns on unspecified encoding input in the ``docutils.io.(Input|Output)`` classes.

> Consistent naming in Docutils code (not only latex2e.py) and
> documentation is good.

The updated patch set renames everything to my reccomendation below. (It is a larger change than originally envisaged, so it is 8 patches -- alternativley formatted on the web [1]_.

> What is the motivation for 'utf-8'?

The name of the encoding is UTF-8 [2]_ [3]_. I propose using UTF-8 (uppercase) in documentation and prose text and utf-8 (lowercase) in code (If you'd prefer consistency in case I would pick lowercase everywhere). 

A

_[1]: https://github.com/AA-Turner/docutils/pull/15 and https://github.com/AA-Turner/docutils/pull/15.patch
_[2]: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3629.html
_[3]: https://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/#names-and-labels