"JEP 400: UTF-8 by Default" and future of Python

[methane (Inada Naoki)]

I created another subtopic about adding new option for forward/backward compatibility.
This is counterpart of file.encoding=UTF-8/COMPAT in java.

Add legacy_text_encoding option to make UTF-8 default

This is one of sub topic toward making UTF-8 default. Java changed the default encoding and added file.encoding option for backward compatibility. Java user can set -Dfile.encoding=COMPAT and get old behavior. I want to add similar option for forward/backward compatibility: Spec Add PYTHONLEGACYTEXTENCODING environment variable and -Xlegacy_text_encoding commandline option to Python 3.12. These options takes 0 or 1. When legacy_text_encoding=0, Python makes UTF-8 as default text encoding: …