A quick survey
As you’ve hopefully noticed if you’re following things in the world of Django, the Unicode branch merged today, which means that Django is now safe for Unicode at every level (pending any bugs which need to be fixed). That’s great news for users of Django.
But it also means that developers of Django-based applications need to be aware of how Django handles Unicode and watch out for boundaries between Django and any bits of software which aren’t so enlightened.
Which is where you come in.
Over the past couple of months I’ve spun out several utility apps in the course of rewriting and enhancing the blog application which powers this site, and they’d generally been well-received. I know, without having to look too closely, that there are going to be some sports in those apps which will need to be updated to work with a Unicode-aware Django or to work around non-Django software which doesn’t handle Unicode smartly.
I’m pretty sure it’ll be easy to manage the updates, largely thanks to Malcolm’s tireless work in providing utilities which handle all the vagaries of going from bytestrings to Unicode strings and back. What I’m wondering is whether there are enough folks tracking Django SVN to make it worth doing the updates immediately — most of the apps I’ve released require a post-0.96 Django, so I suspect the answer for this case is “yes”, but I’d like to get some actual input; making my app suite Unicode-aware is going to require the use of utility functions from Django that only exist after the Unicode merge, and I’d like to break as few installations as possible.
So. This isn’t technically a vote, but if you’re using any or all of comment_utils, contact_form, registration or template_utils I’d like to know whether you’ve already moved to Django revision 5609 or later, and if you haven’t, whether you’re planning to do so soon.
Feed of latest entries
July 5, 2007
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I moved to revision 5609 but I had to revert to the previous one because I was getting too many mistakes from third part applications (like django-logging, django-thumbnails from nesh, etc). I’m also using your registration application but I don’t know whether that was giving problems or not as I reverted before I could go through all the problems.
Thanks for the great work anyway:-)
July 5, 2007
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The registration app should be OK, because it was already heavily driven by newforms, which requires it to work properly with Unicode input regardless; the only thing I’d change in there is switching the
__str__ofRegistrationProfileto__unicode__. Similarly,contact_formshould be fine because it’s just taking data from a newforms form and handing it off to Django’s email functions, so there’s no problem there.The main things I’m concerned about are the Textile filter in
template_utils(I know from testing that PyTextile vomits all over itself if you hand it a Unicode string) and the Akismet API calls incomment_utils(which may have some problems if handed Unicode strings for comment data — I’ll need to test this to be certain).July 5, 2007
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I was just preparing to use your comment util. I thought it would be wiser to start using again the SVN branch of django to stay on par with your comment util.
I stopped using the SVN django because of al the changes that are happening in it. But now I’m going to go using it back.
July 5, 2007
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I run SVN on two different sites, and will be updating to the latest sometime this weekend. I also contact_form.
July 5, 2007
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I haven’tmoved to the post-Unicode-merg Django yet, but I am basically tracking trunk and will be doing so shortly. I’d vote “yes.”
July 5, 2007
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moving to newforms-admin in a few days when it is merged with unicode trunk
July 5, 2007
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I’ve moved, and look forward to replacing the unicode handling in django-tagging with Malcolm’s functions of utilityness.
July 5, 2007
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I updated to revision 5620 just moments ago. My personal site works fine. But I also have a sort-of-blog in Spanish (if you speak Spanish, please ignore the the errors — I am just learning :-). That site is all messed up now; all accented letters and many of the tildes are coming through as garbage. I am using template_utils, but I don’t think that is the problem.
July 5, 2007
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I follow Django trunk, but haven’t upped past the Unicode merge yet. I’m very curious how this will impact my own code… hopefully I won’t see major breakage.
Of your code I currently am using django-registration and I may pick up comment-utils on my next refactoring of my personal site.
July 5, 2007
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I’d love to see
comment_utilsupdated to account for the Unicode integrationbut will be happy to wait for an update on your own schedule.July 6, 2007
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I am developing in a post-0.96 environment, so I can always see what works, and what not.
So if anything changes that breaks my code, I make the necessary changes on my dev-environment, and only then put them onto the production servers.
July 8, 2007
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I’m using registration, comment-utils and template_utils… and am using the svn django.
Ta for all the great work!
July 16, 2007
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I have installed coltrane-blog, monk-wiki, registration, comment-utils, template_utils, tagging and contact_forms on a site that is powered by svn revision 5719. So far so good.