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A quick survey

Published: July 5, 2007. Filed under: Django, Meta.

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.