Proposal: Documentation policy change on Unicode use

Dear Docutils developers,

an update: while we are at it, I propose to allow literal Unicode in both,
documentation and source code (except for identifiers).

If there is no objection or alternative, I would commit the patch below
in a months time.

.. include:: <isolat1.txt>

G|uuml|nter


From 5eb431cc0a4fd3f4f5c1581f9ca74653768b020e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: milde <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2022 22:22:17 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Policy change: accept literal Unicode characters except for
 identifiers.

With UTF-8 as default encoding for Python source code and widespread
Unicode support in todays editors on all platforms,
there is no need to be more restrictive than PEP 8 any more.
---
 docutils/docs/dev/policies.txt | 14 +++++---------
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

diff --git a/docutils/docs/dev/policies.txt b/docutils/docs/dev/policies.txt
index f46c143d2..e95c33389 100644
--- a/docutils/docs/dev/policies.txt
+++ b/docutils/docs/dev/policies.txt
@@ -60,13 +60,13 @@ don't be surprised if the "offending" code gets fiddled over time to
 conform to these conventions.
 
 The Docutils project shall follow the generic coding conventions as
-specified in the `Style Guide for Python Code`_ and `Docstring
-Conventions`_ PEPs, summarized, clarified, and extended as follows:
+specified in the `Style Guide for Python Code` (:PEP:`8`) and `Docstring
+Conventions` (:PEP:`257`), summarized, clarified, and extended as follows:
 
 * 4 spaces per indentation level.  No hard tabs.
 
-* Use only 7-bit ASCII, no 8-bit strings.  See `Docutils
-  Internationalization`_.
+* Use UTF-8 encoding (no encoding declaration).
+  Identifiers must use ASCII only.
 
 * No one-liner compound statements (i.e., no ``if x: return``: use two
   lines & indentation), except for degenerate class or method
@@ -99,9 +99,6 @@ Conventions`_ PEPs, summarized, clarified, and extended as follows:
 * Use 'single quotes' for string literals, and """triple double
   quotes""" for docstrings.
 
-.. _Style Guide for Python Code:
-   https://peps.python.org/pep-0008
-.. _Docstring Conventions: https://peps.python.org/pep-0257
 .. _Docutils Internationalization: ../howto/i18n.html#python-code
 
 
@@ -110,8 +107,7 @@ Documentation Conventions
 
 * Docutils documentation is written using reStructuredText, of course.
 
-* Use 7-bit ASCII if at all possible, and Unicode substitutions when
-  necessary.
+* The encoding of the documentation files is UTF-8.
 
 * Use the following section title adornment styles::
 
-- 
2.30.2