> I am not sure, whether support for non-ascii digits in float()
> constructor is worth maintaining.

I'd be very happy to drop such support.  If you allow alternative digit sets, trying to work out exactly what should be supported and what shouldn't gets very messy;  it's even worse for int(), where bases > 10 have to be taken into account.

> (Anyone knows whether Arabic numbers are written right to left
> or left to right?  What is the proper decimal point character?)

Well, judging by the chocolate packaging I saw recently, they're written left to right (so presumably if you're reading right-to-left, you see the units first, then the tens, etc., which always struck me as the 'right' way to write things in the first place :-).  No idea about the proper decimal point character, though.