Guido van Rossum <report@bugs.python.org> wrote
   on Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:55:03 -0000: 

> I know I sound like NIH, but I'm always reluctant to add a big 3rd
> party lib like ICU to the permanent dependencies of all future Python
> distros.  If people want to use ICU they already can.  OTOH I don't
> have a better idea. :-(

I know exactly what you mean.  I would not want to push that on anyone,
being dependent on a gigantic 3rd-party module.  I just tried to answer
the question.  The only two full UCA implementations I know of are ICU's
and Perl's, which does not use ICU (since we're UTF-8, etc).

I just wish Python had Unicode collation, is all.

--tom

PS: (I haven't had good luck the ICU bindings in 3.2.)