./lib/encodings contains both:

    iso8859_1.py
    latin_1.py

Only one should be present.  Martin says that latin_1
is faster.  Using the 'iso' name would correlate better
with the other ISO encodings provided.

If the latin_1 code is faster, then it should be in the
iso8859_1.py file.  If an automated process produces
the 'iso*' encodings, then it should either produce the
faster code or stop producing iso8859_1.

Regardless, one of the files should be removed.

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Good point.

The iso8859_1.py codec should be removed and added as alias
to latin-1.

Martin is right: the latin-1 codec is not only faster, but
the Unicode integration code also has a lot of short-cuts
for the "latin-1" encoding, so overall performance is better
if you use that name for the encoding.

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Ok.  How about if we specify iso8859_1 as "(see latin_1)" in
the documentation?

The code will work the same regardless of which encoding
name the developer uses.  Right?

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Where could one see some of the "shortcuts" in the Unicode
integration code that make using "latin_1" faster in the
runtime?  I greped *.py and *.c, but could not readily
identify any candidates.

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To answer your questions:

Yes, the encoding is the same for both latin-1 and iso8859-1.

Specifying latin-1 instead of iso8859-1 will allow the code
to use short-cuts.

You have to grep for 'latin-1'.

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i understand that there ought to be one fast implementation, but i 
suppose both names should be available. 
 

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I've added an alias entry from iso8859_1 to latin_1.