Paul Sokolovsky writes: > Hello, > > On Sat, 13 Feb 2021 23:10:59 +0900 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull.stephen...@u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote: > > > Chris Angelico writes: > > > > > Can you explain what would be improved by having a formalized > > > standard? > > > > The Language Reference together with the Library Reference *already* > > constitute a formalized standard. They are at least as precise as > > most W3C or IETF standards. > > You must be kidding, right? Library Reference is full of > underspecification and gaps.
No, I'm not kidding. Did you read what I wrote? I did not write that the Python References are perfect and suitable for automatic validation. I wrote that they are of similar quality to most standards published by the IETF or W3C. They are, in my experience. (And at least the IETF email working groups have a much easier task, since it's mostly restricted to syntax of wire protocols -- most semantics are left up to the receiving agents.) For example, the first attempt at a careful description of how the many agents in the email system interact is RFC 5598 (from 2009), while the current controlling RFC for message format is RFC 5322 (from 2008), and the actual standard is STD 11 = RFC 822 (from 1982!). You think you have problems defining free variables in a code block, the IETF email working groups literally operated for decades without trying to define some important terms! If you want more precise definitions and complete specifications in the Language Reference and Library Reference, put them there yourself, and encourage others to do the same. We'll all thank you. And you can be thankful that you only have to get them past the Steering Council, not the member nations (!) of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 / Subcommittee 22 / Working Group 21. :-) Steve _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/LPTIXDDMFK6T7SZVLBQ4IPILLMOKY45X/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
