On 11/2/2012 11:16 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 12:46 AM, Andrew Svetlov
<andrew.svet...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi. There are issue for subject: http://bugs.python.org/issue1207589
It has patches, implemented well and committed.
I've pushed it to versions 2.7, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4.
My thoughts are: the issue is not brand new subject but improvement for
current IDLE functionality.
Added code cannot break any existing program/library I hope, it's related to
humans who use IDLE only.
It is desirable feature and probably IDLE users will be ok with new items in
context menu even they are still 2.7 users.
There are another opinion: it is new feature, not a bug, and the patch
should be applied to 3.4 only.
If you look on discussion for issue (http://bugs.python.org/issue1207589)
you can see we cannot make decision, votes are split.
I want to raise the question on this mailing list (as Terry Reedy suggested)
to ask for community opinion.
The status quo is that IDLE is covered by the "no new features in
maintenance releases" rule along with the rest of the standard
library.
That may be your opinion, but I disagree that the situation is so clear.
In what PEP (or other document) is the above stated.
IDLE has previously been treated here as an exception to the normal
rules. Two years ago, we debated *dropping* IDLE from the distribution
-- beginning with the next release. We would not have had such a
discussion for any normal library module as simply removing a module
before Py 4 is against policy.
> Now, it may be *unreasonable* that this is so, and changing
it would help improve IDLE as a tool.
If it is 'unreasonable', then perhaps it is not so.
> The way to resolve a proposal
like that is to put it forward as a PEP, and explain the rationale for
treating IDLE differently.
A PEP seems like overkill to me. The matter is a rule clarification, not
an enhancement proposal. The rationale is simple.
1. The reason for the no-new-features rule does not apply to user
interface features, certainly not to the right-click context menu.
2. Users will prefer consistency, especially in something like
right-click behavior (or search/replace boxes, etc).
3. It is often unclear whether a particular change is a fix or an
enhancement. I would suggest that a) in many cases neither word really
applies and b) in such cases, given 1) and 2) above, it is not worth the
effort to force fit a change into either category.
For instance, the existence of a right-click context menu is not
mentioned in the sketchy Library manual chapter for IDLE. So there can
neither be consistency nor inconsistency between current behavior and
the non-existent doc entry. Hence, there is no objective standard for
classifying a change, and hence there is disagreement. Since
http://bugs.python.org/issue1207589
brings IDLE in line with external standards, I consider it a bug fix.
Actually, I consider it *both* a bug fix *and* and enhancement, but a
bug fix for the purpose of deciding where to apply it (given that
someone, Andrew, was willing to go though the effort of applying it
everywhere).
Even features that are documented as to existence are not specified. The
following is typical.
"Find...
Open a search dialog box with many options"
There have been or still are proposed changes to Find or Replace that
could be classified either way, depending on whether, in the absence of
any specification, one is inclined to make 'bug fix' or 'enhancement'
the default choice.
A PEP also makes it possible to state
exactly which modules are being proposed for exemption from the
no-new-features rule.
Since the proposal two years ago was to delete the entire idlelib/*
package, I would start with the entire package. If and when possibly
generally useful modules (perhaps idlelib/rpc.py -- remote procedure
calls) are documented for general use, they should be versioned. But
then they should perhaps be moved elsewhere.
The fact that many (most?) distro packaging teams split idle out into
a separate package from their base python installation may be a point
in such a proposal's favour (e.g. in Fedora, there's a separate
"python-tools" package, so the main python package doesn't need to
depend on tkinter).
Until such a PEP has been submitted and approved, any feature
additions on maintenance branches should be reverted.
And who shall decide what change is what?
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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