Thinking of ">1.7" as "greater than the 1.7 series" sort of helps me as well...



the problem with thinking of it this way is that you naturally want to extend the concept to >=, but it doesn't work.
If the concept were consistent,  1.7.dev1 would satisfy  >=1.7, but it doesn't.
for >=, the concept seems to be zero-padding.
for >, the concept is the series wildcard idea.

this inconsistency concerns me, and makes it hard to edit the PEP to be more understandable like I would have wanted.