I'd like to suggest that we take a step back. It feels as though we are reacting rather than designing. I think we have the following goals: 1. setuptools should be able to read indexes robustly and efficiently. 2. It should be straightforward, and preferably *easy* for people to implement their own indexes. This is very important to me. :) Perhaps: 3. It should be easy to mirror an index 4. It should be possible to create a read index as a static HTTP server. And I suggest: 5. It should be possible to provide an end-user experience for an index without affecting the setuptools interface 4. It should be possible to write other setuptools-like applications for accessing indexes. This means that the web-service (small w-s) should be well defined and/or that setuptools should expose a Python API for accessing indexes. From a design perspective: a. screen scraping is bad b. the web API should be simple and well defined. I suggest, as others have suggested, that we create an *alternate* web API for reading an index focussed on cleanliness and on making the API as easy as possible to implement for both index and client developers. If we agree with all of the goals stated above, I think this should be static HTTP interface using XHTML or some other XML dialect. Perhaps we could even use specific HTML class attrs to make it possible to combine the pypi and user interfaces if an index implementor desires. Thoughts? Jim -- Jim Fulton mailto:jim@zope.com Python Powered! CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org