Marc Recht wrote:
Has anyone thought about features that Python does not have that should be in Minimal? My first candidate would be (ducks) macros,
as a final user visible feature, I hope not. As an implementation then invisible tool maybe/why not.
IMHO the user visible language part should be 100% Python compatible. At least this should be the goal. But, in the build process of the Minimal Python core we could (and should?) use feature to simplify the implementation. Like generating source/classes from a formal description (eg. XML).
I have the same goal. I also don't hesitate to use some abbreviative tools for repeated code, maybe. But only if it helps to simplify, not to change the language. Furthermore, thinking of macros again, they make less sense for me every time I think it over. Our final target is an intelligent code generator which generates optimized code from well-written Python. How could a macro system help here? We would instead loose structure and make optimization harder, since the macro generated code needs to be analysed and optimized, later. That is bullshit, IMHO. Abstractions, like metaclases, which specialize themselves into other concrete classes make more sense to me. This allows to optimize without loosing structural information. XML on the other hand, as an intermediate language or for pickling makes sense to me. At least it is easier to parse than Python. (But we *have* the parser...) -- Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:tismer@tismer.com> Mission Impossible 5oftware : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9a : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/ 14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/ work +49 30 89 09 53 34 home +49 30 802 86 56 pager +49 173 24 18 776 PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04 whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/