[Jim writes]
I'll second Marc-Andre here.
A significant headache occurs when you have a package that has sub-packages. Sub-packages need to be able to reference other sub-packages within the same package without knowing where the containing package is installed.
I certainly dont want to know _where_ the package is installed, but do want to know the package name. A package name, IMO, is like a module name - once named, you are largely stuck with it. I for one use packages quite extensively, but have never lamented the loss of __ from the ni days. If someone, for example, wanted to change the package name of "win32com" or "pywin", then I would expect lots of code to break, in the same way as changing the name any standard module would break code. I see Marc's issue with pickle, but I dont see the problem with absolute package names any more than I see a problem with explicitely naming modules in an import statement... Mark.