Hi again Guido, On a totally unrelated topic: has anyone pushed the idea of a Python language standard lately? Things seem to be changing too fast for many developers to keep up, and it seems to me that a formal standard doc might help ease a few fears I've seen out there. Books used to be a sort of de facto standard, but even they aren't reliable anymore; and the manuals aren't useful as a standard if they are open to arbitrary change every few months. Frankly, some people in my classes are very concerned by the rapid pace of Python change, and I think their fear is justified. I get burned a little almost every time a new Python release rolls out too. Most recently, some new book examples that worked in 1.5.2 this summer no longer work under 2.0 this fall; I understand that most changes are improvements (and minor), but this is not a great story to tell. A prime example: the string module, used in almost every Python program ever written by the half-million Python users out there, has suddenly been marked as deprecated. I expect that it won't really go away, but has anyone considered the impact of even the suggestion of its deprecation on Python's acceptance? If using Python requires that programmers invest lots of time tracking the whims of python-dev, then Python will become much less useful, imo. Most developers just don't have the extra time to spare. A formal standard doc could give us at least a baseline Python definition that developers could cling to. Companies need to see a solid and reliable foundation. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or interest in pushing this idea through to fruition myself. Do you have any ideas along these lines? Maybe this task belongs in whatever body eventually takes over ownership. I'm copying this to python-dev in the hopes that it might trigger some sort of discussion. Cheers, --Mark Lutz (http://rmi.net/~lutz)