On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 11:01 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin@v.loewis.de> wrote:
I am not quite sure whether you are for new features or not. Your first sentence ("vote for ... not adding new features") seems to suggest that you would not like to see new features, and your last sentence ("absence of native curses/console/readline module") suggests that you *do* want to see new features (namely, a native curses module, and a native readline module).
Which one is it?
I would like to see new features in Python, but only if they are cross-platform. Unfortunately, I do not possess C skills to make this happen, nor do I have deep understanding of Microsoft Visual Studio .project files to port Makefiles and GCC options even when codebase is available for windows. The level to make a contribution in this case is too high. The lack of free time makes it impossible to close the gap in one step leaving remnants of work-in-process that will make it harder to continue in future than to start from scratch. Perhaps the necessity to make it in one huge step could be compensated by incremental solution approach and development process if there was obvious centralized place to organize efforts AND provide clear visibility into progress made so far, initial plan, plan deviation and current status. Mailing lists are good for discussions, but that's all - information becomes outdated, text-too-much, no prompt reply often stops the progress. Perhaps I shift my problem from lack-of-skill into lack-of-tools direction, but being amazed by efforts people put into supporting this mailing list I most of the time unable to reply to emails I get mostly because replies require time for testing and proving facts. There is no definite proposal to solve problems of enabling OpenID or SSO for python.org, of porting curses to windows, of testing subprocessing etc., but there is an idea that some things could be given more visibility AND priority to allow people to see the big picture and focus on outstanding problems. Even though most people here know about big-things-to-fix, these things doesn't standout from the pile of issues in roundup. The thing I miss the most is ability to gather all information relevant to one problem in one place. This includes timeline with commits, branches, relevant issues, issue updates, relevant wiki edits, current focus URLs, _filtered_ threads and refactored comments. The problem is to ensure that this information is up to date and provide easy way/instruction how to bring it up to date in case something is broken. It is not necessary to meet the bus to experience the effect of bus factor. -- anatoly t.