[Tim]
I'm sorry, but if you mentally reduced everything I've written about this to "the sole argument", rational discussion has become impossible here.
Forgive me one melodramatic email. I've laid out my reasoning and understand yours. Crossing light sabers with one such as yourself is of course a foolhardy undertaking. A root difference is that I believe we have both a compliant implementation (using Context.create_decimal) and a practical context free extension in the form of the regular Decimal constructor. A second difference is that you see harm in allowing any context free construction while I see greater harm from re-introducing representation error when that is what we were trying to fix in the first place. The rest is just practicalities and engineering (altering decimal's internals may be a non-trivial undertaking). May the force be with you, Raymond