Adam Olsen writes:
On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull stephen@xemacs.org wrote:
I would like to see the clear division between the language (ie, the syntax) and the built-in functionality maintained. I'm not sure I like the proposed title for that reason.
Such a division would make it unnecessarily hard to find documentation on True, False, None, etc. They've become keywords for pragmatic purposes (to prevent accidental modification), not because we think they ideally should be syntax instead of builtins.
This is Python; of course practicality beats purity. I have no problem with putting some keywords in the "built-in functionality" section, or even (boggle) duplicate them across the two sections.
I too was put off by the separation of syntax from built-in functionality when I first started using the documentation, but later I came to appreciate it. I'm a relatively casual user of Python, and having a spare "syntax" section has made it much easier to learn new syntax such as comprehensions and generators. I suspect it will make it a lot easier to learn the differences between Python 2 and Python 3, too. I do not want to lose that.
I don't pretend to be speaking for anyone else, but I'd be surprised if I were unique.<wink>