Re: [Python-ideas] Adding a half-float (16-bit) type to PEP 3118 (and possibly the struct module?)

Robert Kern wrote:

Still, it's worth defining the standard to allow third parties to communicate the full spectrum of things they want to tell each other.

But that's impossible -- there's no way the buffer protocol can explicitly cover all possible data types that any third party application might need to deal with. There needs to be some common ground, and the buffer protocol currently defines that as the set of standard C data types. -- Greg