[Distutils] PEP 241 draft

Paul Prescod paulp@ActiveState.com
Wed Mar 14 09:01:00 2001


Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Since the RFC-822 parser is already written, we don't gain anything by
> having to write a SAX or xmllib handler... *unless* someone shows that
> we need the ability of XML to encode full-blown trees.  I currently
> believe we don't need that, but will listen to a good argument.

When I look at the headers for mail messages, I see increasingly
structured information stuffed into key/value pairs. That's because
information tends to start simple and become complex as time goes by.
Therefore I would prefer we choose a future-proof format now.

I also think that Long Description looks a lot better as XML content
than as a value-string. It makes perfect sense for Long Description to
have hyperlinks in it so it may be that we will soon want it to be some
form of structured text.

Note that I can set up an XML editor to allow *only legal values* in an
XML document but have no equivalent tool for RFC-822.
-- 
Python:
    Programming the way
    Guido
    indented it.
       - (originated with Skip Montanaro?)