[Doc-SIG] Re: DPS file extensions

[David Goodger]

Tony J Ibbs (Tibs) wrote:
> I've noticed that all of the text files in the DPS and reST
> distributions (that is, in the ``spec`` directories) have extension
> ``.txt``, regardless of whether they are PEPs, DPS/reST text, or (if
> there are any!) plain ordinary text.
...
> Could I suggest that we coin a standard extension for DPS/reST files?
...
> (we already know that I prefer ``.rest`` to ``.rst``...)

I suppose that's possible, but I'd rather not. The reason I gave the
files .txt extensions in the first place was for cross-platform
compatibility. I don't need extensions on my home machine at all. The
Mac treats metadata sensibly; metadata embedded in the filename is a
crude hack that MacOS avoids (or avoided; reportedly, MacOS X seems to
have caved in to peer pressure). But I work on different platforms and
I'd much rather I (and you!) get a nice text file icon than a blank
one.

We'd all have to teach our systems that '.rest' means '.txt'. Most
people won't, and I don't want to add Windows registry fiddling to the
distutils scripts.

reStructuredText is a *form* of plaintext, so the .txt extension is
appropriate.

-- 
David Goodger    goodger@users.sourceforge.net    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sourceforge.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sourceforge.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net