[Image-SIG] support for python 3

[Daniel Fetchinson]

> In reply to Daniel Fetchinson:
>
> Thanks Daniel. As you say, it's legitimate to not commit to a deadline or
> timeline and there's nothing wrong with that.
>
> I wasn't really asking for a deadline or timeline, just trying to get an
> idea how the process is going.

Well, the status is this: python 3 support for PIL will sooner or
later be done. I'm not fooling you, that's the exact status, many
people tried to get more details but they all failed. Hence this is
the exact knowledge that exists publicly. I'm also interested,
probably even asked a similar question in the past, but came to the
conclusion that it's impossible to get more details out of the
developers. And I think there is nothing wrong with that.

> Since PIL is an important Python library, having a general idea of how it's
> going would be helpful to those who are thinking about learning Python and
> trying to decide between Python 2.x and Python 3.x.

Wait. If you are really asking about a decision between python 2 and
python 3 then I can definitely give you my advice: without hesitation
pick python 2. Reasons: (1) the difference between python 2 and 3 is
not big (2) there are tons of example code out there written in python
2, see for example the activestate cookbook (3) there are tons of 3rd
party libraries written in python 2, PIL being one example (4) python
2 will be supported for at least 10 years (if I'm not mistaken).

> I'll give you an example:
>
> My son is an engineer at TI. He writes programs in C, assembly(!) and
> Matlab, but he told me he was thinking about learning Python with his son
> Tim. The boy is 10, and it would be his first computer language. It would be
> simpler for Tim to learn Python 3 than to learn Python 2 and then switch.
> But I'm sure Tim would soon be interested in games and images à la Pygames,
> hence PIL.

I'd advise your grandson to dive into python 2 and not worry about
python 3 for the moment. When python 3 becomes mainstream (a couple
more years at least) he will be able to pick it up really fast because
the jump from python 2 to 3 is not big at all.

> I  think it's wonderful what the authors of PIL have done and are doing. As
> I mentioned, I'm a novice (though I just wrote a Python program that uses a
> Tkinter GUI to access a dictionary whose keys are subjects and whose values
> are files). So my offer to help rings a little hollow, but it's sincere.

No worries, there is no problem with not contributing code or anything
else. There is absolutely nothing wrong with simply using python
and/or 3rd party libraries.

Cheers,
Daniel



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