[Python-3000] xturtle and 3.0

[Guido van Rossum]

I'm changing the subject to keep this separate from the project
management tools discussion.

On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Gregor Lingl <gregor.lingl at aon.at> wrote:
>
>  Hi everyone,
>
>  with this posting I refer to a paragraph in PEP 361, which says:
>
>  """Each non-trivial feature listed here that is not a PEP must be discussed on python-dev.  Other enhancements include:
>
>    - ...
>    - turtle.py replacement or enhancements
>  """
>
>  Some time ago I had offered my xturtle.py as a replacement of or
>  supplement to turtle.py. The discussion that followed is here:
>
>  http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2006-06-16_2006-06-30/
>
>  At Europython 2006 I gave a talk on xturtle and there and since then I
>  had quite positive feedback including encouragement to offer it again to
>  include it in the python standard distribution by quite a few people
>  including Guido van Rossum.
>
>  During the last few weeks I did some enhancements to xturtle and put the
>  current version on the xturtle website for download in order to get same
>  feedback about the API as well as possible bug reports. This version
>  still needs some code polishing.
>
>  http://www.rg16.at/~python/xturtle/download.html
>
>  So I'm interested to know if this is still an issue for you. If so there
>  should be initiated some procedure to decide that.

I think that for 3.0, replacing turtle with xturtle is great, *IF*
xturtle doesn't add any additional dependencies *AND* it works well on
Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.

>  If this decision were negative, things were done (- and I'd continue to
>  develop xturtle elsewhere.)
>
>  If the decision were positive, I'd be able to prepare two equivalent
>  versions for Python2.6 and Python3000 within two or three weeks. (The
>  port to Python3000 is nearly ready.) These could include say 85% of the
>  documentation, albeit still not in the correct format.

That sounds cool. In 2.6 I'm reluctant to replace the existing turtle
module; xturtle can be added as xturtle.

>  I think these had to be examined my some reviewer(s) and also a
>  discussion about features to include or not include would be useful. I'd
>  like to intensivly take part in this discussion and development.
>
>  After a possible decision to include xturtle into Python, which
>  certainly should take place before the first beta release, there would
>  be enough time to polish the documentation and to fix bugs. For their
>  discovery it would certainly be an advantage to put it in some
>  prerelease as early as possible.
>
>  Of course I know that xturtle is only a side issue in the current
>  development efforts. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the procedures
>  needed to get a new module into Python, so I kindly ask you for your
>  advice how to proceed, at the same time offering my cooperation.

I think that for a library module like this, an email like you've sent
is just fine. Maybe Brett has a suggestion on whether it would remain
a toplevel module or could be placed in some umbrella package (is
Tkinter being moved around?).

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)