[Python-Dev] PEP 343 update (with statement context terminology)

[Paul Moore]

On 4/24/06, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> At 10:26 AM 4/24/2006 +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
> >OK. At this point, the discussion seems to have mutated from a
> >"Phillip vs Nick" debate to a "Paul vs Nick" debate.
>
> I only stepped aside so that other people would chime in.  I still don't
> think the new terminology makes anything clearer, and would rather see
> tweaks to address the one minor issue of @contextmanager producing an
> object that's also a context than a complete reworking of the
> documentation.  That was the only thing that was unclear in the a1
> terminology and docs, and it's an extremely minor point that could easily
> be addressed.
>
> Throwing away an intuitive terminology because of a minor implementation
> issue in favor of a non-intutitive terminology that happens to be
> super-precise seems penny-wise and pound-foolish to me.

That's *exactly* my feeling (thanks for expressing it better than I did).

So I guess the 2 questions remaining are:

1. Does anyone feel that Nick's (re-)wording is better than the a1
version (apart from the @contextmanager issue, which we all agree
needs a fix)?

2. Nick, what can we do to persuade you to go back to the a1 version,
and simply look at @contextmanager? I've proposed splitting it into
two, but that seems not to suit you (you've never responded to it
specifically, so I may be misreading your silence here). As an
alternative, I could just think about how to reword the docs. But I'm
not confident I'm the best person to do that.

One thing I would say is that Nick has added a section on context
types to the "Built-in types" section of the libref. At the moment, it
reflects his terminology, but even if the terminology gets reverted to
a1 style, I'd like to see that stay (suitably reworded, of course!)
It's a useful addition.

Oh, and if there's a huge group of people who prefer Nick's
terminology, now is the time to shout!

Paul.