[Python-Dev] \code or \constant in tex markup

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

On Wednesday 09 May 2007, Neal Norwitz wrote:
 > Which is correct?

\constant was introduced much more recently than \code (though it's not really 
new anymore).  The intent for \constant when it was introduced was that it be 
used for names that were treated as constants in code (such as 
string.ascii_letters or doctest.REPORT_NDIFF), not syntactic literals like 3 
or "abc".

At the time, None, True, and False were just named values in the __builtin__ 
module.  I don't think the support for None as a "real" constant should 
change the status of the value as "just another named constant" other than in 
the implementation details.

So I think \constant is right for all three; we just haven't gone back and 
changed all the older instances of \code{None}, \code{True}, and 
\code{False}.  We've generally resisted that sort of blanket change, but 
consistency is valuable too.  Perhaps it's time to make the change across the 
board.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.   <fdrake at acm.org>