[Python-Dev] rfc822_escape doing the right thing?

[stephen emslie]

I have created issue #1923 to keep track of this.

Stephen Emslie

On Jan 23, 2008 6:00 PM, Gregory P. Smith <greg at krypto.org> wrote:
> could you put this on bugs.python.org and follow up with a reference to the
> issue # for better tracking?
>
>
>
> On 1/23/08, stephen emslie <stephenemslie at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > I've been working on a project that renders PKG-INFO metadata in a
> > number of ways. I have noticed that fields with any indentation were
> > flattened out, which is being done in distutils.util.rfc822_escape.
> > This unfortunately means that you cant use reStructuredText formatting
> > in your long description (suggested in PEP345), or are limited to a
> > set that doesn't require indentation (no block quotes, etc.).
> >
> > It looks like this behavior was intentionally added in  rev 20099, but
> > that was about 7 years ago - before reStructuredText and eggs. I
> > wonder if it makes sense to re-think that implementation with this
> > sort of metadata in mind, assuming this behavior isn't required to be
> > rfc822 compliant. I think it would certainly be a shame to miss out on
> > a good thing like proper (renderable) reST in our metadata.
> >
> > A quick example of what I mean:
> >
> > >>> rest = """
> > ... a literal python block::
> > ...     >>> import this
> > ... """
> > >>> print distutils.util.rfc822_escape(rest)
> >
> >         a literal python block::
> >         >>> import this
> >
> > should look something like:
> >
> >         a literal python block::
> >             >>> import this
> >
> >
> > Is distutils being over-cautious in flattening out all whitespace? A
> > w3c discussion on multiple lines in rfc822 [1] seems to suggest that
> > whitespace can be 'unfolded' safely, so it seems a shame to be
> > throwing it away when it can have important meaning.
> >
> > [1] http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc822/3_Lexical.html
> >
> > Thanks for any comments
> >
> > Stephen Emslie
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>