[Python-Dev] Rework nntlib?

[Nick Coghlan]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 8:17 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Like the email package, nntplib in py3k is broken (because of
> various bytes/str mismatches; I suppose the lack of a test suite didn't
> help when porting).
>
> I would like to take the opportunity to improve the API a bit; no heavy
> re-architecting, but simply a bunch of changes to make it higher-level.
> Is it acceptable?
>
> (and, yes, I would add a test suite)

This is the kind of question that's hard to answer in the abstract. In
principle it sounds like a reasonable idea, but in practice, if the
old API works correctly for 7-bit ASCII, it should probably remain
available (even if it's nominally broken for Unicode and 8-bit ASCII).

Adding a higher level API is almost certainly fine. Removing the old
lower level APIs is more questionable, and will likely depend on
precisely how broken they are.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia