And Now For Something Completely Similar !!!

Guido van Rossum guido at cnri.reston.va.us
Thu Sep 2 08:44:40 EDT 1999


kernr at mail.ncifcrf.gov (Robert Kern) writes:

> On Wed, 01 Sep 1999 16:48:24 -0400, David Oppenheimer
> <davidopp at megsinet.net> wrote:
[...]
> >2) Why isn't a module which has broad appeal like the Python Imaging Library
> >included with the core Python 1.5.2 package?  
> 
> Release schedules, lean&mean-ness, not enough people needing to
> manipulate images in Python, etc.

You said it.  The key issues here are independent developers and
independent development schedules; I can't afford to repackage Python
each time a new PIL comes out and I certainly don't want to have to
wait until PIL is stable before releasing Python.

This is a fact of life, and it's how most software distributions are
done.  I *do* package a Tcl/Tk version with Python 1.5.2 for Windows
(as you noetd latest in your post); this was done because (1) Tcl/Tk
8.0.5 was pretty stable at the time, and (2) I needed Tcl/Tk in order
to make IDLE usable.  It turns out that Tcl/Tk 8.1 and 8.2 are not
compatible with standard Python 1.5.2, so this ended up being a good
decision; nevertheless I may decide to drop this in the future (or I
may decide to keep it) depending on the pace of development in the
Tcl/Tk world.

Note that this opens up a market for "packaging companies" (like Red
Hat does for Linux) which bundle stable versions of lots of software
together for ease of installation.  More power to them...!

> >For that matter why not include
> >NumPy also.  
> 
> <IMHO>
> That one, I'd have to agree with.  I think that NumPy arrays and
> ufuncs should become core datatypes.  They're just too useful.
> </IMHO>

Yeah...  This is actually in my plans for Python 1.6 (although I
haven't started working on it honestly).

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




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