PEP 1, PEP Purpose and Guidelines

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "FP" == François Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

    >> It has been a while since I posted a copy of PEP 1 to the
    >> mailing lists and newsgroups.

    FP> Thanks for giving me this opportunity.  There is a tiny detail
    FP> that bothers me:

    >> The format of the author entry should be address at dom.ain
    >> (Random J. User) if the email address is included, and just
    >> Random J. User if the address is not given.

    FP> This makes me jump fifteen years behind (or so, I do not
    FP> remember times), at the time of the great push so the Internet
    FP> prefers:

    FP>        Random J. User <address at dom.ain>

    FP> It is more reasonable to always give the real name, optionally
    FP> followed by an email, that to consider that the real name is a
    FP> mere comment for the email address.

This is a good point.  Originally we thought it was more important to
be able to contact the author, but there are quite a few reasons to
revise this intention.  As pointed out, email addresses change.  Also,
experience has shown that most of the discussions about PEPs are
conducted on the public forums (mailing lists / newsgroups), so that's
a fine way to contact the people working on the PEP.  And of course,
we allow the PEP authors to obfuscate or omit their email addresses
altogether.

    FP> Could the PEP be reformulated, at least, for leaving the
    FP> choice opened?

I'd rather have one preferred way of writing the header, so I'm going
to change PEP 1 to mandate "Random J. User <address at dom.ain>" with the
email address optional.  However, I'm going to let the old style
remain for historical purposes since I don't think it's worth changing
the existing PEPs.

Thanks,
-Barry