>>>>> "JH" == Jeremy Hylton <jeremy@beopen.com> writes:
JH> At our meeting yesterday Tim suggested that each enhancement
JH> or language feature have two documents -- a specification and
JH> a rationale. It looks like Barry did not adopt that
JH> suggestion explicitly, but I think it's still a good approach
JH> for writing a single PEP.
Agreed. I think a single document can contain both spec and
rationale.
JH> Each PEP should have a brief technical specification of the
JH> new feature. For a feature like augmented assignment, it
JH> would need to specify the syntax and semantics of each
JH> operation on each type and on the overloading mechanism for
JH> classes, e.g. is "a += b += c" valid syntactically and what
JH> does it mean.
Yes.
JH> The PEP should also have a rationale that describes why the
JH> specification is the way it is. It should discuss
JH> alternatives that were considered and why there were not
JH> adopted. Other topics appropriate for the rationale might be
JH> motivation (why do we want this feature at all?) and
JH> comparison (what do other languages do?).
Yes.
JH> The Scheme language has a similar mechanism called Scheme
JH> Requests for Implementation (SRFI),
JH> <http://srfi.schemers.org/>. It is not exactly the same,
JH> because Scheme seems to have no end of proposals that include
JH> specification and rationale; they just can't agree on a
JH> standard set <0.2 wink>. We might adopt some of their
JH> processes for the PEPs.
Great pointer, thanks. Would you like to co-own PEP001 and help me
flesh out the guidelines? There are lots of good ideas in the SRFI's,
but we should tailor them toward the Python community.
JH> Two things that each SRFI that PEPs don't yet have are:
JH> - a mail archive attached to the PEP that contains relevant
JH> discussion. A mail archive seems valuable for people
JH> interested in the next level of detail, but I'm not sure what
JH> mechanism to use to create one. (It also seems valuable
JH> because the old "search dejanews" certainly isn't stable in
JH> the long-term.) Maybe PEP authors could maintain their own
JH> archives.
One thing mentioned in teh SRFI's is that each gets its own mailing
list. That might not be a bad idea. I definitely had the notion that
a PEP would contain URLs to other information (a References section).
JH> - a copyright notice. As a strawman, I propose that the
JH> owner/author
JH> of each PEP retains copyright, but must publish it under the
JH> OpenContent license, <http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml>.
Looks good to me.
-Barry
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