Alternative decorator syntax decision

[Anthony Baxter]

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 06:03:12 GMT, Paul McGuire
<ptmcg at austin.rr._bogus_.com> wrote:
> BTW, where are all the votes for option "A"?  Where are all the people who
> hated it but now like it?

Based on what others have said (including Peter Hansen) I was led to believe
that the point of this exercise was to collect votes on _alternates_
to the current
syntax. In that case, I don't see much point in "voting" for it -
particularly since
Guido's going to be utterly uninterested in votes. Of the syntaxes proposed on
the wiki, the only one I think is worth pursuing is the 'decorate:'
block before
the def. I just realised I never posted my problems with this form, as
I promised.
They are:

  -  a new keyword means a 'from future import decorators' for 2.4. (This is, I 
think, pretty much _required_)
  - I find the indentation counter-intuitive, but at the same time,
necessary for
this form. It's abusing indentation-means-new-block. Is that abuse better or 
worse than the pie-decorator applying to the next line? I don't know. 
  - the choice of 'decorate'/'transform'/something else as the keyword.

Please note that this post is _not_ to be considered a vote for, or against, any
of the forms.

FWIW, since the release of 2.4a2, I've sent something like 200 email messages
(including python-list/c.l.py) on the subject of decorators. To say
that I'm utterly
burned out on the entire issue is something of an understatement.

And to repeat a request I made to python-dev - please keep this voting thread
in comp.lang.python. Unless you have _new_ technical points to raise, please,
please do not flood python-dev with further "I like this" or "I don't
like that" posts.