metaclass and customization with parameters

[Anna Martelli Ravenscroft]

Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 17:36:32 +0200, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>>Well, _this_ experienced writer keeps repeating this fact over and over
>>and over again in _his_ explanations (e.g., Nutshell p. 32: "Unlike
>>other languages, Python has no declarations"), but of course that
>>doesn't help all that much if one's explanations just aren't read.
> 
> 
> I can only thank you for having pointed it out to me here at this
> newsgroup. I'm not fortunate enough to have a copy your books here
> with me :-) But even so -- this topic _should_ be better explained,
> and clarified, in the standard Python documentation.

There's much about the "standard Python documentation" that sucks rocks. 
OTOH - it doesn't suck as badly as most techie documentation, and 
besides, if it didn't occasionally need clarification, we wouldn't need 
to come posting here asking for help and meeting such wonderful people - 
so I can't really complain. Particularly considering that asking him to 
help me out on a (to me) obscure Python point (list.append returns None) 
was how I reconnected with this Italian guy I knew from the internet, 
which ended up with us getting married this summer... So, I REALLY can't 
complain too loudly... ;-)


> (as a side note,
> it's not only declarations and metaclasses; I've read Raymond
> Hettinger docs regarding descriptors, and I was left wondering why
> weren't it included into the standard documentation, in some form or
> other).

A lot of these things are pretty, erm, high-level issues - beginners 
don't need them, so it makes some sort of sense that they not be part of 
the standard "everybody needs it" documentation. After all, decorators 
are pretty new - afaik.

Anna