python doesn't install

[Dave Farrance]

Tim Golden <mail at timgolden.me.uk> wrote:

>I'm afraid you've been bitten by the fact that we no longer support 
>Windows XP and haven't communicated this very well. We have a new 
>version of the installer almost ready for release which indicates this 
>much earlier (and more obviously). I'm afraid if you're on XP you're 
>limited to Python 3.4 and earlier, all of which are perfectly usable I'm 
>happy to say!

I've been reading the comments about Python and XP on this group -- and
I must say that I'm thinking: Doesn't pretty much every other Windows
software package tell you the minimum requirements -- because that's the
first thing you'd want to know?

So I've Googled for "python 3.5 minimum requirements":

1st hit: "Using Python on Windows -- Python 3.5.0 documentation"
and a few paragraphs down that page there's:
"Python on XP --  7 Minutes to Hello World by Richard Dooling, 2006"
which says how easy it is to install on XP.

2nd hit: "Download Python -- Python.org"
There's download links but nothing about XP, but there's a link for
"Information about specific ports" -- so click on "Windows"
and no information actually, just more download links.

3rd hit: "Welcome to Python.org"
There's download links and no info about minimum requirements.

And so on down the page of Google hits.

Yes, I've read the justifications. Why list all the non-supported OSs?
And the explanation about each version of Python being supported just
for the supported versions of Windows upon its release is in the
documentation -- somewhere.  But it still seems to me that stating the
minimum requirements in a place that people would tend to look for it is
a... minimum requirement.

If the developers really are determined not to mention specific versions
of Windows (If it was me, I'd have probably mentioned that the most
recent version required Vista somewhere on the download page), then
maybe adding the comment about matching the release date of Python to
the supported versions of Windows to the download pages would give
people some sort of clue as to what's going on.