[Web-SIG] PEP 444 != WSGI 2.0

[Alice Bevan–McGregor]

On 2011-01-02 09:21:29 -0800, Guido van Rossum said:
> Alice hasn't posted a link to her rewrite of PEP 444 in a while. AFAICT 
> it's this: 
> https://github.com/GothAlice/wsgi2/blob/master/pep444.textile . I find 
> it a bit disturbing that the "official" copy of PEP 444 
> (http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0444/ ) hasn't been updated. This 
> is confusing for occasional observers (like myself), since the 
> python.org copy looks quite dead. It also is not in line with the PEP 
> workflow as written down in PEP 1 
> (http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0001/#pep-work-flow ).

I am unsure of the policy behind updating a PEP on the website from a 
partial (with glaring holes) source.  In my rewrite there are several 
sections that need to be fleshed out before I would consider pushing it 
up-stream.

I'm tentative that way.  ;)

> It is not reasonable to demand a discussion on IRC. In fact I think it 
> is one of the worst media for arriving agreement over a standard. IRC 
> doesn't have public logs for those who didn't participate in real time 
> (apparently intentionally so); it is pretty hostile to people who don't 
> use it regularly (I am one of those); it doesn't work well for people 
> in different timezones. Blog comments are not much better (they are 
> archived, but as a medium they get too much spam and are too scattered 
> to be worth tracking down for other participants); the web-sig mailing 
> list is the preferred forum.

Understood.

> If you are going to quote stuff from earlier in the thread and respond 
> to it using "you", please don't strip the attributions (or add them if 
> your mailer doesn't). Also it's best to keep the person you address in 
> the To: line of the message (or add them back if your mailer doesn't 
> automatically do this).

I do forget that not all newsreaders are the same, and that while mine 
may make quoted text relate to the threading of the messages, not all 
do.  Apologies.  Unfortunately, I subscribe and post using a Usenet 
news reader, so e-mail functionality is not included.  :/

> In order to fix some obvious flaws due to Python 3's different 
> treatment of bytes and text, a much less ambitious update was produced 
> as PEP 3333, and labeled WSGI 1.0.1. Although this is still marked as 
> draft, I personally think of it as accepted; it is really just a very 
> small set of clarifications and disambiguations of PEP 333, 
> specifically for the benefit of interoperability between WSGI 1.0 apps 
> and servers across the Python 2 / Python 3 boundary.

PEP 3333 is an excellent solution that should be quick to adopt.  My 
PEP 444 rewrite takes a fundamentally different approach in an attempt 
to simplify and solve broader problems than pure compatibility.

> In the mean time, Alice (understandably) has looked for other forums 
> where she got more feedback -- I may not like IRC, but I can see how 
> the general apathy on the web-sig is not exactly encouraging. (This is 
> a general problem with Python -- we always complain that there aren't 
> enough people to do the work, but when someone shows up and offers to 
> do some work, they don't get much support. On python-dev we've 
> acknowledged this and are trying to get better about it.)

I have recieved valuable input from a co-conspirator on IRC (who is on 
the other side of the world from me) and mentioning PEP 444 on other 
mailing lists (webpy, cherrypy, pylons) has garnered some interesting 
discussion.

> First, it would be great if Alice could prepare a version of her draft 
> in the format required for PEPs, and submit it to the PEP editors.

I will make this a priority.

> (If I were wrong about this, and Alice had an ax to grind, that would 
> change things, and it might even make sense to have multiple competing 
> proposals, each hopeful to once earn the WSGI 2.0 moniker. But I hope 
> not.)

Despite being a framework author, I am distinctly attempting to tackle 
PEP 444 from an independant viewpoint.  I want a workable solution for 
the majority-not nessicarily /everybody/-not something that caters only 
for solution A or solution B.  The HTTP/1.1 server I've written is, 
ATM, merely a platform from which to brainstorm ideas for PEP 444, and 
to check, using code, that 444 is viable.

> Alice, I hope you can live with these recommendations. While it may 
> place a burden on you to convert your draft to ReST and to have to 
> maintain it that way, I think there is a much better chance of an open 
> community discussion leading to a widely accepted standard if you start 
> following the PEP rules set out in PEP 1 (and a few other low-numbered 
> PEPs).

I'll give the low-numbered PEPs a thurough read through and reformat 
the rewrite using ReST; I knew I was going to have to do this anyway at 
some point.

	- Alice