[Doc-SIG] PEP 258

[David Goodger]

On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 18:31, Greg Scaffidi <sgscaffidi3 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am working on a project for my Masters' Verification & Validation class.
>  The topic of the project is to explore the possibilities of implementing a
> modeling language for Python that supports Design-by-Contract and
> Unit-testing.  In my research, I came across the Docutils project.  I was
> wondering why the project was rejected from the PEP.  I also noticed that
> the Docstring Processing System Framework (PEP-256), was also rejected.  The
> reason given for the rejection of PEP-256 is that, "Proposal seems to have
> run out of steam."  Since PEP-256 serves as a, "Rationale" for PEP-258, I
> was also wondering if PEP-258 was rejected for the same reason.  Both
> projects seem like worthy pursuits.  What other reasons, if any, are there
> for rejecting them?

PEP 258's "Rejection Notice" states: "While this may serve as an
interesting design document for the now-independent docutils, it is no
longer slated for inclusion in the standard library." While relevant
to Docutils, PEP 258 is simply not relevant to Python the language or
Python's standard library.

As for PEP 256, it has effectively been implemented in Sphinx, which
uses Docutils.

Both projects are have been implemented, but outside of the standard
library, and that's just fine. When I wrote the PEPs I had the goal of
standard library inclusion, but that proved not to be so important.
Thanks to its own merits, some small initial nudges from me (like
proposing reST as a markup for PEPs themselves), and the efforts of
many people, Docutils & reStructuredText have become a standard in the
Python world.

-- 
David Goodger <http://python.net/~goodger>