[Python-Dev] Sharing expat instances (original) (raw)

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Wed Dec 14 15:51:10 CET 2005

Michael McLay wrote:

On Wednesday 14 December 2005 01:05, Fredrik Lundh wrote:

Michael McLay wrote:

Avoiding imaginaary name collisions and putting cElementTree into the xml package there's nothing imaginary here -- cElementTree is an existing and quite popular module, and will remain available as a separate distribution. it would be nice if people could install that kit also under 2.5 without risking to mess up their Python installation. (another solution would of course to rule out use of cElementTree by modules shipped with Python...) Renaming the cElementTree in the standard distribution to etree would elmiinate collisions with the existing cElementTree. A few other names to consider would be xmltree or xmlTree. Or, if the consensus is to keep it in the xml package, the name could still be shorted to calling it xml.tree. Average name lengths in the standard distribution are getting longer. In some cases the longer names are very helpful when browsing the module index. For instance, the function of SimpleXMLRPCServer is immediately apparent. To me, the purpose of a package named ElementTree isn't as apparent. While there is value in having meaningful names, there is also an advantage in having names short for commonly used tools. Imagine how painful it would be to type Operatingsystem instead of os. The name xmltree would be shorter and as descriptive as xml.cElementTree. The name etree would be shorter, but less descriptive.

Which reminds me, what about the idea of reducing certain packages (Carbon, dostutils and email come to mind) to just a single entry in the global module index and adding a first-level TOC at the beginning of that section of content?

Even if we then have to call it the global package and module index!

regards Steve

Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/

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