Re: Python 3.x progress

On 12/3/2013 10:34 AM, Andy Robinson wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> More progress towards Python 3.3 compatibility, and some tentative
> decisions.  Shout now if any of these worry you.
>
> Many of the failing tests now relate to old demos or documentation
> tools I would prefer to simply get rid of.  After some debate
> internally about "using docutils" versus "eating our own dogfood", we
> want to keep the User Guide, which makes itself in PDF with no
> external dependencies, as it is our best test and a compelling demo.
>
> I am suggesting that we leave some things out of the next version...
>
> 1. Drop the auto-generated library reference (which walks through
> docstrings in a very weird manner).  Replace it with Sphinx
> documentation.
> 2. Drop the auto-generated graphics reference and replace with some
> Sphinx extension to the above.  It's just easier to browse this stuff
> on the web
> 3. Drop Pythonpoint, then possibly rebuild it later using new parser technology.
>
> We are hoping we might make an Ubuntu cut-off in February to get into 14.04.
>
> Other suggestions are welcome for "dead code" we could throw away.
>
> There is a separate issue on parsers used for paragraph content.  This
> will involve a choice about backwards compatibility.  The ideal
> engineering solution would be to demand strictly well-formed XML
> fragments when you construct a paragraph, and might punish anyone
> using ReportLab to print unquoted data.  But that will be another post
> in a few days.

My (mostly unhelpful) suggestion is to do whatever enables you to get it 
done the quickest.

I don't say that to be trite, but to recognize that it appears Python 3 
is nearing some critical mass of widespread usage where it will look bad 
on ReportLab if it is not ready.

I like the pdf User Guide, it is an excellent demonstration of its own 
ability.

Thanks for your hard work,
Michael Hipp
Heber Springs, Arkansas, USA