pygettext.py

This should have gone to the list.  Sorry about that.

Laura

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Alex Martelli:
> Not sure what snake-farm has to do with this so I'm answering privately:
> 
> pygettext.py is in Tools/i18n/ in the source distribution of Python 2.2.2 and
> many earlier version; if it doesn't get picked up in the binary distribution 
> it's because Tim Peters' procedure that builds the standard installers for
> Windows is quite picky about what it gets from the Tools and Demo
> directories.  I asked Tim a few months ago and he said something about
> there needing to be volunteers to test and maintain such tools &c on ALL
> Windows platforms we declare we support: e,g, /98, /SE, /NT4, /2000, /XP.
> 
> I demurred because I have nowhere like ALL of them around -- only /98
> and /XP right now -- and wasn't all that interested in donating a lot of my
> time to testing stuff particularly on platforms that seem designed to make
> automation of tests &c quite hard (the leaked Microsoft document about
> hotmail's migration to Windows is QUITE instructive in this respect -- and
> they only had to worry about ONE Windows version...).
> 
> Tim has good reasons for paranoia about differences between Windows
> platforms, of course -- e.g. the fact that, as the maintainer of the Windows
> installer, HE gets targeted by the zillion of bug reports from hapless users
> who don't even know how utterly different the Windows versions are under
> the covers.  I suspect that dealing with half a dozen issues of the kind "you
> r
> python thing works not under Thailand versions of Windows 95" (it takes a
> while even to elicit that much information from the typical Windows user bug
> report -- they NEVER tell you what exact version, language etc they have --
> the original reports are always "works not" PERIOD:-) is quite enough to
> remove anybody's motivation.  BTW, think3 recently switched to supporting
> /2000 and /XP only, at least officially, and I've seen enthusiasm about that
> in the development and support groups (NOT in the sales and marketing
> groups, but...:-).
> 
> 
> Alex

er, re: Not sure what snake-farm has to do with this

This is a module which is not included due to not enough testing,
correct?  And the Snake Farm claims to test things with the aim
of producing certified to run everywhere stuff.  And here we have
a real user who says that this belongs in Python, ie PIT -- he
thinks it belongs with all pythons, period.

Bingo.

This is a significant test case.  If we cannot get Tim happy enough to
support include pygettext.py based on the snake farm, then we will learn
(some of at least) what more we need to do with the snake farm in order 
to make Pythonlabs happy.  If we _can_ then it belongs in PIT.  Either
way we win.

Permission to post this whole note -- your reply and my reply to it
back to the snake farm mailing list?

(Alex said yes).

Laura

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