On 28 Jan, 02:05, ajaksu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hmmm. Seems to me that "Is X Standardized" in the given context means > having a formal, published standard issued by some Standards > organization. While you can discuss the meaning of some so-called > standards (like W3C's 'recommendations', RFCs, etc.), Python, IMHO, > doesn't fit the label. There is no "Standard" to reference that is > implementation, documentation and core-dev's opinion independent to a > reasonable degree. > > I guess MilesAgain gives the best arguments regarding this issue.
Agreed. The supposed definition of Python is decided by the developers of CPython, which is why every other implementation has to chase behind that group making changes as the language definition shifts. You could argue that Java is in a similar situation: a controlling body with their own implementations, albeit with a process for suggesting changes and arguably more complete documentation. Looking at the table of languages, we see that Java is indeed categorised as not having a standard. Of course, one could contend that languages like C# aren't really standardised either, since everyone knows that ECMA standardisation is just a convenient rubber-stamping process, as we have seen with the adoption of "Office Open XML" (OOXML) as a standard by ECMA, whilst the ISO standardisation attempt for OOXML was sunk (despite Microsoft ballot-stuffing) due to glaring flaws in that so-called standard. As I probably pointed out before, people have advocated a standard for Python, such as a presenter at EuroPython 2006 who had been alarmed that features such as lambda which his team used extensively were at one point scheduled for removal from the language. Unfortunately, there hasn't been significant scope for differentiation between implementations of Python, so one could argue that demand for a standard hasn't yet reached a critical level, but I imagine that some kind of independent documentation of what Python (or a subset of Python) is may eventually emerge in some form or other. Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
