New submission from Stephen Emslie:
distutils.util.rfc822_escape strips each line of its whitespace before
indenting, but this can mean losing meaningful whitespace, such as in
reStructuredText.
distutils uses rfc822_escape to escape fields in metadata, such as
PKG-INFO. This unfortunately means that you cant use reStructuredText
formatting in your long description (suggested in PEP345), or are
limited to a set that doesn't require indentation (no block quotes, etc.).
for example:
>>> rest = """
... a literal python block::
... >>> import this
... """
>>> print distutils.util.rfc822_escape(rest)
a literal python block::
>>> import this
I would be expecting this to look something like:
a literal python block::
>>> import this
It looks like this behavior was intentionally added in rev 20099, but
that was about 7 years ago - before reStructuredText and eggs. I
wonder if it makes sense to re-think that implementation with this
sort of metadata in mind, assuming this behavior isn't required to be
rfc822 compliant. I think it would certainly be a shame to miss out on
a good thing like proper (renderable) reST in our metadata.
Is distutils being over-cautious in flattening out all whitespace? A
w3c discussion on multiple lines in rfc822 [1] seems to suggest that
whitespace can be 'unfolded' safely, so it seems a shame to be
throwing it away when it can have important meaning.
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc822/3_Lexical.html
----------
components: Library (Lib)
messages: 61633
nosy: stephenemslie
severity: normal
status: open
title: meaningful whitespace can be lost in rfc822_escape
type: behavior
versions: Python 2.5
__________________________________
Tracker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue1923>
__________________________________
_______________________________________________
Python-bugs-list mailing list
Unsubscribe:
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
