On 2/20/19, Thomas Jollans <t...@tjol.eu> wrote: > > I'm fairly sure "win32" was used on W9x as well. In any case it *was* > correct at the time, as early versions of Python also ran on DOS and > Windows 3.1. "windows" would not have been suitable.
DOS Python would be a separate platform. But if there was really a Windows 3.x version of Python, I wouldn't have a problem calling it a "Windows" platform. We could differentiate implementations via os.name ("win3", "win4", and "winnt" -- not "nt"). On a technical note, the NT subsystem name is "Windows", not "Win32", so there's that. > But yeah, we're stuck with it. There are obviously good reasons that it > wasn't changed when we moved to amd64, but it is annoying. The win-amd64 ABI is significantly different, but at the API level there isn't a drastic difference between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, so there's no cognitive burden with perpetuating the Win32 name. The official API name was actually changed to "Windows API" or WINAPI (or WinAPI). But it would require a massive effort to change the culture. There's no pressing need to expend that much time and energy over a name. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list