Re: [ctypes-users] Future plans for ctypes

[Lenard L. <le...@te...>]

On 22 Feb 2006 at 19:36, Thomas Heller wrote:

> Lenard Lindstrom wrote:
> > Congratulations on getting ctypes into the Python distribution.
> 
> Thanks, also for your suggestions.  Comments below.
> 
> > I have been following the discussed changes and this is just an idea. 
> > Why not release ctypes into the Python core library under a new name. 
> > There is certainly a precident with optparse.  Then it can have the 
> > interface you want. For backwards compatibility a ctypes wrapper 
> > package can be built around the core package, like wxPython is now 
> > built around wx. To me ctypes implies an alternative to the struct 
> > module. It certainly is not that. Is there some licensing reason it 
> > can't be named ffi?
> 
> There's no principal problem, afaik, to rename it to ffi.  But, I don't like
> this idea, although I will have to sleep over it.  IIRC, optik was renamed
> from optparse because the python-dev crowd did not like the name.
> 
Yes, the optik name was too "cute" if I remember correctly. But given 
that optik was past version 1.0 I assume that was all that changed 
from the user's perspective. I was simply suggesting a way to allow a 
clean release version of ctypes, less deprecated features and the 
questionable wintypes module, to be entered into the core library 
without breaking existing software. But if the impact will be small 
the name change is not justified.

[snip]
> > As for the wintypes issue, just call the module winsyns for Windows 
> > synonyms. Then you need only include stuff like DWORD and LPSTR. 
> > Windows structures can be omitted.
> 
> I don't like this name.  If it were possible, I would rename it from
> ctypes.wintypes into ctypes.windows, then other modules could be added
> if needed named ctypes.windows_ce, ctypes.windows64 and so on.
> 
Just suggesting a way to keep wintypes from becoming ungainly. Having 
a more specific name justifies limiting what goes into it.

Lenard Lindstrom
<le...@te...>