Rewritten a bit for clarity, add a note about what you can set

func.__dict__ to, added a note in the open issues about support for
built-in function attributes, and included a link to the SF patch
#103123.

pep-0232.txt

@@ -30,12 +30,11 @@ Background
     attribute.  This convenience has been exploited over and over
     again, overloading docstrings with additional semantics.
 
-    For example, John Aycock[1] has written a system where docstrings
-    are used to define parsing rules.  Zope's ZPublisher ORB[2] uses
+    For example, John Aycock has written a system where docstrings are
+    used to define parsing rules[1].  Zope's ZPublisher ORB[2] uses
     docstrings to signal "publishable" methods, i.e. methods that can
-    be called through the web.  And Tim Peters[3] has developed a
-    system called doctest, where docstrings actually contain unit
-    tests.
+    be called through the web.  And Tim Peters has developed a system
+    called doctest[3], where docstrings actually contain unit tests.
 
     The problem with this approach is that the overloaded semantics
     may conflict with each other.  For example, if we wanted to add a
@@ -45,9 +44,9 @@ Background
 
 Proposal
 
-    This proposal simply adds a new dictionary to function objects,
-    called func_dict (a.k.a. __dict__).  This dictionary can be set
-    and get using ordinary attribute set and get syntax.
+    This proposal adds a new dictionary to function objects, called
+    func_dict (a.k.a. __dict__).  This dictionary can be set and get
+    using ordinary attribute set and get syntax.
 
     Unbound methods also gain set and get attribute syntax, but they
     modify the dictionary of the underlying function object.  When
@@ -57,6 +56,10 @@ Proposal
     the bound method, they are really shared by all bound methods, via
     the underlying function object.
 
+    A function object's __dict__ can also be set, but only to a
+    dictionary object (i.e. setting __dict__ to UserDict raises a
+    TypeError). 
+
 
 Examples
 
@@ -77,8 +80,8 @@ Examples
 	class C:
 	    def a(self):
 	        'just a docstring'
+            a.publish = 1
 
-	C.a.publish = 1
 	c = C()
 	if c.a.publish:
             publish(c.a())
@@ -86,7 +89,7 @@ Examples
 
 Other Uses
 
-    Paul Prescod enumerated a bunch of uses
+    Paul Prescod enumerated a bunch of other uses:
 
     http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2000-April/003364.html
 
@@ -96,10 +99,19 @@ Open Issues
     1) Should function attributes be settable or gettable when in
        restricted execution mode?  What about __dict__/func_dict?
 
-    2) __doc__ is the only function attribute that currently has
+    2) Should built-in functions have writable attributes?  The
+       current patch only supports attributes on user defined
+       (i.e. Python) functions and methods.  Adding support to
+       built-in functions isn't difficult -- it would essentially
+       mirror the implementation for user defined functions (i.e. we
+       add a PyObject* to the PyCFunctionObject struct and write
+       getattro and setattro functions to read and write them).
+
+    3) __doc__ is the only function attribute that currently has
        syntactic support for conveniently setting.  It may be
-       worthwhile to enhance the language for supporting easy function
-       attribute setting.  Here are some suggested syntaxes:
+       worthwhile to eventually enhance the language for supporting
+       easy function attribute setting.  Here are some syntaxes
+       suggested by PEP reviewers:
 
        def a {
            'publish' : 1,
@@ -116,7 +128,8 @@ Open Issues
             }
 
        It isn't currently clear if special syntax is necessary or
-       desirable.
+       desirable.  It would be sufficient to postpone syntactic
+       support for some future PEP.
 
 
 Dissenting Opinion
@@ -134,9 +147,9 @@ Dissenting Opinion
     - other ways to do it (e.g. mappings as class attributes)
     - useless until syntactic support is included
 
-    Countering some of these arguments is the observation that, with
-    the current implementation, __doc__ can in fact be set to any type
-    of object, so some semblance of writable function attributes are
+    Countering some of these arguments is the observation that with
+    vanilla Python 2.0, __doc__ can in fact be set to any type of
+    object, so some semblance of writable function attributes are
     already feasible.  But that approach is yet another corruption of
     __doc__.
 
@@ -153,7 +166,12 @@ Dissenting Opinion
 
 Reference Implementation
 
-    A reference implementation will be uploaded to SourceForge soon.
+    The reference implementation is available on SourceForge as a
+    patch against the Python CVS tree (patch #103123).  This patch
+    doesn't include the regrtest module and output file.  Those are
+    available upon request.
+
+    http://sourceforge.net/patch/?func=detailpatch&patch_id=103123&group_id=5470
 
 
 References