Current state of python.el in the Emacs trunk

[Christoph <cschol2112@googlemail.com>]

Hi,

There was a recent comment in another thread that the Python mode is 
currently poorly maintained, so I started looking into what the current 
state is and what it would take to improve it.

I noticed that the original author Dave Love has an updated version on 
his website, that, among other things, also supports Python 3. There is 
a note in the beginning of the file that this version is not covered by 
FSF copyright anymore. Can anybody (Dave?) shed some light on as to why 
there is such a big discrepancy between the Emacs version and Dave's 
version on his homepage?

Could we update the Emacs version with Dave's changes (if he agrees and 
the legal stuff is sorted out, of course)?

I would also like to volunteer to work on python.el by integrating 
Dave's changes, and work on other issues. For my own benefit, it would 
also be nice if it supported alternative implementations like 
IronPython, which right now it does not. There seems to be some support 
for Jython but just invoking the IronPython interpreter in Jython mode 
does not work and seems hokey, too.

Christoph