Remove top-level sstruct and xmlWriter?

Now that extra_path=FontTools is gone from our setup.py (see https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools/pull/695), I would like to use this opportunity to also drop support for the stand-alone sstruct and xmlWriter modules that we still install to site-packages alongside the main fontTools package.

These were at some point moved by Behdad to their current location, inside fontTools.misc package, but they were subsequently restored to their original position (as aliases) after some users started complaining about sudden ImportErrors.

I think we can now safely drop those, as compatibility with the “sourceforge” fonttools is no longer so important.

Anybody who still relies on importing from those instead of the fontTools.misc.* counterparts, could keep using version 3.1.2. But future versions would no longer have them.

WDYT?

/cc @justvanrossum @LettError @typemytype @typesupply @benkiel

[anthrotype]

Well, my point of view is that ideally fontTools as a library should be self-contained in its own package. There might be historical reasons why sstruct and xmlWriter were put outside of the core fontTools package. But now I think we could all agree on moving those inside it for good. It’s not such a big deal to change one line in the code, no?

[anthrotype]

I’m going to proceed removing the top-level sstruct and xmlWriter aliases in the 3.3.0 release in the next few days, if nobody has objections.