> The "no header" thing is very much done on purpose, and it's
> documented in the upstream ElementTree documentation.

I'm sorry, where is that?
I can't find it either at
http://effbot.org/zone/pythondoc-elementtree-ElementTree.htm#elementtree.ElementTree.tostring-function
or
http://effbot.org/zone/pythondoc-elementtree-ElementTree.htm#elementtree.ElementTree.ElementTree.write-method

> I suggest dropping this "Python 3 exists in its own universe"
> nonsense; it's not very professional, and it's hurting Python, its
> users, and all third party developers.

Ha. There has been a very long temporal window (until 3.1, probably)
during which things were very much in flux and anyone with a
professional knowledge of elementtree and XML APIs could chime in and
point out any nonsense in py3k.

Now Python 3.1 is out and as a result py3k also has to ensure upwards
compatibility for its own APIs. Of course we can still make exceptions
if the alleged breakage is truly major. To me, it doesn't /seem/ to be
the case here.