Well, it's still the case that the Python raw string syntax isn't going to change to not escape the quotes, because that would break far too many existing applications that depend on them being escaped.  So a new string literal type would seem to be the only option.  I'm going to close this issue again; if either of you want to pursue the new string literal type, please bring it up on python-ideas.  Frankly, I doubt you would get much traction, but I could be wrong :)