> That's because wrap() suppresses extra whitespace by default. 

But the documentation for drop_whitespace clearly states that, after wrapping, "leading whitespace in the first line is always preserved, though."

> Once extra whitespace is suppressed, you are left with an empty text, meaning an empty list of lines. That's perfectly logical.

I wouldn't say that it is "perfectly" logical.  String methods that drop characters from the beginning or end of a string return an empty string for empty text.

>>> "   ".strip()
''

> Furthermore, by "fixing" this, you may break existing software.

Issue 1859 is an arguably larger change that will also break existing software, and that issue has been kept open.

One scenario to consider: if we agree to fix issue 1859 in some versions, might that change whether we should address this issue in those versions as well?