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Back to Jack -- and sorry for sitting on it so long.  
Clearly this isn't making it into 2.2 in the core.  As I 
said on Python-Dev, I believe this needs a PEP:  the design 
decisions are debatable, so *should* be debated outside the 
Mac community too.  Note, though, that I can't stop you 
from adding it to the 2.2 Mac distribution (if you want it 
badly enough there).

If a PEP won't be written, I suggest finding someone else 
to review it again; maybe Guido.  Note that the patch needs 
doc changes too.  The patch to regrtest.py doesn't belong 
here (I assume it just slipped in).  There seems a lot of 
code in support of the f_newlinetypes member, and the value 
of that member isn't clear -- I can't imagine a good use 
for it (maybe it's a Mac thing?).  The implementation of 
Py_UniversalNewlineFread appears incorrect to me:  it reads 
n bytes *every* time around the outer loop, no matter how 
few characters are still required, and n doesn't change 
inside the loop.  The business about the GIL may be due to 
the lack of docs:  are, or are not, people supposed to 
release the GIL themselves around calls to these guys?  
It's not documented, and it appears your intent differed 
from my guess.  Finally, it would be better to call ferror
() after calling fread() instead of before it <wink>.