As an outsider this may be your perception, but this is not how python's documentation works.
> These documents are just informal prose.
Not true. They're the language spec. Every guaranteed behavior of python is described clearly and concretely in these documents.
> Are they sound?
Yes.
> Does my implementation match what they say?
Yes.
> Does CPython even match it?
Yes.
> Does anyone know?
Yes! There's a very rigorous and thorough set of unit tests that specifically test an implementation's ability to match precisely the behavior described in these documents. All implementations (that I'm aware of, eg. cpython, pypy, jython, etc) state which versions of the spec they are compatible with, in other words they pass the unit test suite for that version.
Further, the maintainers of python (and by that I mean, regular contributors to the python-dev mailing list, not a cabal of robed individuals in a cave somewhere) are deeply aware of the language of the spec, the way the test suite implements it, and the importance of maintaining this relationship.
> These documents are just informal prose.
Not true. They're the language spec. Every guaranteed behavior of python is described clearly and concretely in these documents.
> Are they sound?
Yes.
> Does my implementation match what they say?
Yes.
> Does CPython even match it?
Yes.
> Does anyone know?
Yes! There's a very rigorous and thorough set of unit tests that specifically test an implementation's ability to match precisely the behavior described in these documents. All implementations (that I'm aware of, eg. cpython, pypy, jython, etc) state which versions of the spec they are compatible with, in other words they pass the unit test suite for that version.
Further, the maintainers of python (and by that I mean, regular contributors to the python-dev mailing list, not a cabal of robed individuals in a cave somewhere) are deeply aware of the language of the spec, the way the test suite implements it, and the importance of maintaining this relationship.