I wrote a similar Python library (named yuri) a couple of months back: https://github.com/jparise/yuri

I was motivated to write it in response to one of Quora's Programming Challenges (http://www.quora.com/about/challenges). It seemed like a fun problem, and I had never had a good reason to read through the applicable RFCs. I wonder if furl was similarly motivated?

I don't find the standard library modules very difficult to use, however, so I haven't spent much more time on it since then.