gh-64921: Clarify wording for open()'s newline arg (GH-96171)

(cherry picked from commit 4a74e6ab3885e7906cc5e0b15addc7779bc76249)

Co-authored-by: Stanley <46876382+slateny@users.noreply.github.com>

diff --git a/Doc/library/functions.rst b/Doc/library/functions.rst
index 4986d0a47e2ab4ee0f33abc28f2dd1ef46063240..635cffdc0baec245521523e78a4eb12f0ec9e028 100644 (file)
--- a/Doc/library/functions.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/functions.rst
@@ -1267,8 +1267,8 @@ are always available.  They are listed here in alphabetical order.
 
    .. _open-newline-parameter:
 
-   *newline* controls how :term:`universal newlines` mode works (it only
-   applies to text mode).  It can be ``None``, ``''``, ``'\n'``, ``'\r'``, and
+   *newline* determines how to parse newline characters from the stream.
+   It can be ``None``, ``''``, ``'\n'``, ``'\r'``, and
    ``'\r\n'``.  It works as follows:
 
    * When reading input from the stream, if *newline* is ``None``, universal