Merged revisions 61672,61674,61676-61678,61681,61683-61684 via svnmerge from

svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/trunk

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  r61672 | brett.cannon | 2008-03-20 17:13:48 +0100 (Do, 20 Mär 2008) | 2 lines

  Gave Jerry Seutter svn access for general Python development.
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  r61674 | marc-andre.lemburg | 2008-03-20 18:31:36 +0100 (Do, 20 Mär 2008) | 7 lines

  If Mark Hammonds win32 tools are not available, try to use the _winreg module
  and sys.getwindowsversion() to get at the Windows version info.

  For the machine and processor uname() values, use the environment variables
  for these on Windows XP and later.
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  r61676 | marc-andre.lemburg | 2008-03-20 18:55:31 +0100 (Do, 20 Mär 2008) | 5 lines

  Add documentation for updated Windows support in win32_ver().

  Add documentation for linux_distribution() API.
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  r61677 | marc-andre.lemburg | 2008-03-20 19:08:00 +0100 (Do, 20 Mär 2008) | 2 lines

  Add news items for platform module changes.
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  r61678 | marc-andre.lemburg | 2008-03-20 19:58:14 +0100 (Do, 20 Mär 2008) | 3 lines

  Clarfiy the availability of the extended support for win32_ver() in Py2.6.
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  r61681 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-03-20 23:49:26 +0100 (Do, 20 Mär 2008) | 1 line

  Add lots of items
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  r61683 | eric.smith | 2008-03-21 00:04:04 +0100 (Fr, 21 Mär 2008) | 1 line

  Fixed PEP name.
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  r61684 | eric.smith | 2008-03-21 00:56:08 +0100 (Fr, 21 Mär 2008) | 1 line

  Comment how 'from __future__ import print_function' operates in 3.0.
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1 files changed, 24 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/library/platform.rst b/Doc/library/platform.rst
index bb1e672..22ac72d 100644
--- a/Doc/library/platform.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/platform.rst
@@ -187,8 +187,10 @@ Windows Platform
 
    .. note::
 
-      This function only works if Mark Hammond's :mod:`win32all` package is installed
-      and (obviously) only runs on Win32 compatible platforms.
+      Note: this function works best with Mark Hammond's
+      :mod:`win32all` package installed, but also on Python 2.3 and
+      later (support for this was added in Python 2.6). It obviously
+      only runs on Win32 compatible platforms.
 
 
 Win95/98 specific
@@ -222,13 +224,31 @@ Unix Platforms
 --------------
 
 
-.. function:: dist(distname='', version='', id='', supported_dists=('SuSE','debian','redhat','mandrake'))
+.. function:: dist(distname='', version='', id='', supported_dists=('SuSE','debian','redhat','mandrake',...))
 
    Tries to determine the name of the OS distribution name Returns a tuple
    ``(distname, version, id)`` which defaults to the args given as parameters.
 
-.. XXX Document linux_distribution()?
+   ``supported_dists`` may be given to define the set of Linux
+   distributions to look for. It defaults to a list of currently
+   supported Linux distributions identified by their release file
+   name.
 
+.. function:: linux_distribution(distname='', version='', id='', supported_dists=('SuSE','debian','redhat','mandrake',...), full_distribution_name=1)
+
+   Tries to determine the name of the Linux OS distribution name.
+
+   ``supported_dists`` may be given to define the set of Linux
+   distributions to look for. It defaults to a list of currently
+   supported Linux distributions identified by their release file
+   name.
+
+   If ``full_distribution_name`` is true (default), the full
+   distribution read from the OS is returned. Otherwise the short name
+   taken from ``supported_dists`` is used.
+
+   Returns a tuple ``(distname,version,id)`` which defaults to the
+   args given as parameters.
 
 .. function:: libc_ver(executable=sys.executable, lib='', version='', chunksize=2048)