Added dictionary.popitem() and the improved XML modules.

Reorder the smaller items, roughly in decreasing order of visibility to
   the Python coder
Finished an incomplete sentence.
Moved the unwritten sections down to the bottom.
Bumped version number and added acknowledgements

1 files changed, 41 insertions, 18 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex
index 88a45f9..25ea1f0 100644
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex
+++ b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 % $Id$
 
 \title{What's New in Python 2.1}
-\release{0.01}
+\release{0.03}
 \author{A.M. Kuchling}
 \authoraddress{\email{amk1@bigfoot.com}}
 \begin{document}
@@ -142,11 +142,6 @@ based on earlier work by David Ascher, and implemented by Guido van Rossum.}
 \end{seealso}
 
 % ======================================================================
-\section{XXX Nested Scopes ?}
-
-xxx
-
-% ======================================================================
 \section{PEP 230: Warning Framework}
 
 Over its 10 years of existence, Python has accumulated a certain
@@ -335,6 +330,13 @@ for line in sys.stdin.xreadlines():
 
 For a fuller discussion of the line I/O changes, see the python-dev
 summary for January 1-15, 2001.  
+
+\item A new method, \method{popitem()}, was added to dictionaries to enable 
+destructively iterating through the contents of a dictionary; this can be faster for large dictionaries because .  
+\code{D.popitem()} removes a random \code{(\var{key}, \var{value})} pair
+from the dictionary and returns it as a 2-tuple.  This was implemented
+mostly by Tim Peters and Guido van Rossum, after a suggestion and
+preliminary patch by Moshe Zadka.
  
 \item \module{curses.panel}, a wrapper for the panel library, part of
 ncurses and of SYSV curses, was contributed by Thomas Gellekum.  The
@@ -357,17 +359,15 @@ __all__ = ['Database', 'open']
 \end{verbatim}
 
 A stricter version of this patch was first suggested and implemented
-by Ben Wolfson, but after some python-dev discussion, this weaker final version 
+by Ben Wolfson, but after some python-dev discussion, a weaker
+final version was checked in.
 
-\item The \module{ftplib} module now defaults to retrieving files in passive mode,
-because passive mode is more likely to work from behind a firewall.
-This request came from the Debian bug tracking system, since other
-Debian packages use \module{ftplib} to retrieve files and then don't
-work from behind a firewall.  It's deemed unlikely that this will
-cause problems for anyone, because Netscape defaults to passive mode
-and few people complain, but if passive mode is unsuitable for your
-application or network setup, call
-\method{set_pasv(0)} on FTP objects to disable passive mode.  
+\item The PyXML package has gone through a few releases since Python
+2.0, and Python 2.1 includes an updated version of the \module{xml}
+package.  Some of the noteworthy changes include support for Expat
+1.2, the ability for Expat parsers to handle files in any encoding
+supported by Python, and various bugfixes for SAX, DOM, and the
+\module{minidom} module.
 
 \item Various functions in the \module{time} module, such as
 \function{asctime()} and \function{localtime()},
@@ -382,6 +382,18 @@ previously required.
  
 This change was proposed and implemented by Thomas Wouters.
 
+\item The \module{ftplib} module now defaults to retrieving files in passive mode,
+because passive mode is more likely to work from behind a firewall.
+This request came from the Debian bug tracking system, since other
+Debian packages use \module{ftplib} to retrieve files and then don't
+work from behind a firewall.  It's deemed unlikely that this will
+cause problems for anyone, because Netscape defaults to passive mode
+and few people complain, but if passive mode is unsuitable for your
+application or network setup, call
+\method{set_pasv(0)} on FTP objects to disable passive mode.  
+
+\item The size of the Unicode character database was compressed by another 55K thanks to Fredrik Lundh.
+
 \end{itemize}
 
 And there's the usual list of bugfixes, minor memory leaks, docstring
@@ -390,10 +402,21 @@ CVS logs for the full details if you want them.
 
 
 % ======================================================================
+\section{XXX Nested Scopes ?}
+
+xxx
+
+% ======================================================================
+\section{XXX Weak References ?}
+
+xxx
+
+% ======================================================================
 \section{Acknowledgements}
 
 The author would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions on various drafts of this article: Neil Schemenauer,
-Thomas Wouters.
+suggestions on various drafts of this article: Michael Hudson,
+Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg, 
+Neil Schemenauer, Thomas Wouters.
 
 \end{document}