Emptied (in expectation of a laundry list of what's new in 1.5).

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 766 deletions

diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 87e1e04..e69de29 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -1,766 +0,0 @@
-=====================================
-==> Release 1.4 (October 25 1996) <==
-=====================================
-
-(Starting in reverse chronological order:)
-
-- Changed disclaimer notice.
-
-- Added SHELL=/bin/sh to Misc/Makefile.pre.in -- some Make versions
-default to the user's login shell.
-
-- In Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, removed bogus binding of <Delete> in Text
-widget, and bogus bspace() function.
-
-- In Lib/cgi.py, bumped __version__ to 2.0 and restored a truncated
-paragraph.
-
-- Fixed the NT Makefile (PC/vc40.mak) for VC 4.0 to set /MD for all
-subprojects, and to remove the (broken) experimental NumPy
-subprojects.
-
-- In Lib/py_compile.py, cast mtime to long() so it will work on Mac
-(where os.stat() returns mtimes as floats.)
-- Set self.rfile unbuffered (like self.wfile) in SocketServer.py, to
-fix POST in CGIHTTPServer.py.
-
-- Version 2.83 of Misc/python-mode.el for Emacs is included.
-
-- In Modules/regexmodule.c, fixed symcomp() to correctly handle a new
-group starting immediately after a group tag.
-
-- In Lib/SocketServer.py, changed the mode for rfile to unbuffered.
-
-- In Objects/stringobject.c, fixed the compare function to do the
-first char comparison in unsigned mode, for consistency with the way
-other characters are compared by memcmp().
-
-- In Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, fixed Scale.get() to support floats.
-
-- In Lib/urllib.py, fix another case where openedurl wasn't set.
-
-(XXX Sorry, the rest is in totally random order.  No time to fix it.)
-
-- SyntaxError exceptions detected during code generation
-(e.g. assignment to an expression) now include a line number.
-
-- Don't leave trailing / or \ in script directory inserted in front of
-sys.path.
-
-- Added a note to Tools/scripts/classfix.py abouts its historical
-importance.
-
-- Added Misc/Makefile.pre.in, a universal Makefile for extensions
-built outside the distribution.
-
-- Rewritten Misc/faq2html.py, by Ka-Ping Yee.
-
-- Install shared modules with mode 555 (needed for performance on some
-platforms).
-
-- Some changes to standard library modules to avoid calling append()
-with more than one argument -- while supported, this should be
-outlawed, and I don't want to set a bad example.
-
-- bdb.py (and hence pdb.py) supports calling run() with a code object
-instead of a code string.
-
-- Fixed an embarrassing bug cgi.py which prevented correct uploading
-of binary files from Netscape (which doesn't distinguish between
-binary and text files).  Also added dormant logging support, which
-makes it easier to debug the cgi module itself.
-
-- Added default writer to constructor of NullFormatter class.
-
-- Use binary mode for socket.makefile() calls in ftplib.py.
-
-- The ihooks module no longer "installs" itself upon import -- this
-was an experimental feature that helped ironing out some bugs but that
-slowed down code that imported it without the need to install it
-(e.g. the rexec module).  Also close the file in some cases and add
-the __file__ attribute to loaded modules.
-
-- The test program for mailbox.py is now more useful.
-
-- Added getparamnames() to Message class in mimetools.py -- it returns
-the names of parameters to the content-type header.
-
-- Fixed a typo in ni that broke the loop stripping "__." from names.
-
-- Fix sys.path[0] for scripts run via pdb.py's new main program.
-
-- profile.py can now also run a script, like pdb.
-
-- Fix a small bug in pyclbr -- don't add names starting with _ when
-emulating from ... import *.
-
-- Fixed a series of embarrassing typos in rexec's handling of standard
-I/O redirection.  Added some more "safe" built-in modules: cmath,
-errno, operator.
-
-- Fixed embarrassing typo in shelve.py.
-
-- Added SliceType and EllipsisType to types.py.
-
-- In urllib.py, added handling for error 301 (same as 302); added
-geturl() method to get the URL after redirection.
-
-- Fixed embarrassing typo in xdrlib.py.  Also fixed typo in Setup.in
-for _xdrmodule.c and removed redundant #include from _xdrmodule.c.
-
-- Fixed bsddbmodule.c to add binary mode indicator on platforms that
-have it.  This should make it working on Windows NT.
-
-- Changed last uses of #ifdef NT to #ifdef MS_WINDOWS or MS_WIN32,
-whatever applies.  Also rationalized some other tests for various MS
-platforms.
-
-- Added the sources for the NT installer script used for Python
-1.4beta3.  Not tested with this release, but better than nothing.
-
-- A compromise in pickle's defenses against Trojan horses: a
-user-defined function is now okay where a class is expected.  A
-built-in function is not okay, to prevent pickling something that
-will execute os.system("rm -f *") when unpickling.
-
-- dis.py will print the name of local variables referenced by local
-load/store/delete instructions.
-
-- Improved portability of SimpleHTTPServer module to non-Unix
-platform.
-
-- The thread.h interface adds an extra argument to down_sema().  This
-only affects other C code that uses thread.c; the Python thread module
-doesn't use semaphores (which aren't provided on all platforms where
-Python threads are supported).  Note: on NT, this change is not
-implemented.
-
-- Fixed some typos in abstract.h; corrected signature of
-PyNumber_Coerce, added PyMapping_DelItem.  Also fixed a bug in
-abstract.c's PyObject_CallMethod().
-
-- apply(classname, (), {}) now works even if the class has no
-__init__() method.
-
-- Implemented complex remainder and divmod() (these would dump core!).
-Conversion of complex numbers to int, long int or float now raises an
-exception, since there is no meaningful way to do it without losing
-information.
-
-- Fixed bug in built-in complex() function which gave the wrong result
-for two real arguments.
-
-- Change the hash algorithm for strings -- the multiplier is now
-1000003 instead of 3, which gives better spread for short strings.
-
-- New default path for Windows NT, the registry structure now supports
-default paths for different install packages.  (Mark Hammond -- the
-next PythonWin release will use this.)
-
-- Added more symbols to the python_nt.def file.
-
-- When using GNU readline, set rl_readline_name to "python".
-
-- The Ellipses built-in name has been renamed to Ellipsis -- this is
-the correct singular form.  Thanks to Ka-Ping Yee, who saved us from
-eternal embarrassment.
-
-- Bumped the PYTHON_API_VERSION to 1006, due to the Ellipses ->
-Ellipsis name change.
-
-- Updated the library reference manual.  Added documentation of
-restricted mode (rexec, Bastion) and the formatter module (for use
-with the htmllib module).  Fixed the documentation of htmllib
-(finally).
-
-- The reference manual is now maintained in FrameMaker.
-
-- Upgraded scripts Doc/partparse.py and Doc/texi2html.py.
-
-- Slight improvements to Doc/Makefile.
-
-- Added fcntl.lockf(). This should be used for Unix file locking
-instead of the posixfile module; lockf() is more portable.
-
-- The getopt module now supports long option names, thanks to Lars
-Wizenius.
-
-- Plenty of changes to Tkinter and Canvas, mostly due to Fred Drake
-and Nils Fischbeck.
-
-- Use more bits of time.time() in whrandom's default seed().
-
-- Performance hack for regex module's regs attribute.
-
-- Don't close already closed socket in socket module.
-
-- Correctly handle separators containing embedded nulls in
-strop.split, strop.find and strop.rfind.  Also added more detail to
-error message for strop.atoi and friends.
-
-- Moved fallback definition for hypot() to Python/hypot.c.
-
-- Added fallback definition for strdup, in Python/strdup.c.
-
-- Fixed some bugs where a function would return 0 to indicate an error
-where it should return -1.
-
-- Test for error returned by time.localtime(), and rationalized its MS
-tests.
-
-- Added Modules/Setup.local file, which is processed after Setup.
-
-- Corrected bug in toplevel Makefile.in -- execution of regen script
-would not use the right PATH and PYTHONPATH.
-
-- Various and sundry NeXT configuration changes (sigh).
-
-- Support systems where libreadline needs neither termcap nor curses.
-
-- Improved ld_so_aix script and python.exp file (for AIX).
-
-- More stringent test for working <stdarg.h> in configure script.
-
-- Removed Demo/www subdirectory -- it was totally out of date.
-
-- Improved demos and docs for Fred Drake's parser module; fixed one
-typo in the module itself.
-
-
-=========================================
-==> Release 1.4beta3 (August 26 1996) <==
-=========================================
-
-
-(XXX This is less readable that it should.  I promise to restructure
-it for the final 1.4 release.)
-
-
-What's new in 1.4beta3 (since beta2)?
--------------------------------------
-
-- Name mangling to implement a simple form of class-private variables.
-A name of the form "__spam" can't easily be used outside the class.
-(This was added in 1.4beta3, but left out of the 1.4beta3 release
-message.)
-
-- In urllib.urlopen(): HTTP URLs containing user:passwd@host are now
-handled correctly when using a proxy server.
-
-- In ntpath.normpath(): don't truncate to 8+3 format.
-
-- In mimetools.choose_boundary(): don't die when getuid() or getpid()
-aren't defined.
-
-- Module urllib: some optimizations to (un)quoting.
-
-- New module MimeWriter for writing MIME documents.
-
-- More changes to formatter module.
-
-- The freeze script works once again and is much more robust (using
-sys.prefix etc.).  It also supports a -o option to specify an
-output directory.
-
-- New module whichdb recognizes dbm, gdbm and bsddb/dbhash files.
-
-- The Doc/Makefile targets have been reorganized somewhat to remove the 
-insistence on always generating PostScript.
-
-- The texinfo to html filter (Doc/texi2html.py) has been improved somewhat.
-
-- "errors.h" has been renamed to "pyerrors.h" to resolve a long-standing 
-name conflict on the Mac.
-
-- Linking a module compiled with a different setting for Py_TRACE_REFS now 
-generates a linker error rather than a core dump.
-
-- The cgi module has a new convenience function print_exception(), which 
-formats a python exception using HTML.  It also fixes a bug in the 
-compatibility code and adds a dubious feature which makes it possible to 
-have two query strings, one in the URL and one in the POST data.
-
-- A subtle change in the unpickling of class instances makes it possible 
-to unpickle in restricted execution mode, where the __dict__ attribute is 
-not available (but setattr() is).
-
-- Documentation for os.path.splitext() (== posixpath.splitext()) has been 
-cleared up.  It splits at the *last* dot.
-
-- posixfile locking is now also correctly supported on AIX.
-
-- The tempfile module once again honors an initial setting of tmpdir.  It 
-now works on Windows, too.
-
-- The traceback module has some new functions to extract, format and print 
-the active stack.
-
-- Some translation functions in the urllib module have been made a little 
-less sluggish.
-
-- The addtag_* methods for Canvas widgets in Tkinter as well as in the 
-separate Canvas class have been fixed so they actually do something 
-meaningful.
-
-- A tiny _test() function has been added to Tkinter.py.
-
-- A generic Makefile for dynamically loaded modules is provided in the Misc 
-subdirectory (Misc/gMakefile).
-
-- A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs is provided.  See
-http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for details.  The
-separate file pyimenu.el is no longer needed, imenu support is folded
-into python-mode.el.
-
-- The configure script can finally correctly find the readline library in a 
-non-standard location.  The LDFLAGS variable is passed on the the Makefiles 
-from the configure script.
-
-- Shared libraries are now installed as programs (i.e. with executable 
-permission).  This is required on HP-UX and won't hurt on other systems.
-
-- The objc.c module is no longer part of the distribution.  Objective-C 
-support may become available as contributed software on the ftp site.
-
-- The sybase module is no longer part of the distribution.  A much
-improved sybase module is available as contributed software from the
-ftp site.
-
-- _tkinter is now compatible with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 patch1 on Windows and 
-Mac (don't use unpatched Tcl/Tk!).  The default line in the Setup.in file 
-now links with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 rather than 7.4/4.0.
-
-- In Setup, you can now write "*shared*" instead of "*noconfig*", and you 
-can use *.so and *.sl as shared libraries.
-
-- Some more fidgeting for AIX shared libraries.
-
-- The mpz module is now compatible with GMP 2.x.  (Not tested by me.)
-(Note -- a complete replacement by Niels Mo"ller, called gpmodule, is
-available from the contrib directory on the ftp site.)
-
-- A warning is written to sys.stderr when a __del__ method raises an 
-exception (formerly, such exceptions were completely ignored).
-
-- The configure script now defines HAVE_OLD_CPP if the C preprocessor is 
-incapable of ANSI style token concatenation and stringification.
-
-- All source files (except a few platform specific modules) are once again 
-compatible with K&R C compilers as well as ANSI compilers.  In particular,
-ANSI-isms have been removed or made conditional in complexobject.c, 
-getargs.c and operator.c.
-
-- The abstract object API has three new functions, PyObject_DelItem, 
-PySequence_DelItem, and PySequence_DelSlice.
-
-- The operator module has new functions delitem and delslice, and the 
-functions "or" and "and" are renamed to "or_" and "and_" (since "or" and 
-"and" are reserved words).  ("__or__" and "__and__" are unchanged.)
-
-- The environment module is no longer supported; putenv() is now a function 
-in posixmodule (also under NT).
-
-- Error in filter(<function>, "") has been fixed.
-
-- Unrecognized keyword arguments raise TypeError, not KeyError.
-
-- Better portability, fewer bugs and memory leaks, fewer compiler warnings, 
-some more documentation.
-
-- Bug in float power boundary case (0.0 to the negative integer power) 
-fixed.
-
-- The test of negative number to the float power has been moved from the 
-built-in pow() functin to floatobject.c (so complex numbers can yield the 
-correct result).
-
-- The bug introduced in beta2 where shared libraries loaded (using 
-dlopen()) from the current directory would fail, has been fixed.
-
-- Modules imported as shared libraries now also have a __file__ attribute, 
-giving the filename from which they were loaded.  The only modules without 
-a __file__ attribute now are built-in modules.
-
-- On the Mac, dynamically loaded modules can end in either ".slb" or 
-".<platform>.slb" where <platform> is either "CFM68K" or "ppc".  The ".slb" 
-extension should only be used for "fat" binaries.
-
-- C API addition: marshal.c now supports 
-PyMarshal_WriteObjectToString(object).
-
-- C API addition: getargs.c now supports
-PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(args, kwdict, format, kwnames, ...)
-to parse keyword arguments.
-
-- The PC versioning scheme (sys.winver) has changed once again.  the 
-version number is now "<digit>.<digit>.<digit>.<apiversion>", where the 
-first three <digit>s are the Python version (e.g. "1.4.0" for Python 1.4, 
-"1.4.1" for Python 1.4.1 -- the beta level is not included) and 
-<apiversion> is the four-digit PYTHON_API_VERSION (currently 1005).
-
-- h2py.py accepts whitespace before the # in CPP directives
-
-- On Solaris 2.5, it should now be possible to use either Posix threads or 
-Solaris threads (XXX: how do you select which is used???).  (Note: the 
-Python pthreads interface doesn't fully support semaphores yet -- anyone 
-care to fix this?)
-
-- Thread support should now work on AIX, using either DCE threads or 
-pthreads.
-
-- New file Demo/sockets/unicast.py
-
-- Working Mac port, with CFM68K support, with Tk 4.1 support (though not 
-both) (XXX)
-
-- New project setup for PC port, now compatible with PythonWin, with 
-_tkinter and NumPy support (XXX)
-
-- New module site.py (XXX)
-
-- New module xdrlib.py and optional support module _xdrmodule.c (XXX)
-
-- parser module adapted to new grammar, complete w/ Doc & Demo (XXX)
-
-- regen script fixed (XXX)
-
-- new machdep subdirectories Lib/{aix3,aix4,next3_3,freebsd2,linux2} (XXX)
-
-- testall now also tests math module (XXX)
-
-- string.atoi c.s. now raise an exception for an empty input string.
-
-- At last, it is no longer necessary to define HAVE_CONFIG_H in order to 
-have config.h included at various places.
-
-- Unrecognized keyword arguments now raise TypeError rather than KeyError.
-
-- The makesetup script recognizes files with extension .so or .sl as
-(shared) libraries.
-
-- 'access' is no longer a reserved word, and all code related to its 
-implementation is gone (or at least #ifdef'ed out).  This should make 
-Python a little speedier too!
-
-- Performance enhancements suggested by Sjoerd Mullender.  This includes 
-the introduction of two new optional function pointers in type object, 
-getattro and setattro, which are like getattr and setattr but take a 
-string object instead of a C string pointer.
-
-- New operations in string module: lstrip(s) and rstrip(s) strip whitespace 
-only on the left or only on the right, A new optional third argument to 
-split() specifies the maximum number of separators honored (so 
-splitfields(s, sep, n) returns a list of at most n+1 elements).  (Since 
-1.3, splitfields(s, None) is totally equivalent to split(s).)
-string.capwords() has an optional second argument specifying the 
-separator (which is passed to split()).
-
-- regsub.split() has the same addition as string.split().  regsub.splitx(s, 
-sep, maxsep) implements the functionality that was regsub.split(s, 1) in 
-1.4beta2 (return a list containing the delimiters as well as the words).
-
-- Final touch for AIX loading, rewritten Misc/AIX-NOTES.
-
-- In Modules/_tkinter.c, when using Tk 4.1 or higher, use className
-argument to _tkinter.create() to set Tcl's argv0 variable, so X
-resources use the right resource class again.
-
-- Add #undef fabs to Modules/mathmodule.c for macintosh.
-
-- Added some macro renames for AIX in Modules/operator.c.
-
-- Removed spurious 'E' from Doc/liberrno.tex.
-
-- Got rid of some cruft in Misc/ (dlMakefile, pyimenu.el); added new
-Misc/gMakefile and new version of Misc/python-mode.el.
-
-- Fixed typo in Lib/ntpath.py (islink has "return false" which gives a
-NameError).
-
-- Added missing "from types import *" to Lib/tkinter/Canvas.py.
-
-- Added hint about using default args for __init__ to pickle docs.
-
-- Corrected typo in Inclide/abstract.h: PySequence_Lenth ->
-PySequence_Length.
-
-- Some improvements to Doc/texi2html.py.
-
-- In Python/import.c, Cast unsigned char * in struct _frozen to char *
-in calls to rds_object().
-
-- In doc/ref4.tex, added note about scope of lambda bodies.
-
-What's new in 1.4beta2 (since beta1)?
--------------------------------------
-
-- Portability bug in the md5.h header solved.
-
-- The PC build procedure now really works, and sets sys.platform to a
-meaningful value (a few things were botched in beta 1).  Lib/dos_8x3
-is now a standard part of the distribution (alas).
-
-- More improvements to the installation procedure.  Typing "make install" 
-now inserts the version number in the pathnames of almost everything 
-installed, and creates the machine dependent modules (FCNTL.py etc.) if not 
-supplied by the distribution.  (XXX There's still a problem with the latter 
-because the "regen" script requires that Python is installed.  Some manual 
-intervention may still be required.) (This has been fixed in 1.4beta3.)
-
-- New modules: errno, operator (XXX).
-
-- Changes for use with Numerical Python: builtin function slice() and
-Ellipses object, and corresponding syntax:
-
-	x[lo:hi:stride]		==	x[slice(lo, hi, stride)]
-	x[a, ..., z]		==	x[(a, Ellipses, z)]
-
-- New documentation for errno and cgi mdoules.
-
-- The directory containing the script passed to the interpreter is
-inserted in from of sys.path; "." is no longer a default path
-component.
-
-- Optional third string argument to string.translate() specifies
-characters to delete.  New function string.maketrans() creates a
-translation table for translate() or for regex.compile().
-
-- Module posix (and hence module os under Unix) now supports putenv().
-Moreover, module os is enhanced so that if putenv() is supported,
-assignments to os.environ entries make the appropriate putenv() call.
-(XXX the putenv() implementation can leak a small amount of memory per
-call.)
-
-- pdb.py can now be invoked from the command line to debug a script:
-python pdb.py <script> <arg> ...
-
-- Much improved parseaddr() in rfc822.
-
-- In cgi.py, you can now pass an alternative value for environ to
-nearly all functions.
-
-- You can now assign to instance variables whose name begins and ends
-with '__'.
-
-- New version of Fred Drake's parser module and associates (token,
-symbol, AST).
-
-- New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number (again!).
-
-- The "complex" internal structure type is now called "Py_complex" to
-avoid name conflicts.
-
-- Numerous small bugs fixed.
-
-- Slight pickle speedups.
-
-- Some slight speedups suggested by Sjoerd (more coming in 1.4 final).
-
-- NeXT portability mods by Bill Bumgarner integrated.
-
-- Modules regexmodule.c, bsddbmodule.c and xxmodule.c have been
-converted to new naming style.
-
-
-What's new in 1.4beta1 (since 1.3)?
------------------------------------
-
-- Added sys.platform and sys.exec_platform for Bill Janssen.
-
-- Installation has been completely overhauled.  "make install" now installs 
-everything, not just the python binary.  Installation uses the install-sh 
-script (borrowed from X11) to install each file.
-
-- New functions in the posix module: mkfifo, plock, remove (== unlink),
-and ftruncate.  More functions are also available under NT.
-
-- New function in the fcntl module: flock.
-
-- Shared library support for FreeBSD.
-
-- The --with-readline option can now be used without a DIRECTORY argument, 
-for systems where libreadline.* is in one of the standard places.  It is 
-also possible for it to be a shared library.
-
-- The extension tkinter has been renamed to _tkinter, to avoid confusion 
-with Tkinter.py oncase insensitive file systems.  It now supports Tk 4.1 as 
-well as 4.0.
-
-- Author's change of address from CWI in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to 
-CNRI in Reston, VA, USA.
-
-- The math.hypot() function is now always available (if it isn't found in 
-the C math library, Python provides its own implementation).
-
-- The latex documentation is now compatible with latex2e, thanks to David 
-Ascher.
-
-- The expression x**y is now equivalent to pow(x, y).
-
-- The indexing expression x[a, b, c] is now equivalent to x[(a, b, c)].
-
-- Complex numbers are now supported.  Imaginary constants are written with 
-a 'j' or 'J' prefix, general complex numbers can be formed by adding a real 
-part to an imaginary part, like 3+4j.  Complex numbers are always stored in 
-floating point form, so this is equivalent to 3.0+4.0j.  It is also 
-possible to create complex numbers with the new built-in function 
-complex(re, [im]).  For the footprint-conscious, complex number support can 
-be disabled by defining the symbol WITHOUT_COMPLEX.
-
-- New built-in function list() is the long-awaited counterpart of tuple().
-
-- There's a new "cmath" module which provides the same functions as the 
-"math" library but with complex arguments and results.  (There are very 
-good reasons why math.sqrt(-1) still raises an exception -- you have to use 
-cmath.sqrt(-1) to get 1j for an answer.)
-
-- The Python.h header file (which is really the same as allobjects.h except 
-it disables support for old style names) now includes several more files, 
-so you have to have fewer #include statements in the average extension.
-
-- The NDEBUG symbol is no longer used.  Code that used to be dependent on 
-the presence of NDEBUG is now present on the absence of DEBUG.  TRACE_REFS 
-and REF_DEBUG have been renamed to Py_TRACE_REFS and Py_REF_DEBUG, 
-respectively.  At long last, the source actually compiles and links without 
-errors when this symbol is defined.
-
-- Several symbols that didn't follow the new naming scheme have been 
-renamed (usually by adding to rename2.h) to use a Py or _Py prefix.  There 
-are no external symbols left without a Py or _Py prefix, not even those 
-defined by sources that were incorporated from elsewhere (regexpr.c, 
-md5c.c).  (Macros are a different story...)
-
-- There are now typedefs for the structures defined in config.c and 
-frozen.c.
-
-- New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number.
-
-- New module Bastion.  (XXX)
-
-- Improved performance of StringIO module.
-
-- UserList module now supports + and * operators.
-
-- The binhex and binascii modules now actually work.
-
-- The cgi module has been almost totally rewritten and documented.
-It now supports file upload and a new data type to handle forms more 
-flexibly.
-
-- The formatter module (for use with htmllib) has been overhauled (again).
-
-- The ftplib module now supports passive mode and has doc strings.
-
-- In (ideally) all places where binary files are read or written, the file 
-is now correctly opened in binary mode ('rb' or 'wb') so the code will work 
-on Mac or PC.
-
-- Dummy versions of os.path.expandvars() and expanduser() are now provided 
-on non-Unix platforms.
-
-- Module urllib now has two new functions url2pathname and pathname2url 
-which turn local filenames into "file:..." URLs using the same rules as 
-Netscape (why be different).  it also supports urlretrieve() with a 
-pathname parameter, and honors the proxy environment variables (http_proxy 
-etc.).  The URL parsing has been improved somewhat, too.
-
-- Micro improvements to urlparse.  Added urlparse.urldefrag() which 
-removes a trailing ``#fragment'' if any.
-
-- The mailbox module now supports MH style message delimiters as well.
-
-- The mhlib module contains some new functionality: setcontext() to set the 
-current folder and parsesequence() to parse a sequence as commonly passed 
-to MH commands (e.g. 1-10 or last:5).
-
-- New module mimify for conversion to and from MIME format of email 
-messages.
-
-- Module ni now automatically installs itself when first imported -- this 
-is against the normal rule that modules should define classes and functions 
-but not invoke them, but appears more useful in the case that two 
-different, independent modules want to use ni's features.
-
-- Some small performance enhancements in module pickle.
-
-- Small interface change to the profile.run*() family of functions -- more 
-sensible handling of return values.
-
-- The officially registered Mac creator for Python files is 'Pyth'.  This 
-replaces 'PYTH' which was used before but never registered.
-
-- Added regsub.capwords().  (XXX)
-
-- Added string.capwords(), string.capitalize() and string.translate().  
-(XXX)
-
-- Fixed an interface bug in the rexec module: it was impossible to pass a 
-hooks instance to the RExec class.  rexec now also supports the dynamic 
-loading of modules from shared libraries.  Some other interfaces have been 
-added too.
-
-- Module rfc822 now caches the headers in a dictionary for more efficient 
-lookup.
-
-- The sgmllib module now understands a limited number of SGML "shorthands" 
-like <A/.../ for <A>...</A>.  (It's not clear that this was a good idea...)
-
-- The tempfile module actually tries a number of different places to find a 
-usable temporary directory.  (This was prompted by certain Linux 
-installations that appear to be missing a /usr/tmp directory.) [A bug in 
-the implementation that would ignore a pre-existing tmpdir global has been 
-fixed in beta3.]
-
-- Much improved and enhanved FileDialog module for Tkinter.
-
-- Many small changes to Tkinter, to bring it more in line with Tk 4.0 (as 
-well as Tk 4.1).
-
-- New socket interfaces include ntohs(), ntohl(), htons(), htonl(), and 
-s.dup().  Sockets now work correctly on Windows.  On Windows, the built-in 
-extension is called _socket and a wrapper module win/socket.py provides 
-"makefile()" and "dup()" functionality.  On Windows, the select module 
-works only with socket objects.
-
-- Bugs in bsddb module fixed (e.g. missing default argument values).
-
-- The curses extension now includes <ncurses.h> when available.
-
-- The gdbm module now supports opening databases in "fast" mode by 
-specifying 'f' as the second character or the mode string.
-
-- new variables sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix pass corresponding 
-configuration options / Makefile variables to the Python programmer.
-
-- The ``new'' module now supports creating new user-defined classes as well 
-as instances thereof.
-
-- The soundex module now sports get_soundex() to get the soundex value for an 
-arbitrary string (formerly it would only do soundex-based string 
-comparison) as well as doc strings.
-
-- New object type "cobject" to safely wrap void pointers for passing them 
-between various extension modules.
-
-- More efficient computation of float**smallint.
-
-- The mysterious bug whereby "x.x" (two occurrences of the same 
-one-character name) typed from the commandline would sometimes fail 
-mysteriously.
-
-- The initialization of the readline function can now be invoked by a C 
-extension through PyOS_ReadlineInit().
-
-- There's now an externally visible pointer PyImport_FrozenModules which 
-can be changed by an embedding application.
-
-- The argument parsing functions now support a new format character 'D' to 
-specify complex numbers.
-
-- Various memory leaks plugged and bugs fixed.
-
-- Improved support for posix threads (now that real implementations are 
-beginning to apepar).  Still no fully functioning semaphores.
-
-- Some various and sundry improvements and new entries in the Tools 
-directory.