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| -rw-r--r-- | Misc/NEWS | 766 |
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@@ -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. |