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Diffstat (limited to 'Misc/NEWS')
| -rw-r--r-- | Misc/NEWS | 157 |
1 files changed, 12 insertions, 145 deletions
@@ -1,153 +1,20 @@ -===================================== -==> Release 1.3 (13 October 1995) <== -===================================== +====================================== +==> Release 1.4 (sometime 3Q 1996) <== +====================================== -Major change -============ +XXX This file still has to be updated! -Two words: Keyword Arguments. See the first section of Chapter 12 of -the Tutorial. +Some highlights: -(The rest of this file is textually the same as the remaining sections -of that chapter.) +- "make install" overhaul to install everything and use a version number +- new builtin modules operator, errno -Changes to the WWW and Internet tools -===================================== +- changes needed by Numeric Python extensions: -The "htmllib" module has been rewritten in an incompatible fashion. -The new version is considerably more complete (HTML 2.0 except forms, -but including all ISO-8859-1 entity definitions), and easy to use. -Small changes to "sgmllib" have also been made, to better match the -tokenization of HTML as recognized by other web tools. + - x[lo:hi:stride] + - x[a, b, c] + - x[a, ..., z] -A new module "formatter" has been added, for use with the new -"htmllib" module. + plus "ellipses" and "slice" objects -The "urllib"and "httplib" modules have been changed somewhat to allow -overriding unknown URL types and to support authentication. They now -use "mimetools.Message" instead of "rfc822.Message" to parse headers. -The "endrequest()" method has been removed from the HTTP class since -it breaks the interaction with some servers. - -The "rfc822.Message" class has been changed to allow a flag to be -passed in that says that the file is unseekable. - -The "ftplib" module has been fixed to be (hopefully) more robust on -Linux. - -Several new operations that are optionally supported by servers have -been added to "nntplib": "xover", "xgtitle", "xpath" and "date". - -Other Language Changes -====================== - -The "raise" statement now takes an optional argument which specifies -the traceback to be used when printing the exception's stack trace. -This must be a traceback object, such as found in "sys.exc_traceback". -When omitted or given as "None", the old behavior (to generate a stack -trace entry for the current stack frame) is used. - -The tokenizer is now more tolerant of alien whitespace. Control-L in -the leading whitespace of a line resets the column number to zero, -while Control-R just before the end of the line is ignored. - -Changes to Built-in Operations -============================== - -For file objects, "f.read(0)" and "f.readline(0)" now return an empty -string rather than reading an unlimited number of bytes. For the -latter, omit the argument altogether or pass a negative value. - -A new system variable, "sys.platform", has been added. It specifies -the current platform, e.g. "sunos5" or "linux1". - -The built-in functions "input()" and "raw_input()" now use the GNU -readline library when it has been configured (formerly, only -interactive input to the interpreter itself was read using GNU -readline). The GNU readline library provides elaborate line editing -and history. The Python debugger ("pdb") is the first beneficiary of -this change. - -Two new built-in functions, "globals()" and "locals()", provide access -to dictionaries containming current global and local variables, -respectively. (These augment rather than replace "vars()", which -returns the current local variables when called without an argument, -and a module's global variables when called with an argument of type -module.) - -The built-in function "compile()" now takes a third possible value for -the kind of code to be compiled: specifying "'single'" generates code -for a single interactive statement, which prints the output of -expression statements that evaluate to something else than "None". - -Library Changes -=============== - -There are new module "ni" and "ihooks" that support importing modules -with hierarchical names such as "A.B.C". This is enabled by writing -"import ni; ni.ni()" at the very top of the main program. These -modules are amply documented in the Python source. - -The module "rexec" has been rewritten (incompatibly) to define a class -and to use "ihooks". - -The "string.split()" and "string.splitfields()" functions are now the -same function (the presence or absence of the second argument -determines which operation is invoked); similar for "string.join()" -and "string.joinfields()". - -The "Tkinter" module and its helper "Dialog" have been revamped to use -keyword arguments. Tk 4.0 is now the standard. A new module -"FileDialog" has been added which implements standard file selection -dialogs. - -The optional built-in modules "dbm" and "gdbm" are more coordinated ---- their "open()" functions now take the same values for their "flag" -argument, and the "flag" and "mode" argument have default values (to -open the database for reading only, and to create the database with -mode "0666" minuse the umask, respectively). The memory leaks have -finally been fixed. - -A new dbm-like module, "bsddb", has been added, which uses the BSD DB -package's hash method. - -A portable (though slow) dbm-clone, implemented in Python, has been -added for systems where none of the above is provided. It is aptly -dubbed "dumbdbm". - -The module "anydbm" provides a unified interface to "bsddb", "gdbm", -"dbm", and "dumbdbm", choosing the first one available. - -A new extension module, "binascii", provides a variety of operations -for conversion of text-encoded binary data. - -There are three new or rewritten companion modules implemented in -Python that can encode and decode the most common such formats: "uu" -(uuencode), "base64" and "binhex". - -A module to handle the MIME encoding quoted-printable has also been -added: "quopri". - -The parser module (which provides an interface to the Python parser's -abstract syntax trees) has been rewritten (incompatibly) by Fred -Drake. It now lets you change the parse tree and compile the result! - -The \code{syslog} module has been upgraded and documented. - -Other Changes -============= - -The dynamic module loader recognizes the fact that different filenames -point to the same shared library and loads the library only once, so -you can have a single shared library that defines multiple modules. -(SunOS / SVR4 style shared libraries only.) - -Jim Fulton's ``abstract object interface'' has been incorporated into -the run-time API. For more detailes, read the files -"Include/abstract.h" and "Objects/abstract.c". - -The Macintosh version is much more robust now. - -Numerous things I have forgotten or that are so obscure no-one will -notice them anyway :-) |