FCL/interim/QEMU: comparison symbian-qemu-0.9.1-12/python-2.6.1/Misc/HISTORY

equal deleted inserted replaced

-:ffa851df0825
+:2fb8b9db1c86
+Python History
+--------------
+This file contains the release messages for previous Python releases.
+As you read on you go back to the dark ages of Python's history.
+(Note: news about 2.5c2 and later 2.5 releases is in the Misc/NEWS
+file of the release25-maint branch.)
+======================================================================
+What's New in Python 2.5 release candidate 1?
+=============================================
+*Release date: 17-AUG-2006*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Unicode objects will no longer raise an exception when being
+compared equal or unequal to a string and a UnicodeDecodeError
+exception occurs, e.g. as result of a decoding failure.
+Instead, the equal (==) and unequal (!=) comparison operators will
+now issue a UnicodeWarning and interpret the two objects as
+unequal. The UnicodeWarning can be filtered as desired using
+the warning framework, e.g. silenced completely, turned into an
+exception, logged, etc.
+Note that compare operators other than equal and unequal will still
+raise UnicodeDecodeError exceptions as they've always done.
+- Fix segfault when doing string formatting on subclasses of long.
+- Fix bug related to __len__ functions using values > 2**32 on 64-bit machines
+with new-style classes.
+- Fix bug related to __len__ functions returning negative values with
+classic classes.
+- Patch #1538606, Fix __index__() clipping.  There were some problems
+discovered with the API and how integers that didn't fit into Py_ssize_t
+were handled.  This patch attempts to provide enough alternatives
+to effectively use __index__.
+- Bug #1536021: __hash__ may now return long int; the final hash
+value is obtained by invoking hash on the long int.
+- Bug #1536786: buffer comparison could emit a RuntimeWarning.
+- Bug #1535165: fixed a segfault in input() and raw_input() when
+sys.stdin is closed.
+- On Windows, the PyErr_Warn function is now exported from
+the Python dll again.
+- Bug #1191458: tracing over for loops now produces a line event
+on each iteration.  Fixing this problem required changing the .pyc
+magic number.  This means that .pyc files generated before 2.5c1
+will be regenerated.
+- Bug #1333982: string/number constants were inappropriately stored
+in the byte code and co_consts even if they were not used, ie
+immediately popped off the stack.
+- Fixed a reference-counting problem in property().
+Library
+-------
+- Fix a bug in the ``compiler`` package that caused invalid code to be
+generated for generator expressions.
+- The distutils version has been changed to 2.5.0. The change to
+keep it programmatically in sync with the Python version running
+the code (introduced in 2.5b3) has been reverted. It will continue
+to be maintained manually as static string literal.
+- If the Python part of a ctypes callback function returns None,
+and this cannot be converted to the required C type, an exception is
+printed with PyErr_WriteUnraisable.  Before this change, the C
+callback returned arbitrary values to the calling code.
+- The __repr__ method of a NULL ctypes.py_object() no longer raises
+an exception.
+- uuid.UUID now has a bytes_le attribute. This returns the UUID in
+little-endian byte order for Windows. In addition, uuid.py gained some
+workarounds for clocks with low resolution, to stop the code yielding
+duplicate UUIDs.
+- Patch #1540892: site.py Quitter() class attempts to close sys.stdin
+before raising SystemExit, allowing IDLE to honor quit() and exit().
+- Bug #1224621: make tabnanny recognize IndentationErrors raised by tokenize.
+- Patch #1536071: trace.py should now find the full module name of a
+file correctly even on Windows.
+- logging's atexit hook now runs even if the rest of the module has
+already been cleaned up.
+- Bug #1112549, fix DoS attack on cgi.FieldStorage.
+- Bug #1531405, format_exception no longer raises an exception if
+str(exception) raised an exception.
+- Fix a bug in the ``compiler`` package that caused invalid code to be
+generated for nested functions.
+Extension Modules
+-----------------
+- Patch #1511317: don't crash on invalid hostname (alias) info.
+- Patch #1535500: fix segfault in BZ2File.writelines and make sure it
+raises the correct exceptions.
+- Patch # 1536908: enable building ctypes on OpenBSD/AMD64.  The
+'-no-stack-protector' compiler flag for OpenBSD has been removed.
+- Patch #1532975 was applied, which fixes Bug #1533481: ctypes now
+uses the _as_parameter_ attribute when objects are passed to foreign
+function calls.  The ctypes version number was changed to 1.0.1.
+- Bug #1530559, struct.pack raises TypeError where it used to convert.
+Passing float arguments to struct.pack when integers are expected
+now triggers a DeprecationWarning.
+Tests
+-----
+- test_socketserver should now work on cygwin and not fail sporadically
+on other platforms.
+- test_mailbox should now work on cygwin versions 2006-08-10 and later.
+- Bug #1535182: really test the xreadlines() method of bz2 objects.
+- test_threading now skips testing alternate thread stack sizes on
+platforms that don't support changing thread stack size.
+Documentation
+-------------
+- Patch #1534922: unittest docs were corrected and enhanced.
+Build
+-----
+- Bug #1535502, build _hashlib on Windows, and use masm assembler
+code in OpenSSL.
+- Bug #1534738, win32 debug version of _msi should be _msi_d.pyd.
+- Bug #1530448, ctypes build failure on Solaris 10 was fixed.
+C API
+-----
+- New API for Unicode rich comparisons: PyUnicode_RichCompare()
+- Bug #1069160.  Internal correctness changes were made to
+``PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc()``.  A test case was added, and
+the documentation was changed to state that the return value
+is always 1 (normal) or 0 (if the specified thread wasn't found).
+What's New in Python 2.5 beta 3?
+================================
+*Release date: 03-AUG-2006*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- _PyWeakref_GetWeakrefCount() now returns a Py_ssize_t; it previously
+returned a long (see PEP 353).
+- Bug #1515471: string.replace() accepts character buffers again.
+- Add PyErr_WarnEx() so C code can pass the stacklevel to warnings.warn().
+This provides the proper warning for struct.pack().
+PyErr_Warn() is now deprecated in favor of PyErr_WarnEx().
+- Patch #1531113: Fix augmented assignment with yield expressions.
+Also fix a SystemError when trying to assign to yield expressions.
+- Bug #1529871: The speed enhancement patch #921466 broke Python's compliance
+with PEP 302.  This was fixed by adding an ``imp.NullImporter`` type that is
+used in ``sys.path_importer_cache`` to cache non-directory paths and avoid
+excessive filesystem operations during imports.
+- Bug #1521947: When checking for overflow, ``PyOS_strtol()`` used some
+operations on signed longs that are formally undefined by C.
+Unfortunately, at least one compiler now cares about that, so complicated
+the code to make that compiler happy again.
+- Bug #1524310: Properly report errors from FindNextFile in os.listdir.
+- Patch #1232023: Stop including current directory in search
+path on Windows.
+- Fix some potential crashes found with failmalloc.
+- Fix warnings reported by Klocwork's static analysis tool.
+- Bug #1512814, Fix incorrect lineno's when code within a function
+had more than 255 blank lines.
+- Patch #1521179: Python now accepts the standard options ``--help`` and
+``--version`` as well as ``/?`` on Windows.
+- Bug #1520864: unpacking singleton tuples in a 'for' loop (for x, in) works
+again.  Fixing this problem required changing the .pyc magic number.
+This means that .pyc files generated before 2.5b3 will be regenerated.
+- Bug #1524317:  Compiling Python ``--without-threads`` failed.
+The Python core compiles again, and, in a build without threads, the
+new ``sys._current_frames()`` returns a dictionary with one entry,
+mapping the faux "thread id" 0 to the current frame.
+- Bug #1525447: build on MacOS X on a case-sensitive filesystem.
+Library
+-------
+- Fix #1693149.  Now you can pass several modules separated by
+comma to trace.py in the same --ignore-module option.
+- Correction of patch #1455898: In the mbcs decoder, set final=False
+for stream decoder, but final=True for the decode function.
+- os.urandom no longer masks unrelated exceptions like SystemExit or
+KeyboardInterrupt.
+- Bug #1525866: Don't copy directory stat times in
+shutil.copytree on Windows
+- Bug #1002398: The documentation for os.path.sameopenfile now correctly
+refers to file descriptors, not file objects.
+- The renaming of the xml package to xmlcore, and the import hackery done
+to make it appear at both names, has been removed.  Bug #1511497,
+#1513611, and probably others.
+- Bug #1441397: The compiler module now recognizes module and function
+docstrings correctly as it did in Python 2.4.
+- Bug #1529297:  The rewrite of doctest for Python 2.4 unintentionally
+lost that tests are sorted by name before being run.  This rarely
+matters for well-written tests, but can create baffling symptoms if
+side effects from one test to the next affect outcomes.  ``DocTestFinder``
+has been changed to sort the list of tests it returns.
+- The distutils version has been changed to 2.5.0, and is now kept
+in sync with sys.version_info[:3].
+- Bug #978833: Really close underlying socket in _socketobject.close.
+- Bug #1459963: urllib and urllib2 now normalize HTTP header names with
+title().
+- Patch #1525766: In pkgutil.walk_packages, correctly pass the onerror callback
+to recursive calls and call it with the failing package name.
+- Bug #1525817: Don't truncate short lines in IDLE's tool tips.
+- Patch #1515343: Fix printing of deprecated string exceptions with a
+value in the traceback module.
+- Resync optparse with Optik 1.5.3: minor tweaks for/to tests.
+- Patch #1524429: Use repr() instead of backticks in Tkinter again.
+- Bug #1520914: Change time.strftime() to accept a zero for any position in its
+argument tuple.  For arguments where zero is illegal, the value is forced to
+the minimum value that is correct.  This is to support an undocumented but
+common way people used  to fill in inconsequential information in the time
+tuple pre-2.4.
+- Patch #1220874: Update the binhex module for Mach-O.
+- The email package has improved RFC 2231 support, specifically for
+recognizing the difference between encoded (name*0*=<blah>) and non-encoded
+(name*0=<blah>) parameter continuations.  This may change the types of
+values returned from email.message.Message.get_param() and friends.
+Specifically in some cases where non-encoded continuations were used,
+get_param() used to return a 3-tuple of (None, None, string) whereas now it
+will just return the string (since non-encoded continuations don't have
+charset and language parts).
+Also, whereas % values were decoded in all parameter continuations, they are
+now only decoded in encoded parameter parts.
+- Bug #1517990: IDLE keybindings on MacOS X now work correctly
+- Bug #1517996: IDLE now longer shows the default Tk menu when a
+path browser, class browser or debugger is the frontmost window on MacOS X
+- Patch #1520294: Support for getset and member descriptors in types.py,
+inspect.py, and pydoc.py.  Specifically, this allows for querying the type
+of an object against these built-in types and more importantly, for getting
+their docstrings printed in the interactive interpreter's help() function.
+Extension Modules
+-----------------
+- Patch #1519025 and bug #926423: If a KeyboardInterrupt occurs during
+a socket operation on a socket with a timeout, the exception will be
+caught correctly.  Previously, the exception was not caught.
+- Patch #1529514: The _ctypes extension is now compiled on more
+openbsd target platforms.
+- The ``__reduce__()`` method of the new ``collections.defaultdict`` had
+a memory leak, affecting pickles and deep copies.
+- Bug #1471938: Fix curses module build problem on Solaris 8; patch by
+Paul Eggert.
+- Patch #1448199: Release interpreter lock in _winreg.ConnectRegistry.
+- Patch #1521817: Index range checking on ctypes arrays containing
+exactly one element enabled again.  This allows iterating over these
+arrays, without the need to check the array size before.
+- Bug #1521375: When the code in ctypes.util.find_library was
+run with root privileges, it could overwrite or delete
+/dev/null in certain cases; this is now fixed.
+- Bug #1467450: On Mac OS X 10.3, RTLD_GLOBAL is now used as the
+default mode for loading shared libraries in ctypes.
+- Because of a misspelled preprocessor symbol, ctypes was always
+compiled without thread support; this is now fixed.
+- pybsddb Bug #1527939: bsddb module DBEnv dbremove and dbrename
+methods now allow their database parameter to be None as the
+sleepycat API allows.
+- Bug #1526460: Fix socketmodule compile on NetBSD as it has a different
+bluetooth API compared with Linux and FreeBSD.
+Tests
+-----
+- Bug #1501330: Change test_ossaudiodev to be much more tolerant in terms of
+how long the test file should take to play.  Now accepts taking 2.93 secs
+(exact time) +/- 10% instead of the hard-coded 3.1 sec.
+- Patch #1529686: The standard tests ``test_defaultdict``, ``test_iterlen``,
+``test_uuid`` and ``test_email_codecs`` didn't actually run any tests when
+run via ``regrtest.py``. Now they do.
+Build
+-----
+- Bug #1439538: Drop usage of test -e in configure as it is not portable.
+Mac
+---
+- PythonLauncher now works correctly when the path to the script contains
+characters that are treated specially by the shell (such as quotes).
+- Bug #1527397: PythonLauncher now launches scripts with the working directory
+set to the directory that contains the script instead of the user home
+directory. That latter was an implementation accident and not what users
+expect.
+What's New in Python 2.5 beta 2?
+================================
+*Release date: 11-JUL-2006*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Bug #1441486: The literal representation of -(sys.maxint - 1)
+again evaluates to a int object, not a long.
+- Bug #1501934: The scope of global variables that are locally assigned
+using augmented assignment is now correctly determined.
+- Bug #927248: Recursive method-wrapper objects can now safely
+be released.
+- Bug #1417699: Reject locale-specific decimal point in float()
+and atof().
+- Bug #1511381: codec_getstreamcodec() in codec.c is corrected to
+omit a default "error" argument for NULL pointer.  This allows
+the parser to take a codec from cjkcodecs again.
+- Bug #1519018: 'as' is now validated properly in import statements.
+- On 64 bit systems, int literals that use less than 64 bits are
+now ints rather than longs.
+- Bug #1512814, Fix incorrect lineno's when code at module scope
+started after line 256.
+- New function ``sys._current_frames()`` returns a dict mapping thread
+id to topmost thread stack frame.  This is for expert use, and is
+especially useful for debugging application deadlocks.  The functionality
+was previously available in Fazal Majid's ``threadframe`` extension
+module, but it wasn't possible to do this in a wholly threadsafe way from
+an extension.
+Library
+-------
+- Bug #1257728: Mention Cygwin in distutils error message about a missing
+VS 2003.
+- Patch #1519566: Update turtle demo, make begin_fill idempotent.
+- Bug #1508010: msvccompiler now requires the DISTUTILS_USE_SDK
+environment variable to be set in order to the SDK environment
+for finding the compiler, include files, etc.
+- Bug #1515998: Properly generate logical ids for files in bdist_msi.
+- warnings.py now ignores ImportWarning by default
+- string.Template() now correctly handles tuple-values. Previously,
+multi-value tuples would raise an exception and single-value tuples would
+be treated as the value they contain, instead.
+- Bug #822974: Honor timeout in telnetlib.{expect,read_until}
+even if some data are received.
+- Bug #1267547: Put proper recursive setup.py call into the
+spec file generated by bdist_rpm.
+- Bug #1514693: Update turtle's heading when switching between
+degrees and radians.
+- Reimplement turtle.circle using a polyline, to allow correct
+filling of arcs.
+- Bug #1514703: Only setup canvas window in turtle when the canvas
+is created.
+- Bug #1513223: .close() of a _socketobj now releases the underlying
+socket again, which then gets closed as it becomes unreferenced.
+- Bug #1504333: Make sgmllib support angle brackets in quoted
+attribute values.
+- Bug #853506: Fix IPv6 address parsing in unquoted attributes in
+sgmllib ('[' and ']' were not accepted).
+- Fix a bug in the turtle module's end_fill function.
+- Bug #1510580: The 'warnings' module improperly required that a Warning
+category be either a types.ClassType and a subclass of Warning.  The proper
+check is just that it is a subclass with Warning as the documentation states.
+- The compiler module now correctly compiles the new try-except-finally
+statement (bug #1509132).
+- The wsgiref package is now installed properly on Unix.
+- A bug was fixed in logging.config.fileConfig() which caused a crash on
+shutdown when fileConfig() was called multiple times.
+- The sqlite3 module did cut off data from the SQLite database at the first
+null character before sending it to a custom converter. This has been fixed
+now.
+Extension Modules
+-----------------
+- #1494314: Fix a regression with high-numbered sockets in 2.4.3. This
+means that select() on sockets > FD_SETSIZE (typically 1024) work again.
+The patch makes sockets use poll() internally where available.
+- Assigning None to pointer type fields in ctypes structures possible
+overwrote the wrong fields, this is fixed now.
+- Fixed a segfault in _ctypes when ctypes.wintypes were imported
+on non-Windows platforms.
+- Bug #1518190: The ctypes.c_void_p constructor now accepts any
+integer or long, without range checking.
+- Patch #1517790: It is now possible to use custom objects in the ctypes
+foreign function argtypes sequence as long as they provide a from_param
+method, no longer is it required that the object is a ctypes type.
+- The '_ctypes' extension module now works when Python is configured
+with the --without-threads option.
+- Bug #1513646: os.access on Windows now correctly determines write
+access, again.
+- Bug #1512695: cPickle.loads could crash if it was interrupted with
+a KeyboardInterrupt.
+- Bug #1296433: parsing XML with a non-default encoding and
+a CharacterDataHandler could crash the interpreter in pyexpat.
+- Patch #1516912: improve Modules support for OpenVMS.
+Build
+-----
+- Automate Windows build process for the Win64 SSL module.
+- 'configure' now detects the zlib library the same way as distutils.
+Previously, the slight difference could cause compilation errors of the
+'zlib' module on systems with more than one version of zlib.
+- The MSI compileall step was fixed to also support a TARGETDIR
+with spaces in it.
+- Bug #1517388: sqlite3.dll is now installed on Windows independent
+of Tcl/Tk.
+- Bug #1513032: 'make install' failed on FreeBSD 5.3 due to lib-old
+trying to be installed even though it's empty.
+Tests
+-----
+- Call os.waitpid() at the end of tests that spawn child processes in order
+to minimize resources (zombies).
+Documentation
+-------------
+- Cover ImportWarning, PendingDeprecationWarning and simplefilter() in the
+documentation for the warnings module.
+- Patch #1509163: MS Toolkit Compiler no longer available.
+- Patch #1504046: Add documentation for xml.etree.
+What's New in Python 2.5 beta 1?
+================================
+*Release date: 20-JUN-2006*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Patch #1507676: Error messages returned by invalid abstract object operations
+(such as iterating over an integer) have been improved and now include the
+type of the offending object to help with debugging.
+- Bug #992017: A classic class that defined a __coerce__() method that returned
+its arguments swapped would infinitely recurse and segfault the interpreter.
+- Fix the socket tests so they can be run concurrently.
+- Removed 5 integers from C frame objects (PyFrameObject).
+f_nlocals, f_ncells, f_nfreevars, f_stack_size, f_restricted.
+- Bug #532646: object.__call__() will continue looking for the __call__
+attribute on objects until one without one is found.  This leads to recursion
+when you take a class and set its __call__ attribute to an instance of the
+class.  Originally fixed for classic classes, but this fix is for new-style.
+Removes the infinite_rec_3 crasher.
+- The string and unicode methods startswith() and endswith() now accept
+a tuple of prefixes/suffixes to look for. Implements RFE #1491485.
+- Buffer objects, at the C level, never used the char buffer
+implementation even when the char buffer for the wrapped object was
+explicitly requested (originally returned the read or write buffer).
+Now a TypeError is raised if the char buffer is not present but is
+requested.
+- Patch #1346214: Statements like "if 0: suite" are now again optimized
+away like they were in Python 2.4.
+- Builtin exceptions are now full-blown new-style classes instead of
+instances pretending to be classes, which speeds up exception handling
+by about 80% in comparison to 2.5a2.
+- Patch #1494554: Update unicodedata.numeric and unicode.isnumeric to
+Unicode 4.1.
+- Patch #921466: sys.path_importer_cache is now used to cache valid and
+invalid file paths for the built-in import machinery which leads to
+fewer open calls on startup.
+- Patch #1442927: ``long(str, base)`` is now up to 6x faster for non-power-
+of-2 bases.  The largest speedup is for inputs with about 1000 decimal
+digits.  Conversion from non-power-of-2 bases remains quadratic-time in
+the number of input digits (it was and remains linear-time for bases
+2, 4, 8, 16 and 32).
+- Bug #1334662: ``int(string, base)`` could deliver a wrong answer
+when ``base`` was not 2, 4, 8, 10, 16 or 32, and ``string`` represented
+an integer close to ``sys.maxint``.  This was repaired by patch
+#1335972, which also gives a nice speedup.
+- Patch #1337051: reduced size of frame objects.
+- PyErr_NewException now accepts a tuple of base classes as its
+"base" parameter.
+- Patch #876206: function call speedup by retaining allocated frame
+objects.
+- Bug #1462152: file() now checks more thoroughly for invalid mode
+strings and removes a possible "U" before passing the mode to the
+C library function.
+- Patch #1488312, Fix memory alignment problem on SPARC in unicode
+- Bug #1487966: Fix SystemError with conditional expression in assignment
+- WindowsError now has two error code attributes: errno, which carries
+the error values from errno.h, and winerror, which carries the error
+values from winerror.h. Previous versions put the winerror.h values
+(from GetLastError()) into the errno attribute.
+- Patch #1475845: Raise IndentationError for unexpected indent.
+- Patch #1479181: split open() and file() from being aliases for each other.
+- Patch #1497053 & bug #1275608: Exceptions occurring in ``__eq__()``
+methods were always silently ignored by dictionaries when comparing keys.
+They are now passed through (except when using the C API function
+``PyDict_GetItem()``, whose semantics did not change).
+- Bug #1456209: In some obscure cases it was possible for a class with a
+custom ``__eq__()`` method to confuse dict internals when class instances
+were used as a dict's keys and the ``__eq__()`` method mutated the dict.
+No, you don't have any code that did this ;-)
+Extension Modules
+-----------------
+- Bug #1295808: expat symbols should be namespaced in pyexpat
+- Patch #1462338: Upgrade pyexpat to expat 2.0.0
+- Change binascii.hexlify to accept a read-only buffer instead of only a char
+buffer and actually follow its documentation.
+- Fixed a potentially invalid memory access of CJKCodecs' shift-jis decoder.
+- Patch #1478788 (modified version): The functional extension module has
+been renamed to _functools and a functools Python wrapper module added.
+This provides a home for additional function related utilities that are
+not specifically about functional programming. See PEP 309.
+- Patch #1493701: performance enhancements for struct module.
+- Patch #1490224: time.altzone is now set correctly on Cygwin.
+- Patch #1435422: zlib's compress and decompress objects now have a
+copy() method.
+- Patch #1454481: thread stack size is now tunable at runtime for thread
+enabled builds on Windows and systems with Posix threads support.
+- On Win32, os.listdir now supports arbitrarily-long Unicode path names
+(up to the system limit of 32K characters).
+- Use Win32 API to implement os.{access,chdir,chmod,mkdir,remove,rename,rmdir,utime}.
+As a result, these functions now raise WindowsError instead of OSError.
+- ``time.clock()`` on Win64 should use the high-performance Windows
+``QueryPerformanceCounter()`` now (as was already the case on 32-bit
+Windows platforms).
+- Calling Tk_Init twice is refused if the first call failed as that
+may deadlock.
+- bsddb: added the DB_ARCH_REMOVE flag and fixed db.DBEnv.log_archive() to
+accept it without potentially using an uninitialized pointer.
+- bsddb: added support for the DBEnv.log_stat() and DBEnv.lsn_reset() methods
+assuming BerkeleyDB >= 4.0 and 4.4 respectively.  [pybsddb project SF
+patch numbers 1494885 and 1494902]
+- bsddb: added an interface for the BerkeleyDB >= 4.3 DBSequence class.
+[pybsddb project SF patch number 1466734]
+- bsddb: fix DBCursor.pget() bug with keyword argument names when no data
+parameter is supplied.  [SF pybsddb bug #1477863]
+- bsddb: the __len__ method of a DB object has been fixed to return correct
+results.  It could previously incorrectly return 0 in some cases.
+Fixes SF bug 1493322 (pybsddb bug 1184012).
+- bsddb: the bsddb.dbtables Modify method now raises the proper error and
+aborts the db transaction safely when a modifier callback fails.
+Fixes SF python patch/bug #1408584.
+- bsddb: multithreaded DB access using the simple bsddb module interface
+now works reliably.  It has been updated to use automatic BerkeleyDB
+deadlock detection and the bsddb.dbutils.DeadlockWrap wrapper to retry
+database calls that would previously deadlock. [SF python bug #775414]
+- Patch #1446489: add support for the ZIP64 extensions to zipfile.
+- Patch #1506645: add Python wrappers for the curses functions
+is_term_resized, resize_term and resizeterm.
+Library
+-------
+- Patch #815924: Restore ability to pass type= and icon= in tkMessageBox
+functions.
+- Patch #812986: Update turtle output even if not tracing.
+- Patch #1494750: Destroy master after deleting children in
+Tkinter.BaseWidget.
+- Patch #1096231: Add ``default`` argument to Tkinter.Wm.wm_iconbitmap.
+- Patch #763580: Add name and value arguments to Tkinter variable
+classes.
+- Bug #1117556: SimpleHTTPServer now tries to find and use the system's
+mime.types file for determining MIME types.
+- Bug #1339007: Shelf objects now don't raise an exception in their
+__del__ method when initialization failed.
+- Patch #1455898: The MBCS codec now supports the incremental mode for
+double-byte encodings.
+- ``difflib``'s ``SequenceMatcher.get_matching_blocks()`` was changed to
+guarantee that adjacent triples in the return list always describe
+non-adjacent blocks.  Previously, a pair of matching blocks could end
+up being described by multiple adjacent triples that formed a partition
+of the matching pair.
+- Bug #1498146: fix optparse to handle Unicode strings in option help,
+description, and epilog.
+- Bug #1366250: minor optparse documentation error.
+- Bug #1361643: fix textwrap.dedent() so it handles tabs appropriately;
+clarify docs.
+- The wsgiref package has been added to the standard library.
+- The functions update_wrapper() and wraps() have been added to the functools
+module. These make it easier to copy relevant metadata from the original
+function when writing wrapper functions.
+- The optional ``isprivate`` argument to ``doctest.testmod()``, and the
+``doctest.is_private()`` function, both deprecated in 2.4, were removed.
+- Patch #1359618: Speed up charmap encoder by using a trie structure
+for lookup.
+- The functions in the ``pprint`` module now sort dictionaries by key
+before computing the display.  Before 2.5, ``pprint`` sorted a dictionary
+if and only if its display required more than one line, although that
+wasn't documented.  The new behavior increases predictability; e.g.,
+using ``pprint.pprint(a_dict)`` in a doctest is now reliable.
+- Patch #1497027: try HTTP digest auth before basic auth in urllib2
+(thanks for J. J. Lee).
+- Patch #1496206: improve urllib2 handling of passwords with respect to
+default HTTP and HTTPS ports.
+- Patch #1080727: add "encoding" parameter to doctest.DocFileSuite.
+- Patch #1281707: speed up gzip.readline.
+- Patch #1180296: Two new functions were added to the locale module:
+format_string() to get the effect of  "format % items" but locale-aware,
+and currency() to format a monetary number with currency sign.
+- Patch #1486962: Several bugs in the turtle Tk demo module were fixed
+and several features added, such as speed and geometry control.
+- Patch #1488881: add support for external file objects in bz2 compressed
+tarfiles.
+- Patch #721464: pdb.Pdb instances can now be given explicit stdin and
+stdout arguments, making it possible to redirect input and output
+for remote debugging.
+- Patch #1484695: Update the tarfile module to version 0.8. This fixes
+a couple of issues, notably handling of long file names using the
+GNU LONGNAME extension.
+- Patch #1478292. ``doctest.register_optionflag(name)`` shouldn't create a
+new flag when ``name`` is already the name of an option flag.
+- Bug #1385040: don't allow "def foo(a=1, b): pass" in the compiler
+package.
+- Patch #1472854: make the rlcompleter.Completer class usable on non-
+UNIX platforms.
+- Patch #1470846: fix urllib2 ProxyBasicAuthHandler.
+- Bug #1472827: correctly escape newlines and tabs in attribute values in
+the saxutils.XMLGenerator class.
+Build
+-----
+- Bug #1502728: Correctly link against librt library on HP-UX.
+- OpenBSD 3.9 is supported now.
+- Patch #1492356: Port to Windows CE.
+- Bug/Patch #1481770: Use .so extension for shared libraries on HP-UX for ia64.
+- Patch #1471883: Add --enable-universalsdk.
+C API
+-----
+Tests
+-----
+Tools
+-----
+Documentation
+-------------
+What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 2?
+=================================
+*Release date: 27-APR-2006*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Bug #1465834: 'bdist_wininst preinstall script support' was fixed
+by converting these apis from macros into exported functions again:
+PyParser_SimpleParseFile PyParser_SimpleParseString PyRun_AnyFile
+PyRun_AnyFileEx PyRun_AnyFileFlags PyRun_File PyRun_FileEx
+PyRun_FileFlags PyRun_InteractiveLoop PyRun_InteractiveOne
+PyRun_SimpleFile PyRun_SimpleFileEx PyRun_SimpleString
+PyRun_String Py_CompileString
+- Under COUNT_ALLOCS, types are not necessarily immortal anymore.
+- All uses of PyStructSequence_InitType have been changed to initialize
+the type objects only once, even if the interpreter is initialized
+multiple times.
+- Bug #1454485, array.array('u') could crash the interpreter.  This was
+due to PyArgs_ParseTuple(args, 'u#', ...) trying to convert buffers (strings)
+to unicode when it didn't make sense.  'u#' now requires a unicode string.
+- Py_UNICODE is unsigned.  It was always documented as unsigned, but
+due to a bug had a signed value in previous versions.
+- Patch #837242: ``id()`` of any Python object always gives a positive
+number now, which might be a long integer. ``PyLong_FromVoidPtr`` and
+``PyLong_AsVoidPtr`` have been changed accordingly.  Note that it has
+never been correct to implement a ``__hash()__`` method that returns the
+``id()`` of an object:
+def __hash__(self):
+return id(self)  # WRONG
+because a hash result must be a (short) Python int but it was always
+possible for ``id()`` to return a Python long.  However, because ``id()``
+could return negative values before, on a 32-bit box an ``id()`` result
+was always usable as a hash value before this patch.  That's no longer
+necessarily so.
+- Python on OS X 10.3 and above now uses dlopen() (via dynload_shlib.c)
+to load extension modules and now provides the dl module. As a result,
+sys.setdlopenflags() now works correctly on these systems. (SF patch
+#1454844)
+- Patch #1463867: enhanced garbage collection to allow cleanup of cycles
+involving generators that have paused outside of any ``try`` or ``with``
+blocks.  (In 2.5a1, a paused generator that was part of a reference
+cycle could not be garbage collected, regardless of whether it was
+paused in a ``try`` or ``with`` block.)
+Extension Modules
+-----------------
+- Patch #1191065: Fix preprocessor problems on systems where recvfrom
+is a macro.
+- Bug #1467952: os.listdir() now correctly raises an error if readdir()
+fails with an error condition.
+- Fixed bsddb.db.DBError derived exceptions so they can be unpickled.
+- Bug #1117761: bsddb.*open() no longer raises an exception when using
+the cachesize parameter.
+- Bug #1149413: bsddb.*open() no longer raises an exception when using
+a temporary db (file=None) with the 'n' flag to truncate on open.
+- Bug #1332852: bsddb module minimum BerkeleyDB version raised to 3.3
+as older versions cause excessive test failures.
+- Patch #1062014: AF_UNIX sockets under Linux have a special
+abstract namespace that is now fully supported.
+Library
+-------
+- Bug #1223937: subprocess.CalledProcessError reports the exit status
+of the process using the returncode attribute, instead of
+abusing errno.
+- Patch #1475231: ``doctest`` has a new ``SKIP`` option, which causes
+a doctest to be skipped (the code is not run, and the expected output
+or exception is ignored).
+- Fixed contextlib.nested to cope with exceptions being raised and
+caught inside exit handlers.
+- Updated optparse module to Optik 1.5.1 (allow numeric constants in
+hex, octal, or binary; add ``append_const`` action; keep going if
+gettext cannot be imported; added ``OptionParser.destroy()`` method;
+added ``epilog`` for better help generation).
+- Bug #1473760: ``tempfile.TemporaryFile()`` could hang on Windows, when
+called from a thread spawned as a side effect of importing a module.
+- The pydoc module now supports documenting packages contained in
+.zip or .egg files.
+- The pkgutil module now has several new utility functions, such
+as ``walk_packages()`` to support working with packages that are either
+in the filesystem or zip files.
+- The mailbox module can now modify and delete messages from
+mailboxes, in addition to simply reading them.  Thanks to Gregory
+K. Johnson for writing the code, and to the 2005 Google Summer of
+Code for funding his work.
+- The ``__del__`` method of class ``local`` in module ``_threading_local``
+returned before accomplishing any of its intended cleanup.
+- Patch #790710: Add breakpoint command lists in pdb.
+- Patch #1063914: Add Tkinter.Misc.clipboard_get().
+- Patch #1191700: Adjust column alignment in bdb breakpoint lists.
+- SimpleXMLRPCServer relied on the fcntl module, which is unavailable on
+Windows. Bug #1469163.
+- The warnings, linecache, inspect, traceback, site, and doctest modules
+were updated to work correctly with modules imported from zipfiles or
+via other PEP 302 __loader__ objects.
+- Patch #1467770: Reduce usage of subprocess._active to processes which
+the application hasn't waited on.
+- Patch #1462222: Fix Tix.Grid.
+- Fix exception when doing glob.glob('anything*/')
+- The pstats.Stats class accepts an optional stream keyword argument to
+direct output to an alternate file-like object.
+Build
+-----
+- The Makefile now has a reindent target, which runs reindent.py on
+the library.
+- Patch #1470875: Building Python with MS Free Compiler
+- Patch #1161914: Add a python-config script.
+- Patch #1324762:Remove ccpython.cc; replace --with-cxx with
+--with-cxx-main. Link with C++ compiler only if --with-cxx-main was
+specified. (Can be overridden by explicitly setting LINKCC.) Decouple
+CXX from --with-cxx-main, see description in README.
+- Patch #1429775: Link extension modules with the shared libpython.
+- Fixed a libffi build problem on MIPS systems.
+- ``PyString_FromFormat``, ``PyErr_Format``, and ``PyString_FromFormatV``
+now accept formats "%u" for unsigned ints, "%lu" for unsigned longs,
+and "%zu" for unsigned integers of type ``size_t``.
+Tests
+-----
+- test_contextlib now checks contextlib.nested can cope with exceptions
+being raised and caught inside exit handlers.
+- test_cmd_line now checks operation of the -m and -c command switches
+- The test_contextlib test in 2.5a1 wasn't actually run unless you ran
+it separately and by hand.  It also wasn't cleaning up its changes to
+the current Decimal context.
+- regrtest.py now has a -M option to run tests that test the new limits of
+containers, on 64-bit architectures. Running these tests is only sensible
+on 64-bit machines with more than two gigabytes of memory. The argument
+passed is the maximum amount of memory for the tests to use.
+Tools
+-----
+- Added the Python benchmark suite pybench to the Tools/ directory;
+contributed by Marc-Andre Lemburg.
+Documentation
+-------------
+- Patch #1473132: Improve docs for ``tp_clear`` and ``tp_traverse``.
+- PEP 343: Added Context Types section to the library reference
+and attempted to bring other PEP 343 related documentation into
+line with the implementation and/or python-dev discussions.
+- Bug #1337990: clarified that ``doctest`` does not support examples
+requiring both expected output and an exception.
+What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
+=================================
+*Release date: 05-APR-2006*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- PEP 338: -m command line switch now delegates to runpy.run_module
+allowing it to support modules in packages and zipfiles
+- On Windows, .DLL is not an accepted file name extension for
+extension modules anymore; extensions are only found if they
+end in .PYD.
+- Bug #1421664: sys.stderr.encoding is now set to the same value as
+sys.stdout.encoding.
+- __import__ accepts keyword arguments.
+- Patch #1460496: round() now accepts keyword arguments.
+- Fixed bug #1459029 - unicode reprs were double-escaped.
+- Patch #1396919: The system scope threads are reenabled on FreeBSD
+5.4 and later versions.
+- Bug #1115379: Compiling a Unicode string with an encoding declaration
+now gives a SyntaxError.
+- Previously, Python code had no easy way to access the contents of a
+cell object. Now, a ``cell_contents`` attribute has been added
+(closes patch #1170323).
+- Patch #1123430: Python's small-object allocator now returns an arena to
+the system ``free()`` when all memory within an arena becomes unused
+again.  Prior to Python 2.5, arenas (256KB chunks of memory) were never
+freed.  Some applications will see a drop in virtual memory size now,
+especially long-running applications that, from time to time, temporarily
+use a large number of small objects.  Note that when Python returns an
+arena to the platform C's ``free()``, there's no guarantee that the
+platform C library will in turn return that memory to the operating system.
+The effect of the patch is to stop making that impossible, and in tests it
+appears to be effective at least on Microsoft C and gcc-based systems.
+Thanks to Evan Jones for hard work and patience.
+- Patch #1434038: property() now uses the getter's docstring if there is
+no "doc" argument given. This makes it possible to legitimately use
+property() as a decorator to produce a read-only property.
+- PEP 357, patch 1436368: add an __index__ method to int/long and a matching
+nb_index slot to the PyNumberMethods struct.  The slot is consulted instead
+of requiring an int or long in slicing and a few other contexts, enabling
+other objects (e.g. Numeric Python's integers) to be used as slice indices.
+- Fixed various bugs reported by Coverity's Prevent tool.
+- PEP 352, patch #1104669: Make exceptions new-style objects.  Introduced the
+new exception base class, BaseException, which has a new message attribute.
+KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit to directly inherit from BaseException now.
+Raising a string exception now raises a DeprecationWarning.
+- Patch #1438387, PEP 328: relative and absolute imports. Imports can now be
+explicitly relative, using 'from .module import name' to mean 'from the same
+package as this module is in. Imports without dots still default to the
+old relative-then-absolute, unless 'from __future__ import
+absolute_import' is used.
+- Properly check if 'warnings' raises an exception (usually when a filter set
+to "error" is triggered) when raising a warning for raising string
+exceptions.
+- CO_GENERATOR_ALLOWED is no longer defined. This behavior is the default.
+The name was removed from Include/code.h.
+- PEP 308: conditional expressions were added: (x if cond else y).
+- Patch 1433928:
+- The copy module now "copies" function objects (as atomic objects).
+- dict.__getitem__ now looks for a __missing__ hook before raising
+KeyError.
+- PEP 343: with statement implemented. Needs ``from __future__ import
+with_statement``. Use of 'with' as a variable will generate a warning.
+Use of 'as' as a variable will also generate a warning (unless it's
+part of an import statement).
+The following objects have __context__ methods:
+- The built-in file type.
+- The thread.LockType type.
+- The following types defined by the threading module:
+Lock, RLock, Condition, Semaphore, BoundedSemaphore.
+- The decimal.Context class.
+- Fix the encodings package codec search function to only search
+inside its own package. Fixes problem reported in patch #1433198.
+Note: Codec packages should implement and register their own
+codec search function. PEP 100 has the details.
+- PEP 353: Using ``Py_ssize_t`` as the index type.
+- ``PYMALLOC_DEBUG`` builds now add ``4*sizeof(size_t)`` bytes of debugging
+info to each allocated block, since the ``Py_ssize_t`` changes (PEP 353)
+now allow Python to make use of memory blocks exceeding 2**32 bytes for
+some purposes on 64-bit boxes.  A ``PYMALLOC_DEBUG`` build was limited
+to 4-byte allocations before.
+- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
+This is how string objects work.  u'%f' could use , instead of .
+for the decimal point.  Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
+- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
+configure would break checking curses.h.
+- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
+built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
+- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
+- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
+- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
+- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
+This was not portable.  float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
+- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python.  New C API
+function Py_GetBuildNumber().  New attribute sys.subversion.  Build number
+is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
+- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
+"except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
+one try statement instead of two nested ones.  Patch #1355913.
+- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
+now encodes backslash correctly.
+- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
+- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correctly even with unsigned longs
+and long longs.
+- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
+It was possible for dlerror() to return a NULL pointer, so
+it will now use a default error message in this case.
+- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
+new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
+codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
+at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
+encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
+- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
+- Sped up some Unicode operations.
+- A new AST parser implementation was completed. The abstract
+syntax tree is available for read-only (non-compile) access
+to Python code; an _ast module was added.
+- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being produced for generator expressions.
+The following code now raises a SyntaxError:  foo(a = i for i in range(10))
+- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
+- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
+Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
+- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
+- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
+- All iterators now have a Boolean value of True.  Formerly, some iterators
+supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
+was empty.
+- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
+represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
+- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
+present).
+- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
+codes.
+- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
+with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289).  This also closes SF
+bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
+- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
+Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
+- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
+(fixes bug #1119418).
+- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
+- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
+exceptions that cause a function to exit.
+- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
+own internal data structure.  Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
+and there are modest speed-ups as well.  The API is unchanged.
+- SF bug #1238681:  freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
+- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
+reference counts in some error exit cases.
+- SF bug #1185883:  Python's small-object memory allocator took over
+a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
+a small new size.  However, there's no portable way to know then how
+much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so there's no
+portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
+small-object space without risking a memory fault.  Python's small-object
+realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
+realloc.
+- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
+attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
+- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
+like their int counterparts.
+- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
+Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
+interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
+http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
+for a longer write-up of the problem).
+- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
+serializing floats.
+- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
+the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
+of floats now simply copy bytes around.
+- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
+278.
+- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
+proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed.  Previously the
+magic slot was ignored during conversion.  Semantics now match the way
+subclasses of str always behaved.  int/long/float, conversion of an instance
+to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
+PyNumber_*().
+Thanks Walter D�rwald.
+- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
+NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
+attribute.  Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
+with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
+- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
+PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
+are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
+before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
+have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
+- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
+disabled caused a crash.
+- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
+with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
+- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
+fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
+- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
+- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
+(e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
+Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
+(thanks to logistix for that added support).
+- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
+- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
+returning None.
+- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
+('\') with a specific error message.
+- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
+- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
+inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
+- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
+an ferror() call.
+- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
+list.sort().
+- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
+(2+3) --> (5).
+- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled.  SF #1098985.
+- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
+in calls to os.read().
+- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
+positions.  It once again reports a syntax error if a future
+statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
+- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
+unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
+calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
+- Patch #1413181:  changed ``PyThreadState_Delete()`` to forget about the
+current thread state when the auto-GIL-state machinery knows about
+it (since the thread state is being deleted, continuing to remember it
+can't help, but can hurt if another thread happens to get created with
+the same thread id).
+Extension Modules
+-----------------
+- Patch #1380952: fix SSL objects timing out on consecutive read()s
+- Patch #1309579: wait3 and wait4 were added to the posix module.
+- Patch #1231053: The audioop module now supports encoding/decoding of alaw.
+In addition, the existing ulaw code was updated.
+- RFE #567972: Socket objects' family, type and proto properties are
+now exposed via new attributes.
+- Everything under lib-old was removed.  This includes the following modules:
+Para, addpack, cmp, cmpcache, codehack, dircmp, dump, find, fmt, grep,
+lockfile, newdir, ni, packmail, poly, rand, statcache, tb, tzparse,
+util, whatsound, whrandom, zmod
+- The following modules were removed:  regsub, reconvert, regex, regex_syntax.
+- re and sre were swapped, so help(re) provides full help.  importing sre
+is deprecated.  The undocumented re.engine variable no longer exists.
+- Bug #1448490: Fixed a bug that ISO-2022 codecs could not handle
+SS2 (single-shift 2) escape sequences correctly.
+- The unicodedata module was updated to the 4.1 version of the Unicode
+database. The 3.2 version is still available as unicodedata.db_3_2_0
+for applications that require this specific version (such as IDNA).
+- The timing module is no longer built by default.  It was deprecated
+in PEP 4 in Python 2.0 or earlier.
+- Patch 1433928: Added a new type, defaultdict, to the collections module.
+This uses the new __missing__ hook behavior added to dict (see above).
+- Bug #854823: socketmodule now builds on Sun platforms even when
+INET_ADDRSTRLEN is not defined.
+- Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify
+a "command verb" to invoke on the file.
+- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
+is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
+- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
+mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
+mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
+- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
+than the system default domain.
+- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
+are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
+WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
+- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
+- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
+before the env.
+- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
+- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
+- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
+Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
+The code now conforms to the documented signature.
+- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
+without prior setting of the userptr.
+- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
+- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
+- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
+problem on AIX.
+- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
+- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
+- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
+- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
+REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
+- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
+BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
+- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
+- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
+- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
+but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
+- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
+- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
+FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
+- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
+returns in cStringIO.c.
+- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
+MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
+- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
+- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
+- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
+the file system encoding.
+- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
+platforms that don't have inet_aton().
+- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
+- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
+line without newlines.
+- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
+on Windows.
+- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
+st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
+- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
+the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
+for large or negative values.
+- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
+implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
+- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
+- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
+if available on the platform.
+- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
+available on the platform.
+- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
+were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
+- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
+- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
+multiple fields.  This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
+keys (primary, secondary, etc).
+- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
+- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
+in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
+- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
+file size.
+- Added functional.partial().  See PEP309.
+- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
+{remove_history,replace_history}
+- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
+database.
+- stat_float_times is now True.
+- array.array objects are now picklable.
+- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
+args tuple returned by __reduce__().
+- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
+This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
+islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
+- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
+create datetime object using a string and format.
+- Patch #1117961: Replace the MD5 implementation from RSA Data Security Inc
+with the implementation from http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmd5-rfc/.
+Library
+-------
+- Patch #1388073: Numerous __-prefixed attributes of unittest.TestCase have
+been renamed to have only a single underscore prefix.  This was done to
+make subclassing easier.
+- PEP 338: new module runpy defines a run_module function to support
+executing modules which provide access to source code or a code object
+via the PEP 302 import mechanisms.
+- The email module's parsedate_tz function now sets the daylight savings
+flag to -1 (unknown) since it can't tell from the date whether it should
+be set.
+- Patch #624325: urlparse.urlparse() and urlparse.urlsplit() results
+now sport attributes that provide access to the parts of the result.
+- Patch #1462498: sgmllib now handles entity and character references
+in attribute values.
+- Added the sqlite3 package. This is based on pysqlite2.1.3, and provides
+a DB-API interface in the standard library. You'll need sqlite 3.0.8 or
+later to build this - if you have an earlier version, the C extension
+module will not be built.
+- Bug #1460340: ``random.sample(dict)`` failed in various ways.  Dicts
+aren't officially supported here, and trying to use them will probably
+raise an exception some day.  But dicts have been allowed, and "mostly
+worked", so support for them won't go away without warning.
+- Bug #1445068: getpass.getpass() can now be given an explicit stream
+argument to specify where to write the prompt.
+- Patch #1462313, bug #1443328: the pickle modules now can handle classes
+that have __private names in their __slots__.
+- Bug #1250170: mimetools now handles socket.gethostname() failures gracefully.
+- patch #1457316: "setup.py upload" now supports --identity to select the
+key to be used for signing the uploaded code.
+- Queue.Queue objects now support .task_done() and .join() methods
+to make it easier to monitor when daemon threads have completed
+processing all enqueued tasks.  Patch #1455676.
+- popen2.Popen objects now preserve the command in a .cmd attribute.
+- Added the ctypes ffi package.
+- email 4.0 package now integrated.  This is largely the same as the email 3.0
+package that was included in Python 2.3, except that PEP 8 module names are
+now used (e.g. mail.message instead of email.Message).  The MIME classes
+have been moved to a subpackage (e.g. email.mime.text instead of
+email.MIMEText).  The old names are still supported for now.  Several
+deprecated Message methods have been removed and lots of bugs have been
+fixed.  More details can be found in the email package documentation.
+- Patches #1436130/#1443155: codecs.lookup() now returns a CodecInfo object
+(a subclass of tuple) that provides incremental decoders and encoders
+(a way to use stateful codecs without the stream API). Python functions
+codecs.getincrementaldecoder() and codecs.getincrementalencoder() as well
+as C functions PyCodec_IncrementalEncoder() and PyCodec_IncrementalDecoder()
+have been added.
+- Patch #1359365: Calling next() on a closed StringIO.String object raises
+a ValueError instead of a StopIteration now (like file and cString.String do).
+cStringIO.StringIO.isatty() will raise a ValueError now if close() has been
+called before (like file and StringIO.StringIO do).
+- A regrtest option -w was added to re-run failed tests in verbose mode.
+- Patch #1446372: quit and exit can now be called from the interactive
+interpreter to exit.
+- The function get_count() has been added to the gc module, and gc.collect()
+grew an optional 'generation' argument.
+- A library msilib to generate Windows Installer files, and a distutils
+command bdist_msi have been added.
+- PEP 343: new module contextlib.py defines decorator @contextmanager
+and helpful context managers nested() and closing().
+- The compiler package now supports future imports after the module docstring.
+- Bug #1413790: zipfile now sanitizes absolute archive names that are
+not allowed by the specs.
+- Patch #1215184: FileInput now can be given an opening hook which can
+be used to control how files are opened.
+- Patch #1212287: fileinput.input() now has a mode parameter for
+specifying the file mode input files should be opened with.
+- Patch #1215184: fileinput now has a fileno() function for getting the
+current file number.
+- Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional
+translation functions other than _() in the builtin namespace.
+- Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames.
+- Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than
+two gigabytes.
+- Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers.
+- Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty
+return address using smtplib.
+- Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed
+in pydoc.
+- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
+unless the system is Win32.
+- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
+specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
+are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
+- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
+- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
+- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
+- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
+any more.
+- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
+when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
+- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
+- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
+- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
+LoadError as documented, instead of IOError.  For compatibility,
+LoadError subclasses IOError.
+- Added the hashlib module.  It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
+SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512.  Note that recent developments make the
+historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
+In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
+Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
+"The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
+expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
+is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
+that research should continue, and other alternatives may
+arise from this research.  The larger SHA's also seem OK."
+- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package.  Available
+modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
+xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
+- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
+- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
+- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
+is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
+illegal argument)
+- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
+is an error in the format string.
+- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
+- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
+"parent" argument.
+- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
+for padding.
+- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
+socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
+- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
+to get the correct encoding.
+- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
+languages.
+- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
+- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
+- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
+- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
+functionality.
+- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
+- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
+separator and do not output trailing semicolon.
+- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
+ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
+match the Content-Length header.
+- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
+- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
+even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
+correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
+- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
+- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
+- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
+to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
+- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
+__hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
+Tkdnd.
+- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
+docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
+- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
+parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
+- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
+Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
+- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
+to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
+- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
+as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
+- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module;
+it can be missing in embedded interpreters
+- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
+- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
+error messages.
+- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
+- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
+Bug #1224621.
+- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
+roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python source code.  In addition,
+the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
+terminates by raising StopIteration.
+- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
+- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
+component of the path.
+- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
+support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects.  With use_datetime set
+to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
+class at all.
+- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
+files to PyPI.
+- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
+them to PyPI.
+- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
+instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types.  This
+allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
+work as expected.
+- Bug #1163325:  Decimal infinities failed to hash.  Attempting to
+hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
+- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
+stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
+- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
+- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
+to build.
+- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
+symbolic links on Windows.
+- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
+profile.py if available.
+- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
+- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
+in LWPCookieJar.
+- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
+- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
+- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
+- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
+- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
+- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
+- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
+- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib.  Patch #1116583.
+- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001).  This
+disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
+be exploited in various ways.
+- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
+flags on the HTTP listening socket.
+- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
+Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
+- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to
+constructors of SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
+- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
+- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
+- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
+- Enhancements to the csv module:
++ Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
+reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
+PEP 305.
++ Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
+reporting.
++ quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
+dictates.
++ the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
++ when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
+types, rather than any object that can be represented as a numeric.
++ when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
+to floats.
++ reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
+\n to be quoted).
++ writer doublequote handling improved.
++ Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
+the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
+this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
++ The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
+C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
++ the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
++ register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
+as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
+without first creating a dialect class.
++ a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
+previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
+file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
++ A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
+the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
+limit is 128kB.
++ A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
+the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
+the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
+multiple lines.
++ reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
+This has been fixed.
+- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
+inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'.  The
+lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
+a _DummyThread object.  Fixes bug #1089632.
+- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
+- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
+(Bug #951915).
+- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
+Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
+alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
+encoding alias table.
+- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old:  whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
+- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
+args tuple returned by __reduce__().
+- optparse now optionally imports gettext.  This allows its use in setup.py.
+- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
+- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
+- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
+- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
+- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
+extended or overridden by subclasses.  Formerly, the subclassed method would
+be ignored by the rest of the module.  (Bug #1078905).
+- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
+the same meaning as in list.sort().
+- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
+once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
+tokenizer with very long source lines.
+- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
+immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
+``.decompress()`` calls.
+- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings.  The
+reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
+- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
+``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
+- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
+correctly.
+- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
+``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
+character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
+line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
+between two lines.
+- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
+about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
+handlers.
+- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
+from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
+encoding instead of a unicode string.
+- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
+considering it exactly like a '*'.
+- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
+``encodings.aliases``.
+- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
+- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
+touch the recursion limit.
+- Bug #947906: An object oriented interface has been added to the calendar
+module. It's possible to generate HTML calendar now and the module can be
+called as a script (e.g. via ``python -mcalendar``). Localized month and
+weekday names can be ouput (even if an exotic encoding is used) using
+special classes that use unicode.
+Build
+-----
+- Fix test_float, test_long, and test_struct failures on Tru64 with gcc
+by using -mieee gcc option.
+- Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly.
+- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
+- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
+- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
+- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
+The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
+- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
+- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
+value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
+- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
+vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
+- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
+flags that change binary compatibility.  Changes were also made to
+distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
+compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
+- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
+and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
+no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
+- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
+- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
+defined.  Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
+- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
+and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
+directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against.  This has
+led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS.  It also removes
+the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
+the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
+``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
+Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
+- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
+to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
+Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
+Closes bug #1096244.  Thanks Gregory Bond.
+C API
+-----
+- ``PyMem_{Del, DEL}`` and ``PyMem_{Free, FREE}`` no longer map to
+``PyObject_{Free, FREE}``.  They map to the system ``free()`` now.  If memory
+is obtained via the ``PyObject_`` family, it must be released via the
+``PyObject_`` family, and likewise for the ``PyMem_`` family.  This has
+always been officially true, but when Python's small-object allocator was
+introduced, an attempt was made to cater to a few extension modules
+discovered at the time that obtained memory via ``PyObject_New`` but
+released it via ``PyMem_DEL``.  It's years later, and if such code still
+exists it will fail now (probably with segfaults, but calling wrong
+low-level memory management functions can yield many symptoms).
+- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
+- Removed PyRange_New().
+- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
+mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
+greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
+mappings.
+Tests
+-----
+- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
+- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented.  This enables
+even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
+Documentation
+-------------
+- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
+- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
+values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
+- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
+- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
+- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
+- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
+- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
+- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
+- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
+- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
+- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
+- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
+Closes bug #1166582.
+- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
+Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
+Closes patch #1095802.  Thanks Jack Jansen.
+Mac
+---
+New platforms
+-------------
+- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- Created Misc/Vim/vim_syntax.py to auto-generate a python.vim file in that
+directory for syntax highlighting in Vim.  Vim directory was added and placed
+vimrc to it (was previous up a level).
+- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
+finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
+source files that need an encoding declaration.
+Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
+- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
+- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
+- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
+wiggle over by a pixel.
+What's New in Python 2.4 final?
+===============================
+*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
+forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
+things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
+What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
+==============================================
+*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Bug 1061968:  Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
+the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673.  Numeric history lesson
+aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
+Library
+-------
+- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
+attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers.  The last exception
+raised is re-raised.
+- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
+doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way.  Fixed.
+- Bug 1065388:  ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
+and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
+spellings of month and day names.  Because the locale can change at
+any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
+indexed.  In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
+recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed.  This is
+much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
+integer.  In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
+now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
+by the slice are recomputed now.
+- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
+Build
+-----
+- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
+and CoreFoundation on OS X.  Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
+which has no known users.  Thanks Bob Ippolito.
+C API
+-----
+- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
+What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
+================================
+*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
+License
+-------
+The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
+is released, to remove Python version numbers.  There were no other
+changes to the license.  So, for example, wherever the license for
+Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python".  The
+intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
+durable way.  For example, some people say they're confused by that
+the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
+License::
+http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
+says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
+to Python 2.1.1.
+The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
+License Version 2.
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
+calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
+insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
+running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
+weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
+that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
+in the thread doing gc).  The most likely symptom was "impossible"
+``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
+referenced objects.  The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
+objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
+- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
+Extension Modules
+-----------------
+- Bug #1048870:  the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
+functions with identical bodies.  This was producing confusing
+traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
+object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
+Library
+-------
+- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
+no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group.  Now the delimiter is
+returned.
+- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
+- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
+paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
+- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
+- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
+the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
+- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
+- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
+- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
+the source code is updated and reloaded.
+Build
+-----
+- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
+What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
+================================
+*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
+BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
+- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
+by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
+thread-correct.  This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
+including segfaults.  See bug 1041645 for an example.
+- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
+module and then runs it.  (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
+- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
+constant.
+- SF bug #513866:  Float/long comparison anomaly.  Prior to 2.4b1, when
+an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
+That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
+large), and to anomalies such as
+``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``.  Coercion to float is no
+longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
+``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
+correctly now.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
+collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
+an assert failure in a debug build.  Also, added overflow checks,
+better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
+comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
+Library
+-------
+- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
+specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
+options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
+--swig-cpp.
+- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
+it is set.
+- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module.  See PEP 324 for details.
+- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
+strings for regex-specific symbols.  Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
+the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
+Closes bug #1039270.
+- Updates for the email package:
++ email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
++ All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
+_encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
+Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
++ New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
+Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
+the Parser constructor.  These will be removed in email 3.1.
++ Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
++ All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
++ Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
+added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
++ Updates to documentation.
+- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
+just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions.  Also, documented
+the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
+finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
+- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
+- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
+applications should use the getmember function.
+- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
+- SF bug #1028306:  Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
+``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
+Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison:  ``False`` for ``==``,
+``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
+operators.  Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
+base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
+forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
+``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
+and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
+- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
+{pre,post}-install,  {pre,post}-uninstall, and
+{prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
+- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
+decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
+``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
+readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
+has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
+return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
+``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
+Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
+- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
+the new public features (of which there are many).
+- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
+updates it.  This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
+contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
+some old code apparently relies on it.  For now, all we can do is
+encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
+integration features instead.
+- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
+- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
+processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
+consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
+options.
+- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
+ConfigParser.  Moved the new string-only restriction added in
+rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
+ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
+conditions under which non-string values work.
+Build
+-----
+- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
+building extension modules.  This is so as to include software installed as
+a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
+- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro.  It works as-is when the
+platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
+Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
+specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h.  You can also override
+pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
+C API
+-----
+- SF patch 1044089:  New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
+non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
+- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
+- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
+are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
+the GIL.  However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
+demonstrated.  In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
+of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
+its extra debugging capabilities.  But Python's small-object allocator
+isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
+own locking.  ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
+call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
+- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
+- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
+``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
+decoding.
+Tests
+-----
+- test__locale ported to unittest
+Mac
+---
+- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects.  There is also a new
+interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
+and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
+read the input files in universal-newline mode.  This spares them
+from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
+e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
+have no lines in common.
+What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
+=================================
+*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
+list to be surrounded by parentheses.
+- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin.  Gradeschool
+multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code.  Gradeschool
+squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
+the digit products are duplicates in a square.  Because exponentiation
+uses squaring often, this also speeds long power.  For example, the time
+to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
+to this much.  The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
+since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
+aggressively small regardless.  The exponentiation algorithm was switched
+from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
+bases.  In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
+5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time.  That cut the time to compute
+17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
+- OverflowWarning is no longer generated.  PEP 237 scheduled this to
+occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
+nobody realized it was still being generated.  On the chance that user
+code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
+corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
+- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
+- Fix the order of application of decorators.  The proper order is bottom-up;
+the first decorator listed is the last one called.
+- SF patch #1005778.  Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
+calling list.index().  This could happen if a rich comparison function
+modified the list.
+- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
+functions is now writable.
+- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
+carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
+to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall().  It is still the case
+that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
+- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned.  The semantics of
+interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
+example -- and had bugs.  Explicitly interning a subclass of string
+via intern() will raise a TypeError.  Internal operations that attempt
+to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
+- Bug 1003935:  xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors.  Documented
+what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
+- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
+data.
+- Patch 1012740:  truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
+position to the end of the stream.  This is consistent with the original
+StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
+supposed to have been truncated away.
+- Added socket.socketpair().
+- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
+members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
+- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
+versions of Python, have now been removed.
+Library
+-------
+- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
+heuristics for filtering out imported names.
+- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
+symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
+- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
+Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
+- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
+- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
+replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
+- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
+path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
+- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
+- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
+- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
+- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
+Percivall.
+- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
+the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
+- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
+font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
+which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
+than creating a new one.
+- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
+latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
+Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
+and exponent.
+- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
+- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module.  The sys.exitfunc
+attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
+will just become the one preferred way to do it.
+- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
+to the readline module.
+- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
+of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
+frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
+- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
+path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
+contains symlinks.
+- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
+file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
+- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
+so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
+reached through a symlink.  Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
+- doctest refactoring continued.  See the docs for details.  As part of
+this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
+deprecated:  the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
+isprivate argument to testmod().  The Tester class supplied a feeble
+"by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
+you were doing.  The newer doctest features for unittest integration
+already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
+new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
+hand.  The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
+start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default.  If
+you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
+to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
+any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
+- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
+Control-V works the same as Control-v.
+- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
+Build
+-----
+- Backward incompatibility:  longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
+error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
+divisible by 5.  This new requirement allows simple code for the new
+5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation.  If necessary, the
+restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
+falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
+plans to do so.
+- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
+attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
+- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
+processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
+- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
+GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
+- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
+GNU/k*BSD systems.
+- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
+found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
+C API
+-----
+..
+Documentation
+-------------
+- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
+an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
+- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
+it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
+since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
+New platforms
+-------------
+- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
+Tests
+-----
+..
+Windows
+-------
+- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
+the default 1MB to 2MB.  Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
+bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
+within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
+able to suffer undetected C stack overflows.  The standard test program
+test_compiler was one such program.  If a Python process on Windows
+"just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
+kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
+the problem.
+Mac
+---
+..
+What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
+=================================
+*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Patch #980695:  Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
+of the form s=s+t and s+=t.  This will vary across implementations.
+Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
+sensitive code.
+- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
+implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
+@staticmethod
+def foo(bar):
+(The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
+- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
+in sys.modules.  Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
+succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
+of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
+Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
+initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
+trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
+arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent).  Now subsequent
+imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
+source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
+attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
+This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
+working before by accident.  In the Python source, the only case of
+breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
+module remaining in sys.modules.  Cases are also known where tests
+deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
+sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
+unconditional del sys.modules[M].
+- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
+obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
+- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords().  Analogous to
+PyArg_VaParse().  Both are now documented.  Thanks Greg Chapman.
+- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
+methods on string and unicode objects.  Added unicode.decode()
+which was missing for no apparent reason.
+- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
+signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
+It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
+- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
+types that support garbage collection.
+- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
+- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
+__oct__, and __hex__ are now checked.  Returning an invalid type
+will cause a TypeError to be raised.  This matches the behavior of
+Jython.
+- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
+- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs.  str.split
+and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
+- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
+the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
+module.
+- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
+now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore.  This
+allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
+Library
+-------
+- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
+TIS-620
+- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
+many new features were added.  Full docs will appear later.  For now
+the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
+The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
+(such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
+output).  New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
+output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
+diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
+normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
+ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
+- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
+- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
+and localtime().  If None is provided, the current time is used (the
+same as when the argument is omitted).
+[SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
+- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
+- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
+schemes are offered.
+- Bug #1001053.  wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
+- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
+underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method).  This is
+needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
+- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
+- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
+use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
+- Bug #993394.  Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
+raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
+when dummy_threading is being used.
+- Bug #857297/Patch #916874.  Fix an error when extracting a hard link
+from a tarfile.
+- Patch #846659.  Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
+GNU longname/longlink creation.
+- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted.  The builtin fcntl module
+has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
+1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
+a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
+- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
+iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
+- Bug #788520.  Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
+implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
+Queue was introduced).  A minor semantic change is that the Full and
+Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
+queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
+course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
+thread sees those exceptions, though).  Before, the exceptions could
+also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
+to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
+by some other method in progress).
+- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
+case of comparing two empty lists.  This affected both context_diff() and
+unified_diff(),
+- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
+- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
+returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop.  Thanks
+AM Kuchling.
+- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
+drive letter and the rest of the path.  Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
+as well.  Thanks Paul Moore.
+- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB.  The packed data
+for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
+instead of unsigned.
+- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec.  The other conditions are
+no longer part of the public API.
+- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
+which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
+string methods of the same name).
+- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
+SF patch 945642.
+- doctest unittest integration improvements:
+o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
+o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
+DocTestSuites.
+- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
+that provide thread-local data.
+- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
+no longer returns spurious empty fields.
+- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
+- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
+which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
+as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
+- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1.  Changes:
+- Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
+"%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
+that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
+- Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
+now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
+allows generation of nicer help when using custom types.  Can
+be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
+- Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
+options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
+- Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
+that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
+set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
+HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
+- Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
+targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext().  (If
+you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
+-- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
+http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
+- Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
+wrapping help output.
+- Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
+to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
+(This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
+C API
+-----
+- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx():  if an
+error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
+entry from sys.modules.  All ways of loading modules eventually call
+one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
+ways of loading modules.  In rare cases, a module loader may wish
+to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
+code cannot be executed.  In such cases, the module loader must
+arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
+PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
+module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
+its visible semantics have not changed.
+- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
+thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
+Documentation
+-------------
+- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
+- point out the importance of reassigning data members before
+assigning their values
+- correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
+- mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
+- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
+Tests
+-----
+- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
+platforms that use the Makefile.
+- SF patch 995225:  The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
+CVS keywords (like $Id: HISTORY 60928 2008-02-21 19:46:35Z guido.van.rossum $), which could cause spurious failures in
+test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
+What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
+=================================
+*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
+weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
+class.  There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
+objects now (one object instead of three).
+- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
+Windows DLLs.
+- Bug #215126.  The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
+accept any mapping type.
+- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
+a new .pyc magic.
+- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
+have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
+be there.
+- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
+the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
+the LC_NUMERIC category.
+- Bug #952807:  Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
+datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
+objects.  Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
+- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
+- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
+These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
+TR11.
+- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
+common cases.  Fixes bug  #942952.
+- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289).  Coded by Jiwon Seo.
+- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
+new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
+- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
+- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
+- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
+"a,b,c=1,2,3".  Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
+- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
+and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
+Fixes bug  #858016 .
+- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
+and having them reveal their length.  Also optimized the
+methods:  keys(), values(), and items().
+- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
+the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
+improves their performance (about 35%).
+- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
+comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
+underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
+- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
+intermediate sequences.  Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
+needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
+advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
+- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
+realloc().  Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
+list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
+length is not known).
+- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme.  For larger lists,
+overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%.  Now, it is a constant 12%.
+For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements.  Now,
+the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
+utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
+- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed.  Speeds up list
+instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
+- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
+as the dict() constructor.  This now includes item lists and/or
+keyword arguments.
+- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
+interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
+only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
+- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
+weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
+cases.
+- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
+assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
+would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object.  Since
+GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
+invalid.  In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
+creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
+has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
+cyclic trash, a memory error can occur.  This consistently created a
+segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
+a release build.
+- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
+__future__ statements.  SF patch 876178.
+- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply().  apply() remains
+deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
+- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
+collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules.  The
+call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
+of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
+callbacks to execute sanely.  The most common symptom was a sequence
+of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
+by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
+of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
+destroyed.
+- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
+and left shifts.  (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
+This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
+PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
+'L'.  The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
+changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
+implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
+hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
+- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
+methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
+character other than a space.
+- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
+by the function object or by the method object, the function
+object's attribute usually wins.  Christian Tismer pointed out that
+that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
+methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
+really more appropriate than the function's attribute.  So from now
+on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
+attributes with the same name.
+- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548:  if a weakref with a callback,
+its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
+cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
+in which they were torn down was unpredictable.  It was possible for
+the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
+segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
+resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
+later.  In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
+had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects.  It does now.  When
+weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
+weakrefs are cleared first.  The callbacks don't trigger then,
+preventing the problems.  If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
+as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
+that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
+- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829:  if cyclic garbage collection
+happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
+instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
+in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
+This has been repaired.
+- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
+- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
+- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
+over a sequence.
+- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
+from any iterable.
+- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
+- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments:  cmp, key, and reverse.
+The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
+comparison key from the original record:  mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
+The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
+sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed.  In addition,
+the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
+starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
+records with equal keys is unchanged).
+- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
+usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
+unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
+- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
+lead to a seg fault.  The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
+non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
+freelist.
+- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
+'%f'.  This has always been documented but never implemented.
+- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
+number.
+- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
+a TypeError exception.
+- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0.  SF patch
+820195.
+- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
+When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
+will now just hit the recursion limit.  See SF patch 825639.
+- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
+same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
+working towards the beginning.  See SF feature request 801847.
+- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2.  Failure
+to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
+fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
+- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
+the data and the data length.  Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
+method is called as necessary.
+- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
+close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
+the first call.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
+getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
+- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
+ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
+timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type.  There's no chance
+that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
+cases.  This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime().  Assorted
+fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
+were also protected.  Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
+- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
+- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
+- the weakref module now supports additional objects:  array.array,
+sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
+- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
+fewer false positives.
+- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error .  Also added
+socket.error to the socket module's C API.
+- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
+nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
+- array objects now support the copy module.  Also, their resizing
+scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects.  This improves
+the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
+Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
+for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
+- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
+the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
+Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines().  Saves memory and
+makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
+- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
+are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
+platform's C library implementation of strftime().  Can possibly
+break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
+problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0).  Fixes bug
+#897625.
+- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
+system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
+- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
+offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
+and pops on either side of the deque.
+- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
+improved performance:  Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
+- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
+itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
+functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
+other functions that expect a function argument.
+- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
+- os.getsid was added.
+- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
+struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd.  (The old name
+is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
+- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
+- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
+- readline.clear_history was added.
+- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
+- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
+- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
+- curses module now supports use_default_colors().  [patch #739124]
+- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
+- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
+- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
+- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
+- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
+seed.  Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
+that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
+- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
+with k random bits.  This method is now an optional part of the API
+for user defined generators.  Any generator that defines genrandbits()
+can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53.  Formerly,
+randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
+SF bug #812202).  Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
+issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
+- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
+into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
+It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
+the Unix uniq filter.
+- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
+iterators from a single iterable.
+- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
+of raising a TypeError exception.
+- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
+as parameter.
+Library
+-------
+- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
+profile module.  cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
+profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
+Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
+- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
+- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree().  This affects
+the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
+handler can now also be os.listdir.
+- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
+interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
+original exception.
+- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
+- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
+"netloc" portion of a URL.
+- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
+Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
+- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive.  Thanks Robin Becker.
+- Bug #823209:  cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
+API matches math.log().
+- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
+that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
+- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
+- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
+on cygwin and mingw32.
+- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
+- refactored site.py into functions.  Also wrote regression tests for the
+module.
+- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
+installation scheme for all platforms.
+- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
+looping forever.
+- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
+addition to CVS and RCS directories.  .svn directories hold
+administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
+- Added a new module: cookielib.  Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
+clients.  Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
+urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
+- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
+- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
+- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
+Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
+- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
+for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
+type pattern with the same value exists.
+- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
+when run from the command prompt).
+- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
+not taken into consideration when caching value.
+- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
+default sort).
+- Added global runctx function to profile module
+- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
+- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
+- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
+- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
+first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
+This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
+packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
+package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
+accordingly.
+- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
+decoding standards.
+- urllib2 now supports processors.  A processor is a handler that
+implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method.  These methods are
+called for all requests.
+- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
+they are passed to the compiler.
+- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
+indent, width and depth.
+- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
+and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
+- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
+compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
+- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
+- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
+- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
+- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
+os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
+- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
+for better performance.
+- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
+- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
+a string).
+- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
+- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
+- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
+- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
+- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
+optional.  If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
+list of fieldnames.
+- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
+using "a long string".encode('bz2')
+- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
+- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
+empty lists.
+- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
+mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
+and shelves.
+- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
+arguments.  This was an omission in the initial implementation.
+- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
+CHARSET fields better.  It also includes a patch to parameter
+parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
+- sets.py now runs under Py2.2.  In addition, the argument restrictions
+for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
+allow any iterable.
+- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
+recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
+patterns.  The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
+- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
+and removed in Py2.4.
+- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
+- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
+makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
+- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
+- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
+It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile.  This provides better symmetry with
+db2pickle.  The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
+destination in situations where both files are given.
+- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
+modules determined to be part of the core distribution.  The documentation
+base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
+be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
+- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
+- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
+silent and dangerous change from previous releases.  It once again
+opens input files in binary mode by default.  The -t and -b flags
+remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
+now.
+- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
+in effect
+- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
+C-c C-h
+- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
+-d option was given.
+Build
+-----
+- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
+build under OS X.
+- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
+--enable-profiling.
+- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
+is configured --with-tsc.
+- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
+on AMD64.
+- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
+getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
+- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
+removed.
+- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
+supported (see PEP 11).
+- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
+- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
+- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
+(see PEP 11).
+- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
+sizeof(char) must be 1.
+C API
+-----
+- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
+containing type-check macros and constructors.  See new docs in the
+Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
+- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
+timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
+checking.  Declared in new header file timefuncs.h.  It would be
+good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
+- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
+generator objects.
+- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
+functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
+runtime dynamic embedding of Python.  See patch #938302, by Bob
+Ippolito.
+- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
+underlying array of PyObject pointers.  Useful for high speed looping.
+- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
+even if already defined by a slot wrapper.  This allows a __contains__
+method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot.  This
+is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
+whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
+- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
+PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
+about 10% faster.
+- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
+Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
+- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
+variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
+the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue().  PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
+is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
+Windows
+-------
+- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
+values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056).  The fix is
+uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
+as appropriate, followed by a size check.
+- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
+(modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
+the truncate() call was an input operation.  SF bug 801631.
+What's New in Python 2.3 final?
+===============================
+*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
+IDLE
+----
+- Bug 778400:  IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
+This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
+the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
+context-menu actions.
+- IDLE displays a new message upon startup:  some "personal firewall"
+kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
+own when any program opens a socket.  IDLE does use sockets, talking
+on the computer's internal loopback interface.  This connection is not
+visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
+from the Internet.  So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
+asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
+and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
+place.  If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
+What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
+=============================================
+*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
+data bytes before the zip compatible archive.  Zipfiles containing a
+comment at the end are still unsupported.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
+fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
+than once.  This has been fixed.
+- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
+with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
+caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
+call.
+- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
+Library
+-------
+- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
+uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
+- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
+fix a locale related bug in the test suite.  Although another patch
+was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
+restored.
+IDLE
+----
+- Calltips patches.
+Build
+-----
+- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
+on Panther (OSX 10.3).
+C API
+-----
+Windows
+-------
+- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
+was set, making temp file creation impossible.  Repaired.
+- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
+Mac
+---
+- Various fixes to pimp.
+- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
+- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
+more problems than it solves.
+What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
+=============================================
+*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
+by sys.setcheckinterval().
+- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
+fixed.  Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
+reporting an error.  SF patch 763201.
+- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
+module.  In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
+earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
+not be found on the file system.  Fixes SF bug 771097.
+- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
+builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
+- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
+and tuple that define an itemsize.  Earlier releases of Python 2.3
+allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
+- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build.  SF bug
+770247.
+- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
+defining __delitem__.  Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
+- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
+- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
+- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
+contained within the _strptime module.
+- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
+not consistent with the object's repr slot.
+- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
+character or block devices.  SF patch 708374.
+- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
+the find_class attribute, if present.
+- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
+bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
+(SF bug 763298).
+The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
+a level instead of a boolean flag.  The new level 2 means that in
+addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
+an exception.
+A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
+Library
+-------
+- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
+- doctest now examines all docstrings by default.  Previously, it would
+skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
+naming convention).  The old default created too much of a risk that
+user tests were being skipped inadvertently.  Note, this change could
+break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
+failing tests in the docstrings of private functions.  The breakage
+is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
+or Tester().
+- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed.  It's vital
+that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
+and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
+dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
+database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
+prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
+get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised.  The race
+has been repaired.  A sync() method was also added so that shelve
+can guarantee data is written to disk.
+The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
+- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes.  That they
+weren't before was an oversight.
+- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
+auth_header.  The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
+- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
+when there are no lines.
+- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
+which could occur with Tk 8.4
+- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
+to child processes.
+- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
+- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
+- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
+xmlrpclib.
+- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
+responses.
+- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
+generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
+- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
+-1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
+is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
+- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
+used as patterns.
+- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
+of varying sizes.  Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
+than Tk 8.3.
+- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
+- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
+- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
+- The trace.py script has been removed.  It is now in the standard library.
+Build
+-----
+- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
+- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
+- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
+patch 764560).
+- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
+__BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined.  configure now defines it as
+needed.
+C API
+-----
+- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
+API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
+Windows
+-------
+- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
+checked error returns from Windows functions correctly.  As a result,
+it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
+_beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
+on the order of thousands when it happens).  In these cases, the
+Python exception ::
+thread.error: can't start new thread
+is raised now.
+- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
+use.  The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
+instead of from DLL teardown.
+Mac
+---
+- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way.  It was
+previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
+of "APPL."  Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
+specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
+the executable in the bundle.
+- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
+- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
+- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
+on Panther.
+What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
+================================
+*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
+string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
+interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
+with the -i option.
+- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments.  Similar
+changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
+- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
+for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
+- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys".  This
+wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
+instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
+thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
+mutated it.  It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
+present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
+referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
+invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
+set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
+the search to those keys with the same hash code.  All of these are
+considered to be bugs.  A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
+that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
+code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
+- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
+compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
+embedded in a lambda expression.
+- SF bug 705231:  builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
+raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
+in some cases.  The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
+if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
+is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
+- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
+return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method.  This
+matches the restriction on classic classes.
+- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
+the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
+- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
+It's writable again.
+- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
+tuple.  By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
+instead of going through __getitem__.  If __getitem__ access is
+preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
+- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
+garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
+occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
+timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
+- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
+user code.  In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
+exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
+specific exceptions like AttributeError.
+- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
+collection.
+- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
+especially likely on Windows.  The strings returned are now guaranteed
+unique within a single program run.
+- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
+dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
+- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
+to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
+- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
+properly subclassable.
+- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
+- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
+Fixes SF bug #730685.
+- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
+/usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2.  This is true
+for many BSD-derived systems.
+Library
+-------
+- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
+doctest.py.  These are already being used in Zope3.  The two
+primary ones:
+doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
+in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
+on that file.  This is great when a doctest fails.
+doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
+TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
+runs all the doctests in the module.  This allows writing tests in
+doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
+in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
+framework features (which doctest lacks).
+- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
+output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
+consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
+for "0" and "False".  This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
+The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
+constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
+argument.
+- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions.  Previously,
+a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
+in the archive.
+- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
+LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
+- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
+569574).
+- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
+SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib.  The old Tools/idle is
+no more.
+- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing).  This module used
+to be distributed in Tools/scripts.  It uses sys.settrace() to trace
+code execution -- either function calls or individual lines.  It can
+generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
+code coverage.
+- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
+that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
+module.  A function registered with the threading module will
+be used for all threads it creates.  The new trace module uses this
+to provide tracing for code running in threads.
+- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
+Taschuk.  Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
+didn't work.  (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
+Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
+- difflib.py has two new functions:  context_diff() and unified_diff().
+- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
+GET.  This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
+HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
+an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
+- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
+handling.
+- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
+__doc__ of data descriptors.
+- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
+in socket.py.
+- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
+- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
+have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
+inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
+opener with proxy support.
+- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
+- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
+- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
+- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
+providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
+- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
+files.
+Build
+-----
+- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
+different root directory.
+C API
+-----
+- PyType_Ready():  If a type declares that it participates in gc
+(Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
+tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
+a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
+Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
+segfault.  In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
+slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
+(Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised:  since the type is a base
+type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
+is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
+- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
+from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception.  It is
+intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
+from Python.
+New platforms
+-------------
+None this time.
+Tests
+-----
+- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
+side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
+Windows
+-------
+- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
+- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
+drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
+wizard.  People with machines where C: is not the system drive
+usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
+instead.  We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
+where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
+suggests their system drive.  Note that you can always select the
+directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
+that's what it's for.
+Mac
+---
+- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
+automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
+goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
+supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
+- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
+toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
+- The Package Manager can now update itself.
+SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
+------------------------------------
+430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
+598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
+622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
+661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
+683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
+697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
+713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
+724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
+727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
+729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
+730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
+731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
+732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
+733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
+735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
+740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
+744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
+745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
+747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
+749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
+751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
+753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
+755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
+757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
+760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
+What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
+================================
+*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
+PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
+- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
+items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
+and cannot be strings).
+- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
+raising an exception.  This is consistent with calling the
+constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
+they all return the false value of that type.  (SF patch #724135)
+- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
+from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
+few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
+Python itself.
+- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
+the referenced object, if it has one.
+- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__.  See
+the thread started at
+http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
+- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
+interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
+list.  This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
+placed on a list index.
+- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
+larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
+fits.  E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
+[1267650600228229401496703205376L].  (SF patch #707427.)
+- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
+between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
+getattr hooks.  If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
+but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
+only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
+unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
+a segfault could happen.  That's been repaired.
+- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
+value to return if the key is not in the dict.  If a default is not
+given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
+Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
+[SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
+- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
+Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
+- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception.  This is
+rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
+referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2].  (SF patch
+#693195.)
+- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
+if the key value was larger than 2**32.  See SF bug #689659.
+- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
+variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
+unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
+interpreter executions, would fail.
+- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
+TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
+of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
+for converting between string and packed representation of IP
+addresses.  There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
+True iff the current Python has IPv6 support.  See SF patch #658327.
+- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
+to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
+- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
+recursion limit.  (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
+and Greg Chapman.)
+- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
+recursively.
+- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
+directly referenced by obj.  In effect, it exposes what the object's
+tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
+leaks.
+- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
+- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
+(struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
+pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
+propagate.  The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
+could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
+away from the original float.  This has been fixed.  See SF bug
+#705836.
+- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
+function, if supported.  (SF patch #675422.)
+- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
+on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
+See SF bug #692416.
+- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
+mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
+- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
+Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
+Added chain() and cycle().
+- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
+is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
+has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
+- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
+platforms which have dup(2).  The makefile() method is built directly
+on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
+timeouts to work properly.
+Library
+-------
+- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
+os.path.walk().  See os module docs for details.  os.path.walk()
+isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
+future release.
+- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
+for querying platform dependent features.
+- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
+- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
+pickle protocol versions.
+- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
+which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
+(already supported by the body() method).  (SF patch #720468)
+- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
+- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
+the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
+'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
+modules.
+- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
+HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
+codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
+- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
+arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
+- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
+return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'.  This gives the desired
+result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
+- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
+MS Office extensions.
+- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
+SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
+- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
+execution speed of expressions and statements.
+- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
+of raising TypeError.  If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
+x == y is False, and x != y is True.  This is akin to the change made
+for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
+about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that.  See also SF bug
+report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
+- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
+it now returns Unicode strings.  (This behavior was added earlier
+to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
+- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
+in core.setup().  Previously you could supply one or the other, but
+not both of them.  (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
+- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
+- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
+including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
+commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
+See the module docstring for details.
+Build
+-----
+- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
+preprocessor directives that start in column 1.  (SF bug #691793.)
+C API
+-----
+- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
+- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
+issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available.  This
+makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
+- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG.  Extensions that use this and
+need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
+#ifndef  PY_LONG_LONG
+#define  PY_LONG_LONG  LONG_LONG
+#endif
+- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
+typical case where the method returns its self argument.
+- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
+classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
+exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject.  (SF patch #696193.)
+New platforms
+-------------
+None this time.
+Tests
+-----
+- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
+See SF bug #692988.
+Windows
+-------
+- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
+function.
+- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
+MessageBeep().
+Mac
+---
+- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
+a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
+- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
+the window manager, false otherwise.
+- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
+currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
+before displaying.
+- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
+be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
+complete.
+- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
+in Apple Help Viewer format.
+What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
+=================================
+*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
+treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
+that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
+- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
+turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
+(SF patch #664376.)
+- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
+with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
+This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c...  Except
+codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
+invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
+this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
+files.  (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
+- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
+constructor would ignore all arguments.  This is changed now: the
+constructor refuses arguments in this case.  This might break code
+that worked under Python 2.2.  The simplest fix is to add a no-op
+__init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
+- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
+Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
+with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
+("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
+range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
+always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
+E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
+come out as -4294967295.  This was the case in Python 2.2 through
+2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
+value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now.  This
+will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well.  (SF #660455)
+- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
+does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'.  When the
+sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
+machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
+2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
+int("0xffffffff", 16) right now.  (PEP 347)
+- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
+issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
+- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
+to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X).  Previously
+only type(x) was tested.  (For classic classes this was already the
+case.)
+- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
+passed as unicode strings.
+- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
+See SF bug #683467.
+- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
+of 2 now.  It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
+- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
+- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
+- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
+Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
+arguments.
+- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
+See SF bug #667147.
+- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
+to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
+See SF bug #676155.
+- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
+the name of the module in which the function was defined.  This
+applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
+defined in Python.  This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
+which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly.  In Python 2.2
+whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
+at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
+Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
+nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
+tp_as_number pointer.
+- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
+lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock().  Note: this is a
+reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
+this is the last release_lock() call.  You can check with
+imp.lock_held().  (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
+- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
+- Fix some bugs in the parser module.  SF bug #678518.
+- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
+extension implemented flush() was fixed.  Scott also rewrote the
+zlib test suite using the unittest module.  (SF bug #640230 and
+patch #678531.)
+- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
+looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
+- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
+patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
+- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
+- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
+errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
+thread was active.  (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
+- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
+- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
+an mmap'ed file which was already closed.  (SF patch #665913)
+- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
+- datetime changes:
+The date class is now properly subclassable.  (SF bug #720908)
+The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
+datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
+time class.  Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
+exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz.  This wasn't
+enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
+now.
+today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
+microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>.  This repairs an
+irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
+In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
+ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
+as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
+time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
+DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
+meaning that DST is never in effect).
+The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
+(or None) now.  In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
+was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
+they couldn't return a timedelta.  TOOWTDI.
+The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug.  It was replaced
+by a later example coded by Guido.
+datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
+input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz.  For typical "hybrid" time
+zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
+time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
+ends.  See new docs for details.  In short, the new behavior mimics
+the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
+dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
+datetime objects.  If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
+object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
+dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
+tzinfo subclass instance.
+A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
+to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
+a local time.  The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
+as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
+fromutc().  It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
+be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
+creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
+allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
+datetime.now():  The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
+repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
+already).  With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
+and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
+members.  This was less than useful.  Now now(tz) returns the current
+date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
+tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
+where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC.  Without
+a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
+as a naive datetime object.
+datetime.fromtimestamp():  Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
+useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified.  See
+also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
+date and datetime comparison:  In order to prevent comparison from
+falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
+raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
+They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
+in which case they return NotImplemented now.  This gives other
+datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
+comparison.
+date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison:  When the exception
+for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
+the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
+!= then True is returned.  Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
+only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
+if some_datetime in some_sequence:
+and ::
+some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
+to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
+sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys.  [This
+seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
+that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
+The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
+ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
+seconds".  Leap seconds are ignored now.  On such platforms, it's
+possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
+datetimes constructed from them are equal.
+The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
+completely.  The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
+longer exist.  The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
+methods no longer exist either.
+Library
+-------
+- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
+to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
+- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
+protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
+extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
+etc.).  The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
+API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
+See PEP 307 for details.
+- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
+as the default repository.  (See PEP 301.)
+- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
+pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
+dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
+variables are now available via os.path.  They continue to be
+available from the os module.
+(see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
+- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
+<http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
+- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
+internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
+a symbolic pickle disassembler.
+- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
+- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
+exception.
+- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
+class.
+- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
+sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
+operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
+- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled.  These modules are not safe in
+Python 2.2. or 2.3.
+- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
+It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
+See SF bug #659228.
+- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
+to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
+See SF patch #651082.
+- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs.  See SF feature request #618024.
+- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
+the gain value which is passed to Tk.  SF bug# 602259.
+- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
+See SF patch #642974.
+- The dospath module was deleted.  Use the ntpath module when manipulating
+DOS paths from other platforms.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
+Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
+to the new one.  While the user-visible API of the new module is
+compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
+underlying database library has changed.  To convert from the old library,
+run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
+to a pickle file.  After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
+using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database.  For
+example:
+% python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
+% python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
+Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
+Build
+-----
+- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
+test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default.  This is
+because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
+software.  To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
+./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
+- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
+used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
+groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS.  OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
+debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3".  BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
+compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile.  On some
+platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
+default.  On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
+flags.  This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
+fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
+- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
+relevant search lists in setup.py.  This allows users building Python to
+take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
+<http://fink.sf.net/>.
+- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
+from the Tools/scripts directory.
+C API
+-----
+- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
+instead of a plain ``PyObject *``.  (SF patch #686601.)
+- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
+slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
+tp_as_number pointer.
+- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
+will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
+(SF #681367)
+- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
+argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
+'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes).  Future versions of Python will
+raise a TypeError.
+Tests
+-----
+- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
+test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
+test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py).  Now they are.  (Note to
+developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
+make sure to do it right!  All tests need to use either unittest or
+pydoc.)
+- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
+- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
+Windows
+-------
+- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
+now been fixed.  test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
+time).
+- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
+the resource compiler.  See SF patch #669198.
+- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
+release without strong cryptography.
+- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
+absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
+- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer.  It
+wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
+Mac
+---
+- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
+and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
+- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
+of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
+in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
+- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
+This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
+- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
+accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
+and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
+form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
+- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
+them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
+downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
+Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
+What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
+=================================
+*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
+Type/class unification and new-style classes
+--------------------------------------------
+- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
+- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
+is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}.  Accordingly,
+the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
+been eliminated.  This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
+a different meaning than before.
+- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
+integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
+all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
+- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
+class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
+extension module).  This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
+- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
+significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
+and deallocation.
+- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
+right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
+- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types.  The
+types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
+instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
+names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
+callable.  The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
+- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
+now detected by the garbage collector.
+- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
+[SF bug 519621]
+- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
+identifier.
+- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
+takes an optional docstring argument.  Previously, this constructor
+ignored its arguments.  As a consequence, deriving a class from a
+module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
+created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
+[SF bug 563060]
+- A new type object, 'basestring', is added.  This is a common base type
+for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
+types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
+isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings.  This
+is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
+- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
+method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
+not called.  [SF bug #537450]
+- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods.  [SF bug #535444]
+- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
+doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
+This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
+raises TypeError.  (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
+state of the slots would be lost.)
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Import from zipfiles is now supported.  The name of a zipfile placed
+on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
+modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
+zipfile.  The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
+the sample implementation) of PEP 273.  The semantics of __path__ are
+compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
+Jython 2.1.
+- PEP 302 has been accepted.  Although it was initially developed to
+support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
+Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
+sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
+make extending the import statement much more convenient than
+overriding the __import__ built-in function.  For a description of
+these, see PEP 302.
+- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
+trace function to change which line will execute next.  A command to
+exploit this from pdb has been added.  [SF patch #643835]
+- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
+module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
+to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
+- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
+isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
+``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
+- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
+by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
+during a list.sort() operation has been fixed.  The effect of
+attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
+length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
+The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
+and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
+all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
+releases or implementations.
+- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
+All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
+which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
+- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
+Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
+- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
+interned strings are no longer immortal.  You must keep a reference
+to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
+- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
+issues a SyntaxWarning.  In the future, None may become a keyword.
+- SET_LINENO is gone.  co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
+call the trace function.  C code that accessed f_lineno should call
+PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
+to date when there is a trace function set).
+- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning.  This is used to warn
+about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
+result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
+unification).  The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
+PEP.  The warnings are about the following situations:
+- Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
+[0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
+in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
+pattern.
+- Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
+bits or have a different sign than the left operand.  To be
+precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
+as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
+- Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
+unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
+this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
+formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X.  In Python 2.4, these will
+show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
+in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
+- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
+been changed.  Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
+per-thread values.  They are now just a pair of global variables.
+In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
+bytecode instructions.  This may have some effect on systems that
+relied on the old default value.  In particular, in multi-threaded
+applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
+increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
+- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
+Karatsuba algorithm is now used.  This is most effective if the
+inputs have roughly the same size.  If they both have about N digits,
+Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
+log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2).  Measured results may
+be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks.  Besides
+the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
+appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
+(starting in the ballpark of a million bits).  Note that this is a
+simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
+e.g., GMP.  It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
+devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
+- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
+integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
+- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security.  The
+mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
+mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
+higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
+Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
+new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
+functionality.  All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
+interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements.  Thanks
+to Zack Weinberg!
+- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
+1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
+invoke __mul__.  This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
+type.  This has been fixed now.
+- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
+This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
+any length.  Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
+- File objects are now their own iterators.  For a file f, iter(f) now
+returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
+f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
+readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
+f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
+Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
+don't.  It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
+to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
+module are now obsolete.  Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
+- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented.  A
+comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
+or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
+- list.sort() has a new implementation.  While cross-platform results
+may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
+kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
+and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
+several major platforms.  This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
+precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
+although the language definition does not guarantee stability.  A
+potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
+len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine).  It's therefore possible
+for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
+does not.  See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
+- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
+raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
+raise StopIteration.  There used to be various counterexamples to
+this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
+breakage, without any benefits.  (Note that this is still an
+iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
+this.)
+- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
+other platforms.  KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
+and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
+process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x).  Ctrl+C will
+interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
+created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
+reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
+[SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
+- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows.  This
+returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
+currently running.
+- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
+a string.  Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
+but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
+was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
+- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
+as directory names.
+- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
+so they accept negative indices.  [SF bug 493951]
+- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
+finally clause.  [SF bug 567538]
+- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
+with a third "stride" parameter.  For example, "hello world"[::-1]
+gives "dlrow olleh".
+- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
+direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
+The warning will not be printed by default.  To see the pending
+deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
+as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
+- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
+promised.  The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
+method no longer exist.  xrange repetition and slicing have been
+removed.
+- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279.  Example:
+enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
+The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
+- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime.  This means
+that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
+to __debug__.
+- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
+string to the left with zeros.  For example,
+"+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
+- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
+these make no sense.  Since this was documented, they're being
+deprecated now.
+- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
+an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip.  For
+example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
+- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
+class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None).  It constructs a
+dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
+single value.  It can be used for building sets and for removing
+duplicates from sequences.
+- Added a new dict method pop(key).  This removes and returns the
+value corresponding to key.  [SF patch #539949]
+- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
+names for its two values, True and False.  Comparisons and sundry
+other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
+return a bool instead.  Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
+is backward compatible.
+- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
+deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
+garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
+access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
+could access a pointer to freed memory.
+- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
+default.  The recommended practice for memory allocation and
+deallocation has been streamlined.  A header file is included,
+Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
+and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
+onwards.
+- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
+that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
+- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
+correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
+- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented.  Briefly, using 'U'
+instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
+ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
+recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
+'\n', the standard Python line end character.
+- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
+Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
+a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
+- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
+An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
+- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
+general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
+evaluate f1 first.
+- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
+could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
+- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
+slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
+This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
+- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- Added three operators to the operator module:
+operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to:  a**b.
+operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to:  a is b.
+operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to:  a is not b.
+- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
+- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
+archives.
+- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
+times.  The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
+favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica.  See
+http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
+- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
+have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
+are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
+or Tkinter.wantobjects.
+- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
+been added as the package bsddb.  The traditional bsddb module is
+still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
+and is now named bsddb185.  This supports Berkeley DB versions from
+3.0 to 4.1.  For help converting your databases from the old module (which
+probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
+the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
+section above.
+- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
+and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
+- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
+- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
+sys.stdin/stdout changes.
+- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
+Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1.  Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
+supported.
+- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
+- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
+after stat_float_times has been called.
+- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
+file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
+- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
+- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
+Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
+- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
+only exists for backwards compatibility.  Its contents are no longer
+functions but callable type objects.
+- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
+This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
+written to disk.
+- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
+posix.getpgid have been added where available.
+- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
+also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
+- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
+third party compression library used by some Python modules.  The
+hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
+Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
+- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
+field names.
+- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
+'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
+.fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
+and __imul__.
+- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h.  Failure in case
+of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
+is called.
+- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
+to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
+interpreter was compiled.
+- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
+when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
+returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
+lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
+when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
+1, not 2.
+- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
+before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
+loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
+limit.
+- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
+letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
+bug #623464.
+- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
+ossaudiodev.  The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
+OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
+OSS mixer API.  Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
+Library
+-------
+- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
+- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
+slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
+reports (see sf path #643711 for details).  Documentation will follow
+with Python 2.3a2.
+- os.path exposes getctime.
+- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
+and failIfAlmostEqual().  They implement an approximate comparison
+by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
+the result to zero.  Approximate comparison is essential for
+unit tests of floating point results.
+- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
+the time module.  As a result, the range of allowable dates
+has been increased.
+- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
+executed.
+- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
+postinstallation script.
+- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
+test the current module.
+- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
+interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
+client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
+the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
+this behavior needs to be controlled.
+- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
+command line parsing.  It is a slightly modified version of Greg
+Ward's Optik package.
+- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
+methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
+This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
+for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
+- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin.  Now shelve supports
+all dictionary methods.  This eases the transition to persistent
+storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
+- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
+binary flag, which defaults to False.  If True, the values stored in the
+shelf are binary pickles.
+- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
+282.  The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
+- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
+modules are iterators now.
+- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB.  Files over 4GB also work
+now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
+file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
+record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
+some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
+size.
+- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
+with their entity value.
+- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
+- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
+option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
+- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
+tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
+dictionary when invoked with no argument.
+- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
+calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "").  The initial "C" locale, or
+whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved.  If you
+want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
+all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
+following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
+main():
+import locale
+locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
+- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
+exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
+- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
+replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
+characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
+package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
+to the new standard.
+- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
+returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
+add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
+an extension to the database.
+- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
+set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set.  There's
+also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
+or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
+is the base class of the two.
+- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
+Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
+- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
+OverflowError.  That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
+and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
+bounded integers.
+- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
+generator.  The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
+threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
+large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
+precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
+in existence.
+The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
+generator.  Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
+existing state to create a new state.  This means that jumpahead()
+continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
+non-overlapping sequences.  However, it will break code which relies
+on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
+The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
+the new generator.  Code using these attributes should switch to a
+new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
+compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
+- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue.  Thanks to
+Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
+write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
+- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
+- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
+platforms.  These have been fixed.  On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
+crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
+as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
+- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
+argument.
+- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
+__reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
+the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
+custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
+[SF patch 560794].
+- Sockets now support timeout mode.  After s.settimeout(T), where T is
+a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
+if they cannot be completed within T seconds.  To disable timeout
+mode, use s.settimeout(None).  There's also a module function,
+socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
+created henceforth.
+- getopt.gnu_getopt was added.  This supports GNU-style option
+processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
+- Stop using strings for exceptions.  String objects used for
+exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception.  The objects
+changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
+tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
+- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
+BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
+Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
+big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
+BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
+- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
+- math.log() now takes an optional argument:  math.log(x[, base]).
+- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
+for False.  Was causing an error when given a callback object which
+was callable but also returned len() as zero.  The change may
+create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
+and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
+identical to None.
+- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
+and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it.  In other
+words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
+results produced by random.gauss().  It does now.  Programs repeatedly
+mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
+results now.
+- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
+provided by cPickle.Pickler.
+- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
+which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise.  For
+comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
+than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
+argument defaults to None now as a result.  A happy benefit is
+that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
+to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
+text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
+- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
+- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
+support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
+- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
+command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
+This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
+people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
+and other systems.
+- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
+NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
+used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
+UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't
+work well with these.
+- compileall now supports quiet operation.
+- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
+connections.
+- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
+_socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
+which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
+- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
+sets
+- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
+"anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
+name.
+- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
+arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
+passed in.
+- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
+gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
+on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
+of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
+- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
+- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
+- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
+circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
+to the content handler implementation.  [SF bug #535474]
+- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
+of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
+or CRLF).  Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
+has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
+honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
+- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
+compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
+running under \*nix.
+- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
+library.  It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
+functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
+- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
+the value of its expression argument.
+- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
+the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
+the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
+- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
+unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
+skipstone browser was included.
+- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
+strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
+names in addition to accepting file names.
+- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed.  Nobody thought they
+were interesting any more.  (The SGI library modules and extensions
+are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
+still used and useful.)
+- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
+deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
+allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
+in the locale's encoding.
+- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
+unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
+the generated binary.
+Build
+-----
+- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
+- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
+except in the hands of experts.
+- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
+and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
+will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC.  DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
+are deprecated.
+- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
+get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
+Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
+that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds.  Note that
+COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
+builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
+builds.
+- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
+The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
+that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
+that may be conditionalizing on it).  A bonus is that any extension
+type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
+Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
+to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
+new type.
+- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
+The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
+HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
+positive infinities.
+Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
+Py_HUGE_VAL.  Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
+pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
+other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up.  If your platform defines
+HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
+that works on your platform.  The only instance of this I'm sure about
+is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
+http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
+Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems.  If anyone uses such a system, help!
+- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
+doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
+size of the executable.
+- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default.  On Unix
+it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
+configure script.  On other platforms, remove
+WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
+- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
+- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
+preprocessor symbols were eliminated.  The internal decisions they
+controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
+- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
+well as Unix.
+- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
+skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
+installer knows what s/he's doing.  See the section on building these
+modules in the README file for details.
+C API
+-----
+- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
+This is a result of these types having a partially defined
+tp_as_number slot.  (This is not a feature, but an indication that
+PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
+It may be deprecated.)
+- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
+ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate.  On some
+platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
+the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
+incremented.  The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
+strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone.  Interned
+strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
+PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
+(The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
+making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
+it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
+aligned.)
+- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
+argument.  Modules without global functions are becoming more common
+now that factories can be types rather than functions.
+- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
+level.
+- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
+PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
+PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
+PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
+the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
+- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument.  It
+was previously declared without const.  This should not affect working
+code.
+- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
+sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
+adjusting for negative indices.
+- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
+This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
+object.
+- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
+coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
+CHECKTYPES flag set.  This is to better support proxies.
+- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
+"``void (*)(void *)``".
+- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
+- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type.  Previously,
+when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
+was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
+where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
+- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
+- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
+- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
+without going through the buffer API.
+- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
+- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h.  This
+hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
+been marked as obsolete since then.  SF bug 495548 says it created
+conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
+- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
+to stop Python development.  Thanks for all the fish!
+- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
+scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
+New platforms
+-------------
+- OpenVMS is now supported.
+- AtheOS is now supported.
+- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
+- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
+Tests
+-----
+- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
+all resources except this one."  For example, to allow everything
+except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
+Windows
+-------
+- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
+Sleepycat Berkeley database library.  This should be a huge
+improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
+bugs.
+XXX What are the licensing issues here?
+XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
+XXX     Python, what must they do to convert it?
+XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
+XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
+- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
+module (_ssl.pyd)
+- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
+previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
+- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
+includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER).  For example, under
+MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ".  1200 is
+the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
+- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes.  One cause
+of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
+use files" uninstall option).
+- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows.  [SF bug #503031]
+- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
+equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
+- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
+It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
+limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
+- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
+until a specified process exits.  This is similar to, but not exactly
+the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems.  If you're waiting for
+a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
+functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
+See the docs for details.  The docs were changed to clarify that
+spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
+Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
+- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows:  this doesn't
+need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
+to a nasty problem:  before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
+got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
+underlying file, then deleted the file.  This usually worked fine.
+However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
+level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
+open in the spawning process P.  If a temp file f was among them, then
+doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
+C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
+blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
+deleting open files).  This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
+work around.
+- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
+low-level os.open() on Windows:  the new constants in 2.3 are
+O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
+The others were also available in 2.2:  O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
+O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY.  Contrary
+to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
+(so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
+specified with O_CREAT too).
+Mac
+----
+- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
+- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
+version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
+system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
+- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
+refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
+CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
+- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
+including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
+will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
+talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
+bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
+with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
+be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
+Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
+- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
+MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
+are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
+- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
+.pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
+run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
+files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
+window, but all this can be customized.
+- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
+possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
+releases.
+- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
+line interface too.
+- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
+subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
+now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
+documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
+available for convenience.
+- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
+and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
+gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
+- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
+unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
+(also when running on Mac OS X).
+- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
+There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
+(and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
+See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
+Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
+- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
+mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
+- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
+This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
+- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
+mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
+other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
+you can change this in site.py.
+What's New in Python 2.2 final?
+===============================
+*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
+Type/class unification and new-style classes
+--------------------------------------------
+- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
+with a custom metaclass.
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
+are proxies.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
+very short strings.
+- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
+overflows on the Mac.  Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
+limit much smaller.  If the limit is too low (it only affects
+performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
+when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
+Library
+-------
+- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
+close or delete time).
+- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
+instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
+- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
+- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
+when run from the standard regression test.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+Build
+-----
+C API
+-----
+New platforms
+-------------
+Tests
+-----
+Windows
+-------
+- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
+- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
+instances are deleted at process exit time.
+- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
+deleted at process exit time.
+- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
+in backslash.
+Mac
+----
+- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
+3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
+been added.  All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
+What's New in Python 2.2c1?
+===========================
+*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
+Type/class unification and new-style classes
+--------------------------------------------
+- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
+been extensively updated.  See
+http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
+That remains the primary documentation in this area.
+- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
+deleted!
+- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
+__delete__, not __del__.  In previous releases, it was mistakenly
+called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
+with finalizers.  (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
+are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
+- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
+(a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
+return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
+(b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super.  This
+is confusing.  To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
+super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
+attributes.  After all, overriding data attributes is not
+supported anyway.
+(c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
+instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
+- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
+(list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
+TypeError.  This has been fixed.  Also, directly calling
+dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
+(previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
+- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__.  This is for
+all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
+dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238:  when -Qnew is passed on
+the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
+of classic division.  See the PEP for details.  Note that "all"
+means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
+your own code.  As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
+educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
+Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
+under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
+division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
+testing the current rules).
+- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
+argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
+or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
+Library
+-------
+- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
+lock around calling the platform spawn.  They should always have done
+this, but did not before 2.2c1.  Multithreaded programs calling
+an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
+until the spawned program completes.  It's possible that some programs
+relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
+- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
+- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
+- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
+- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
+usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
+without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
+- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
+off a search on Google.
+Build
+-----
+- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
+preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
+In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
+Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
+authors.  The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
+release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead.  Ports to
+other platforms should do likewise.
+- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
+case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
+directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
+C API
+-----
+- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
+constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
+producing key-value pairs.
+- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
+the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers.  This
+wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
+dump core in some bad cases.  This has been repaired.  As a result,
+PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
+previously went unchallenged.
+New platforms
+-------------
+Tests
+-----
+Windows
+-------
+Mac
+----
+- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
+without any trailing digits.
+- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
+Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
+the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
+home.
+What's New in Python 2.2b2?
+===========================
+*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
+Type/class unification and new-style classes
+--------------------------------------------
+- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
+list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
+class Classic: pass
+class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
+The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
+according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
+using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
+This needs to be documented.
+- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
+been renamed to dict.  This reflects a decade of common usage.
+- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences.  For
+example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d.  The argument,
+and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
+- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
+when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
+- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
+instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
+class forbids it).
+- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
+(formerly these were silently ignored).  The only built-in methods
+that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
+- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time.  This
+was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
+(see below) says.
+- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
+(like 1 + '').
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
+both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
+copy-on-write memory mappings.  This was previously possible only on
+Unix.  A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
+uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
+platforms.  Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
+- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
+unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
+instances in unreachable cycles.  "Instances" here has been generalized
+to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
+- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
+sendall().  This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
+send() until all data has been sent.  Also, the socket function has
+been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
+before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
+- Various bugfixes to the curses module.  There is now a test suite
+for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
+- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
+bytes on its input.
+Library
+-------
+- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
+convenience function.
+- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique.  For
+example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
+single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
+Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
+previously, the error went undetected, and results were
+unpredictable.  Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
+pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C.  Also, an
+experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
+like findall() but returns an iterator.
+- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
+DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
+methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
+tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
+- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
+cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
+permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
+- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support.  It is the
+separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
+RISCOS, where it is '/'.  There is no need to use this variable
+unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
+- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
+found types.  guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
+optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
+recognize non-standard types or not.  A few non-standard types we
+know about have been added.  Also, when run as a script, there are
+new -l and -e options.
+- statcache is now deprecated.
+- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
+dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
+hard coded to "GMT" timezone).  An optional 'localtime' flag is
+added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
+time properly taken into account.
+- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
+transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
+propagate out.  Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
+in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+Build
+-----
+- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available.  The bsddb module
+is built with libdb3 if available.
+- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
+C API
+-----
+- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
+NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
+PySequence_Size().
+- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
+- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
+PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
+convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
+- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
+possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
+- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
+argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
+New platforms
+-------------
+- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
+*with* threads, and passes the test suite.
+- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
+again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
+- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
+Tests
+-----
+- Added a test script for the curses module.  It isn't run automatically;
+regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
+Windows
+-------
+Mac
+----
+- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
+removed completely in the next release.
+- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
+OSX.
+- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
+result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
+- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
+What's New in Python 2.2b1?
+===========================
+*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
+Type/class unification and new-style classes
+--------------------------------------------
+- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
+extension types).  There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
+no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around.  One relic
+remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
+must set the class's attribute to modify it.  As a consequence, the
+__defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
+of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
+future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
+can prove that it actually speeds things up).
+- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
+always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
+- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
+class methods, static methods, and properties.
+Core and builtins
+-----------------
+- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
+For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def'].  The comma in
+this example is a mistake.  Previously, this would silently let 'a'
+iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
+'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
+'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf'].  Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
+Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
+[<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
+- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
+documented, rather than returning the default value for all
+exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
+example).
+- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
+A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
+proxy reference has been fixed.  weakref.ReferenceError is now a
+built-in exception.
+- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
+objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
+unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
+require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
+- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
+class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
+second argument.  The second argument may also be a tuple of a
+class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
+will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
+things contained in the second argument tuple.  E.g.
+isinstance(x, (A, B))
+returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
+- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
+- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
+pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
+- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
+available.  The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
+now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
+accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
+backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
+Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
+attributes.
+- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
+pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
+attributes like tm_year etc.
+- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
+second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
+of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
+- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
+functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status().  These calls
+are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
+automatically seed its PRNG.  Also, the keyfile and certfile
+arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
+- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
+exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
+Library
+-------
+- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
+being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
+- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
+been added.  This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
+but it is still quite preliminary.  Support modules and
+documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
+- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
+raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()).  This used
+to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
+functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
+The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
+profiling classes was removed.  The code hasn't worked for years (if
+you tried to use them, they raised exceptions).  OldProfile
+intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
+than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore.  HotProfile intended
+to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
+that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
+without losing information).
+- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
+a much better system-specific calibration constant.  The constant can
+now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
+instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
+Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
+module).
+Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
+Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
+profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
+and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
+a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
+- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
+which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
+encoding.
+- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
+finish_request() returns.  (Not when it errors out though.)
+- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
+to allow saving the message body to a file.
+- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
+only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
+Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
+audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
+- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
+- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
+ON, and OFF.
+- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
+and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
+Tools/Demos
+-----------
+- Demo/dns was removed.  It no longer serves any purpose; a package
+derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
+http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
+- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
+been added: -X and -E.
+Build
+-----
+- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
+the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
+C API
+-----
+- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
+the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
+not correct.  This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
+Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
+"NotImplemented".  Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
+- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
+Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
+as long) arguments.
+- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
+ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
+thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
+the thread module used this API).  This code has only really been
+tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
+report any bugs or strange behavior).
+- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
+input.
+New platforms
+-------------
+Tests
+-----
+Windows
+-------
+- Installer:  If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
+registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
+is created for .py and .pyw files.
+- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
+Scott.  Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows.  The default SIGBREAK
+action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess().  This can be changed via
+signal.signal().  For example::
+# Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
+# (SIGINT) behavior.
+import signal
+signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
+try:
+while 1:
+pass
+except KeyboardInterrupt:
+# We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
+# SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
+# program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
+print "Clean exit"
+What's New in Python 2.2a4?
+===========================
+*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
+Type/class unification and new-style classes
+--------------------------------------------
+- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
+e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
+documentation for all operations on list objects.
+- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
+be used with Python 2.2.  In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
+Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1).  The Demo/metaclass
+examples also work again.  It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
+with 2.2a4 and beyond.  (If you can confirm this, please write
+webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
+report on SourceForge.)
+- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments:  fget, fset, fdel and doc.
+These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
+in the constructed property object.  fget, fset and fdel weren't
+discoverable from Python in 2.2a3.  __doc__ is new, and allows to
+associate a docstring with a property.
+- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented.  For
+example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
+instance, and it can properly overload comparison.  Ditto for most
+other built-in object types.
+- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
+'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
+*except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
+'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
+otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
+- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
+previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
+- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
+called __getattribute__.  This method, if defined, is called for
+*every* attribute access.  A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
+one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
+attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
+access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes).  If
+both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
+AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
+- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
+The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
+class.
+- The builtin file type can be subclassed now.  In the usual pattern,
+"file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
+constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
+file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
+- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
+the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
+and keyword arguments.  This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
+now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
+- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
+unicode always returned 0.  This has been repaired.
+- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
+immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
+where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
+operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
+instance instead a value of the base type.  For example, if s was of
+a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is.  Now it returns a str
+with the same value as s.
+- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
+Core
+----
+- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
+- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
+PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
+on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
+makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
+objects.
+- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
+method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
+of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
+at least convert them into ASCII strings.
+- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
+necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
+to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
+Library
+-------
+- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
+read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
+These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
+by the instances.
+- The "email" package has been added.  This is basically a port of the
+mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
+and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
+- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now.  This
+restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
+before the entire comparison is complete.
+- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
+iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
+called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
+- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
+builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
+getwriter().
+- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
+simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
+- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
+after interpretation of symbolic links.  On non-Unix systems, this
+is an alias for os.path.abspath().
+- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
+iterable object.
+- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
+the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
+- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
+authentication.
+- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types.  At the
+same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
+- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
+Python 2.2 bytecode generation.  It has also been promoted from a
+Tool to a standard library package.  (Tools/compiler still exists as
+a sample driver.)
+Build
+-----
+- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
+it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed.  On Linux, at
+least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
+files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
+still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
+kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
+kernel has large file support.
+- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
+cross-compilation environment.  This doesn't mean that the supplied
+values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
+flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
+autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
+- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
+generator.  The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
+using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
+C API
+-----
+- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
+and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
+New platforms
+-------------
+- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
+(http://familiar.handhelds.org).
+Tests
+-----
+- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
+an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
+the first mismatch.  Instead the test is run to completion, and a
+variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
+This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
+- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
+convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
+imported.  This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
+flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
+- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
+especially in regard to reporting errors.
+Windows
+-------
+- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
+that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000).  See "What's New in
+Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
+What's New in Python 2.2a3?
+===========================
+*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
+Core
+----
+- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
+big to represent as a C double.
+- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
+if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
+integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
+the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
+restriction).
+- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
+more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
+reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
+classes, and so on from them too.  Example:  in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
+an empty list.  In 2.2a3,
+>>> dir([])
+['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
+'__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
+'__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
+'__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
+'__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
+'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
+'reverse', 'sort']
+dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
+- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
+than raising OverflowError.  This is a partial implementation of PEP
+237.  You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
+this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
+OverflowError exception.
+- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
+warnings for the use of classic division.  (See PEP 238.)  Possible
+values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew.  The default is
+-Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
+warnings are issued.  Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
+all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
+also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
+(for use with fixdiv.py).
+[Note:  the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
+obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
+Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
+only in the __main__ module.  You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
+-Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
+warns about classic division everywhere else.
+- Many built-in types can now be subclassed.  This applies to int,
+long, float, str, unicode, and tuple.  (The types complex, list and
+dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
+Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
+types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
+__new__.  You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
+will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
+(as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
+once it is created.
+- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
+mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
+(key, value) pairs.
+- A new built-in type, super, has been added.  This facilitates making
+"cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting.  For an
+explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
+- A new built-in type, property, has been added.  This enables the
+creation of "properties".  These are attributes implemented by
+getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
+write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
+See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
+- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
+liberalized, to allow leading zeroes.  Examples of literals now
+legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
+00.0    0e3   0100j   07.5   00000000000000000008.
+- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
+exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-.  Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
+Library
+-------
+- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
+setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
+of suboptions.
+- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
+ERANGE on overflow.  For platform libraries that exploit this new
+freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken.  A new overflow-
+checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
+platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
+in this area anymore).
+- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
+threading.Timer.
+- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
+long arguments.  For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
+- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
+currently held.  See the docs for the imp module.
+- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
+dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
+When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
+converted to Python longs.
+- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
+code objects is no longer allowed.  This plugs a security hole.
+- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
+generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
+to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
+Tools
+-----
+- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
+division operators as per PEP 238.
+Build
+-----
+- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
+Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
+application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
+Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
+C API
+-----
+- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
+- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail!  This has always been true, but no
+callers checked for it.  It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
+errors are properly detected now.  The proper way to check::
+double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
+if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
+/* The conversion failed. */
+}
+- The GC API has been changed.  Extensions that use the old API will still
+compile but will not participate in GC.  To upgrade an extension
+module:
+- rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
+- use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
+PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
+- rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
+to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
+- remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
+- remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
+- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
+These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
+sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
+by PyErr_Format()).
+New platforms
+-------------
+- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
+under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
+out of time to complete the port.  Volunteers?  Expect a MemoryError
+when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
+causing later failures too.
+Tests
+-----
+Windows
+-------
+- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
+Win64.  This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
+to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
+disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
+partitions).  Windows filesystem limits:  FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
+filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
+FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
+NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
+used from Python now.
+- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
+points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
+What's New in Python 2.2a2?
+===========================
+*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
+Build
+-----
+- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
+generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
+- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
+ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
+type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
+- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
+which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
+point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
+if you are interested in helping.
+- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
+- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
+Tools
+-----
+- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
+edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code.  See
+the module docstring for details.
+Tests
+-----
+- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
+platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output.  regrtest
+also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
+which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
+- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
+Nick Mathewson.
+Core
+----
+- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
+238.  The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
+Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
+which case the / operator will provide true division.  The operator
+module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions.  Augmented
+assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
+methods and C API methods.  See the PEP for a full discussion:
+<http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
+- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
+(like IDLE).  This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
+Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
+details:  <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
+- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
+trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
+some features is still tentative).  A lot of work has done on fixing
+bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
+come a long way).
+- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
+now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
+write filters for these warnings).
+- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
+dictionary.  It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
+but now both actions raise TypeErrors.  It is still legal to set it
+to a dictionary object.  Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
+have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
+- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
+all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
+significant to Python.  Usually those have a name starting with
+"PYTHON".  This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
+the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
+older distribution.
+Library
+-------
+- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
+These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
+for programmatic reuse.
+- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr():  Quote an XML attribute
+value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
+reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
+- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
+- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
+- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
+- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
+- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
+- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
+New platforms
+-------------
+C API
+-----
+- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
+which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
+relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
+the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
+apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
+against buffer overruns.
+- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
+and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
+impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
+will result in an ImportError.  Unicode extensions writers must make
+sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
+using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
+- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
+tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
+single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
+calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
+deprecated.
+Windows
+-------
+- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
+relevant is found.
+What's New in Python 2.2a1?
+===========================
+*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
+Core
+----
+- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
+described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
+253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added.  This will be released
+with Python 2.2a1.  Documentation will be provided separately
+through http://www.python.org/2.2/.  The purpose of releasing this
+with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility.  It is
+possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
+this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
+incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
+repaired.
+- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
+below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
+more 'yield' statements.  See PEP 255.  Since this adds a new
+keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
+future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
+Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
+(probably 2.3).  Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
+ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
+(These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
+PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
+- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
+only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
+only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
+leading BMO character).
+- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
+existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
+to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
+To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
+casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
+were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
+Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
+requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
+return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
+will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
+for various simple to use conversions.
+New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
+and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
++---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
+|Name     | .encode() | .decode() | Description                 |
++=========+===========+===========+=============================+
+|uu       | string    | string    | UU codec (e.g. for email)   |
++---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
+|base64   | string    | string    | base64 codec                |
++---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
+|quopri   | string    | string    | quoted-printable codec      |
++---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
+|zlib     | string    | string    | zlib compression            |
++---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
+|hex      | string    | string    | 2-byte hex codec            |
++---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
+|rot-13   | string    | Unicode   | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
++---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
+- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
+encoding for file system operations.  Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
+as the default.  The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
+term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
+'mbcs'.
+On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
+functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
+string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
+the platform.  As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
+default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
+it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
+would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
+the default encoding for the file system.
+In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
+Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
+increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
+See [????] for more details, including examples.
+- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
+precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
+.pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
+12th significant decimal digit.  For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
+floating arithmetic,
+x = 9007199254740992.0
+print long(x)
+printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
+if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file.  This was due to marshal using
+str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects.  marshal
+now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
+machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
+functions are of good quality).
+This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
+usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
+algorithms to break.
+- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
+benefits.  However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
+dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
+given dict.  Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
+rely on it.  Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
+order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
+dict to an "expected results" file.  See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
+sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
+order.
+- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
+operation along the most common code paths.
+- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
+the same as dict.has_key(x).
+- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
+objects.  Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
+and __getitem__() methods.  This allows you to say, for example,
+{}.update(UserDict())
+- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
+to a for loop.  See PEP 234.  There's a new built-in function iter()
+to return an iterator.  There's a new protocol to get the next value
+from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
+tp_iternext slot (in C).  There's a new protocol to get iterators
+using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
+Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
+Iterating over a file generates its lines.
+- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
+arguments::
+map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
+list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
+max(), min()
+join() method of strings
+extend() method of lists
+'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
+operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
+right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
+x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
+- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
+random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
+- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
+if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
+- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower:  there were
+insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
+to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
+values mutated the dicts.  Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
+- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
+dramatically in bad cases.  For example, looking up every key in a dict
+d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
+faster now.  Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
+the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
+- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
+Library
+-------
+- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
+were added to the string module.  These a locale-independent
+constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase.  These are now
+use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
+- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
+sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
+- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module.  This
+provides full client-side XML-RPC support.  In addition,
+Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
+one asyncore-based).  Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
+- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
+repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
+method, or the start, stop and step attributes.  See PEP 260.
+- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
+- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
+- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
+and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
+that are still imported into string.py).
+- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
+- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
+Now it does.
+- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
+- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
+types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64).  In
+native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
+these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
+process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
+In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
+8-byte integral types.
+- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
+pydoc.help.  It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
+it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
+'help(object)'.
+Tests
+-----
+- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
+comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison.  This
+rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
+of heart:  it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
+- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
+pprint.isreadable() return sensible results.  Also verifies that simple
+cases produce correct output.
+C API
+-----
+- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
+_PyTuple_Resize().  If this affects you, you were cheating.
+What's New in Python 2.1 (final)?
+=================================
+We only changed a few things since the last release candidate, all in
+Python library code:
+- A bug in the locale module was fixed that affected locales which
+define no grouping for numeric formatting.
+- A few bugs in the weakref module's implementations of weak
+dictionaries (WeakValueDictionary and WeakKeyDictionary) were fixed,
+and the test suite was updated to check for these bugs.
+- An old bug in the os.path.walk() function (introduced in Python
+2.0!) was fixed: a non-existent file would cause an exception
+instead of being ignored.
+- Fixed a few bugs in the new symtable module found by Neil Norwitz's
+PyChecker.
+What's New in Python 2.1c2?
+===========================
+A flurry of small changes, and one showstopper fixed in the nick of
+time made it necessary to release another release candidate.  The list
+here is the *complete* list of patches (except version updates):
+Core
+- Tim discovered a nasty bug in the dictionary code, caused by
+PyDict_Next() calling dict_resize(), and the GC code's use of
+PyDict_Next() violating an assumption in dict_items().  This was
+fixed with considerable amounts of band-aid, but the net effect is a
+saner and more robust implementation.
+- Made a bunch of symbols static that were accidentally global.
+Build and Ports
+- The setup.py script didn't check for a new enough version of zlib
+(1.1.3 is needed).  Now it does.
+- Changed "make clean" target to also remove shared libraries.
+- Added a more general warning about the SGI Irix optimizer to README.
+Library
+- Fix a bug in urllib.basejoin("http://host", "../file.html") which
+omitted the slash between host and file.html.
+- The mailbox module's _Mailbox class contained a completely broken
+and undocumented seek() method.  Ripped it out.
+- Fixed a bunch of typos in various library modules (urllib2, smtpd,
+sgmllib, netrc, chunk) found by Neil Norwitz's PyChecker.
+- Fixed a few last-minute bugs in unittest.
+Extensions
+- Reverted the patch to the OpenSSL code in socketmodule.c to support
+RAND_status() and the EGD, and the subsequent patch that tried to
+fix it for pre-0.9.5 versions; the problem with the patch is that on
+some systems it issues a warning whenever socket is imported, and
+that's unacceptable.
+Tests
+- Fixed the pickle tests to work with "import test.test_pickle".
+- Tweaked test_locale.py to actually run the test Windows.
+- In distutils/archive_util.py, call zipfile.ZipFile() with mode "w",
+not "wb" (which is not a valid mode at all).
+- Fix pstats browser crashes.  Import readline if it exists to make
+the user interface nicer.
+- Add "import thread" to the top of test modules that import the
+threading module (test_asynchat and test_threadedtempfile).  This
+prevents test failures caused by a broken threading module resulting
+from a previously caught failed import.
+- Changed test_asynchat.py to set the SO_REUSEADDR option; this was
+needed on some platforms (e.g. Solaris 8) when the tests are run
+twice in succession.
+- Skip rather than fail test_sunaudiodev if no audio device is found.
+What's New in Python 2.1c1?
+===========================
+This list was significantly updated when 2.1c2 was released; the 2.1c1
+release didn't mention most changes that were actually part of 2.1c1:
+Legal
+- Copyright was assigned to the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and a
+PSF license (very similar to the CNRI license) was added.
+- The CNRI copyright notice was updated to include 2001.
+Core
+- After a public outcry, assignment to __debug__ is no longer illegal;
+instead, a warning is issued.  It will become illegal in 2.2.
+- Fixed a core dump with "%#x" % 0, and changed the semantics so that
+"%#x" now always prepends "0x", even if the value is zero.
+- Fixed some nits in the bytecode compiler.
+- Fixed core dumps when calling certain kinds of non-functions.
+- Fixed various core dumps caused by reference count bugs.
+Build and Ports
+- Use INSTALL_SCRIPT to install script files.
+- New port: SCO Unixware 7, by Billy G. Allie.
+- Updated RISCOS port.
+- Updated BeOS port and notes.
+- Various other porting problems resolved.
+Library
+- The TERMIOS and SOCKET modules are now truly obsolete and
+unnecessary.  Their symbols are incorporated in the termios and
+socket modules.
+- Fixed some 64-bit bugs in pickle, cPickle, and struct, and added
+better tests for pickling.
+- threading: make Condition.wait() robust against KeyboardInterrupt.
+- zipfile: add support to zipfile to support opening an archive
+represented by an open file rather than a file name.  Fix bug where
+the archive was not properly closed.  Fixed a bug in this bugfix
+where flush() was called for a read-only file.
+- imputil: added an uninstall() method to the ImportManager.
+- Canvas: fixed bugs in lower() and tkraise() methods.
+- SocketServer: API change (added overridable close_request() method)
+so that the TCP server can explicitly close the request.
+- pstats: Eric Raymond added a simple interactive statistics browser,
+invoked when the module is run as a script.
+- locale: fixed a problem in format().
+- webbrowser: made it work when the BROWSER environment variable has a
+value like "/usr/bin/netscape".  Made it auto-detect Konqueror for
+KDE 2.  Fixed some other nits.
+- unittest: changes to allow using a different exception than
+AssertionError, and added a few more function aliases.  Some other
+small changes.
+- urllib, urllib2: fixed redirect problems and a coupleof other nits.
+- asynchat: fixed a critical bug in asynchat that slipped through the
+2.1b2 release.  Fixed another rare bug.
+- Fix some unqualified except: clauses (always a bad code example).
+XML
+- pyexpat: new API get_version_string().
+- Fixed some minidom bugs.
+Extensions
+- Fixed a core dump in _weakref.  Removed the weakref.mapping()
+function (it adds nothing to the API).
+- Rationalized the use of header files in the readline module, to make
+it compile (albeit with some warnings) with the very recent readline
+4.2, without breaking for earlier versions.
+- Hopefully fixed a buffering problem in linuxaudiodev.
+- Attempted a fix to make the OpenSSL support in the socket module
+work again with pre-0.9.5 versions of OpenSSL.
+Tests
+- Added a test case for asynchat and asyncore.
+- Removed coupling between tests where one test failing could break
+another.
+Tools
+- Ping added an interactive help browser to pydoc, fixed some nits
+in the rest of the pydoc code, and added some features to his
+inspect module.
+- An updated python-mode.el version 4.1 which integrates Ken
+Manheimer's pdbtrack.el.  This makes debugging Python code via pdb
+much nicer in XEmacs and Emacs.  When stepping through your program
+with pdb, in either the shell window or the *Python* window, the
+source file and line will be tracked by an arrow.  Very cool!
+- IDLE: syntax warnings in interactive mode are changed into errors.
+- Some improvements to Tools/webchecker (ignore some more URL types,
+follow some more links).
+- Brought the Tools/compiler package up to date.
+What's New in Python 2.1 beta 2?
+================================
+(Unlisted are many fixed bugs, more documentation, etc.)
+Core language, builtins, and interpreter
+- The nested scopes work (enabled by "from __future__ import
+nested_scopes") is completed; in particular, the future now extends
+into code executed through exec, eval() and execfile(), and into the
+interactive interpreter.
+- When calling a base class method (e.g. BaseClass.__init__(self)),
+this is now allowed even if self is not strictly spoken a class
+instance (e.g. when using metaclasses or the Don Beaudry hook).
+- Slice objects are now comparable but not hashable; this prevents
+dict[:] from being accepted but meaningless.
+- Complex division is now calculated using less braindead algorithms.
+This doesn't change semantics except it's more likely to give useful
+results in extreme cases.  Complex repr() now uses full precision
+like float repr().
+- sgmllib.py now calls handle_decl() for simple <!...> declarations.
+- It is illegal to assign to the name __debug__, which is set when the
+interpreter starts.  It is effectively a compile-time constant.
+- A warning will be issued if a global statement for a variable
+follows a use or assignment of that variable.
+Standard library
+- unittest.py, a unit testing framework by Steve Purcell (PyUNIT,
+inspired by JUnit), is now part of the standard library.  You now
+have a choice of two testing frameworks: unittest requires you to
+write testcases as separate code, doctest gathers them from
+docstrings.  Both approaches have their advantages and
+disadvantages.
+- A new module Tix was added, which wraps the Tix extension library
+for Tk.  With that module, it is not necessary to statically link
+Tix with _tkinter, since Tix will be loaded with Tcl's "package
+require" command.  See Demo/tix/.
+- tzparse.py is now obsolete.
+- In gzip.py, the seek() and tell() methods are removed -- they were
+non-functional anyway, and it's better if callers can test for their
+existence with hasattr().
+Python/C API
+- PyDict_Next(): it is now safe to call PyDict_SetItem() with a key
+that's already in the dictionary during a PyDict_Next() iteration.
+This used to fail occasionally when a dictionary resize operation
+could be triggered that would rehash all the keys.  All other
+modifications to the dictionary are still off-limits during a
+PyDict_Next() iteration!
+- New extended APIs related to passing compiler variables around.
+- New abstract APIs PyObject_IsInstance(), PyObject_IsSubclass()
+implement isinstance() and issubclass().
+- Py_BuildValue() now has a "D" conversion to create a Python complex
+number from a Py_complex C value.
+- Extensions types which support weak references must now set the
+field allocated for the weak reference machinery to NULL themselves;
+this is done to avoid the cost of checking each object for having a
+weakly referencable type in PyObject_INIT(), since most types are
+not weakly referencable.
+- PyFrame_FastToLocals() and PyFrame_LocalsToFast() copy bindings for
+free variables and cell variables to and from the frame's f_locals.
+- Variants of several functions defined in pythonrun.h have been added
+to support the nested_scopes future statement.  The variants all end
+in Flags and take an extra argument, a PyCompilerFlags *; examples:
+PyRun_AnyFileExFlags(), PyRun_InteractiveLoopFlags().  These
+variants may be removed in Python 2.2, when nested scopes are
+mandatory.
+Distutils
+- the sdist command now writes a PKG-INFO file, as described in PEP 241,
+into the release tree.
+- several enhancements to the bdist_wininst command from Thomas Heller
+(an uninstaller, more customization of the installer's display)
+- from Jack Jansen: added Mac-specific code to generate a dialog for
+users to specify the command-line (because providing a command-line with
+MacPython is awkward).  Jack also made various fixes for the Mac
+and the Metrowerks compiler.
+- added 'platforms' and 'keywords' to the set of metadata that can be
+specified for a distribution.
+- applied patches from Jason Tishler to make the compiler class work with
+Cygwin.
+What's New in Python 2.1 beta 1?
+================================
+Core language, builtins, and interpreter
+- Following an outcry from the community about the amount of code
+broken by the nested scopes feature introduced in 2.1a2, we decided
+to make this feature optional, and to wait until Python 2.2 (or at
+least 6 months) to make it standard.  The option can be enabled on a
+per-module basis by adding "from __future__ import nested_scopes" at
+the beginning of a module (before any other statements, but after
+comments and an optional docstring).  See PEP 236 (Back to the
+__future__) for a description of the __future__ statement.  PEP 227
+(Statically Nested Scopes) has been updated to reflect this change,
+and to clarify the semantics in a number of endcases.
+- The nested scopes code, when enabled, has been hardened, and most
+bugs and memory leaks in it have been fixed.
+- Compile-time warnings are now generated for a number of conditions
+that will break or change in meaning when nested scopes are enabled:
+- Using "from...import *" or "exec" without in-clause in a function
+scope that also defines a lambda or nested function with one or
+more free (non-local) variables.  The presence of the import* or
+bare exec makes it impossible for the compiler to determine the
+exact set of local variables in the outer scope, which makes it
+impossible to determine the bindings for free variables in the
+inner scope.  To avoid the warning about import *, change it into
+an import of explicitly name object, or move the import* statement
+to the global scope; to avoid the warning about bare exec, use
+exec...in... (a good idea anyway -- there's a possibility that
+bare exec will be deprecated in the future).
+- Use of a global variable in a nested scope with the same name as a
+local variable in a surrounding scope.  This will change in
+meaning with nested scopes: the name in the inner scope will
+reference the variable in the outer scope rather than the global
+of the same name.  To avoid the warning, either rename the outer
+variable, or use a global statement in the inner function.
+- An optional object allocator has been included.  This allocator is
+optimized for Python objects and should be faster and use less memory
+than the standard system allocator.  It is not enabled by default
+because of possible thread safety problems.  The allocator is only
+protected by the Python interpreter lock and it is possible that some
+extension modules require a thread safe allocator.  The object
+allocator can be enabled by providing the "--with-pymalloc" option to
+configure.
+Standard library
+- pyexpat now detects the expat version if expat.h defines it. A
+number of additional handlers are provided, which are only available
+since expat 1.95. In addition, the methods SetParamEntityParsing and
+GetInputContext of Parser objects are available with 1.95.x
+only. Parser objects now provide the ordered_attributes and
+specified_attributes attributes. A new module expat.model was added,
+which offers a number of additional constants if 1.95.x is used.
+- xml.dom offers the new functions registerDOMImplementation and
+getDOMImplementation.
+- xml.dom.minidom offers a toprettyxml method. A number of DOM
+conformance issues have been resolved. In particular, Element now
+has an hasAttributes method, and the handling of namespaces was
+improved.
+- Ka-Ping Yee contributed two new modules: inspect.py, a module for
+getting information about live Python code, and pydoc.py, a module
+for interactively converting docstrings to HTML or text.
+Tools/scripts/pydoc, which is now automatically installed into
+<prefix>/bin, uses pydoc.py to display documentation; try running
+"pydoc -h" for instructions.  "pydoc -g" pops up a small GUI that
+lets you browse the module docstrings using a web browser.
+- New library module difflib.py, primarily packaging the SequenceMatcher
+class at the heart of the popular ndiff.py file-comparison tool.
+- doctest.py (a framework for verifying Python code examples in docstrings)
+is now part of the std library.
+Windows changes
+- A new entry in the Start menu, "Module Docs", runs "pydoc -g" -- a
+small GUI that lets you browse the module docstrings using your
+default web browser.
+- Import is now case-sensitive.  PEP 235 (Import on Case-Insensitive
+Platforms) is implemented.  See
+http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0235.html
+for full details, especially the "Current Lower-Left Semantics" section.
+The new Windows import rules are simpler than before:
+A. If the PYTHONCASEOK environment variable exists, same as
+before:  silently accept the first case-insensitive match of any
+kind; raise ImportError if none found.
+B. Else search sys.path for the first case-sensitive match; raise
+ImportError if none found.
+The same rules have been implemented on other platforms with case-
+insensitive but case-preserving filesystems too (including Cygwin, and
+several flavors of Macintosh operating systems).
+- winsound module:  Under Win9x, winsound.Beep() now attempts to simulate
+what it's supposed to do (and does do under NT and 2000) via direct
+port manipulation.  It's unknown whether this will work on all systems,
+but it does work on my Win98SE systems now and was known to be useless on
+all Win9x systems before.
+- Build:  Subproject _test (effectively) renamed to _testcapi.
+New platforms
+- 2.1 should compile and run out of the box under MacOS X, even using HFS+.
+Thanks to Steven Majewski!
+- 2.1 should compile and run out of the box on Cygwin.  Thanks to Jason
+Tishler!
+- 2.1 contains new files and patches for RISCOS, thanks to Dietmar
+Schwertberger!  See RISCOS/README for more information -- it seems
+that because of the bizarre filename conventions on RISCOS, no port
+to that platform is easy.
+What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 2?
+=================================
+Core language, builtins, and interpreter
+- Scopes nest.  If a name is used in a function or class, but is not
+local, the definition in the nearest enclosing function scope will
+be used.  One consequence of this change is that lambda statements
+could reference variables in the namespaces where the lambda is
+defined.  In some unusual cases, this change will break code.
+In all previous version of Python, names were resolved in exactly
+three namespaces -- the local namespace, the global namespace, and
+the builtin namespace.  According to this old definition, if a
+function A is defined within a function B, the names bound in B are
+not visible in A.  The new rules make names bound in B visible in A,
+unless A contains a name binding that hides the binding in B.
+Section 4.1 of the reference manual describes the new scoping rules
+in detail.  The test script in Lib/test/test_scope.py demonstrates
+some of the effects of the change.
+The new rules will cause existing code to break if it defines nested
+functions where an outer function has local variables with the same
+name as globals or builtins used by the inner function.  Example:
+def munge(str):
+def helper(x):
+return str(x)
+if type(str) != type(''):
+str = helper(str)
+return str.strip()
+Under the old rules, the name str in helper() is bound to the
+builtin function str().  Under the new rules, it will be bound to
+the argument named str and an error will occur when helper() is
+called.
+- The compiler will report a SyntaxError if "from ... import *" occurs
+in a function or class scope.  The language reference has documented
+that this case is illegal, but the compiler never checked for it.
+The recent introduction of nested scope makes the meaning of this
+form of name binding ambiguous.  In a future release, the compiler
+may allow this form when there is no possibility of ambiguity.
+- repr(string) is easier to read, now using hex escapes instead of octal,
+and using \t, \n and \r instead of \011, \012 and \015 (respectively):
+>>> "\texample \r\n" + chr(0) + chr(255)
+'\texample \r\n\x00\xff'         # in 2.1
+'\011example \015\012\000\377'   # in 2.0
+- Functions are now compared and hashed by identity, not by value, since
+the func_code attribute is writable.
+- Weak references (PEP 205) have been added.  This involves a few
+changes in the core, an extension module (_weakref), and a Python
+module (weakref).  The weakref module is the public interface.  It
+includes support for "explicit" weak references, proxy objects, and
+mappings with weakly held values.
+- A 'continue' statement can now appear in a try block within the body
+of a loop.  It is still not possible to use continue in a finally
+clause.
+Standard library
+- mailbox.py now has a new class, PortableUnixMailbox which is
+identical to UnixMailbox but uses a more portable scheme for
+determining From_ separators.  Also, the constructors for all the
+classes in this module have a new optional `factory' argument, which
+is a callable used when new message classes must be instantiated by
+the next() method.
+- random.py is now self-contained, and offers all the functionality of
+the now-deprecated whrandom.py.  See the docs for details.  random.py
+also supports new functions getstate() and setstate(), for saving
+and restoring the internal state of the generator; and jumpahead(n),
+for quickly forcing the internal state to be the same as if n calls to
+random() had been made.  The latter is particularly useful for multi-
+threaded programs, creating one instance of the random.Random() class for
+each thread, then using .jumpahead() to force each instance to use a
+non-overlapping segment of the full period.
+- random.py's seed() function is new.  For bit-for-bit compatibility with
+prior releases, use the whseed function instead.  The new seed function
+addresses two problems:  (1) The old function couldn't produce more than
+about 2**24 distinct internal states; the new one about 2**45 (the best
+that can be done in the Wichmann-Hill generator).  (2) The old function
+sometimes produced identical internal states when passed distinct
+integers, and there was no simple way to predict when that would happen;
+the new one guarantees to produce distinct internal states for all
+arguments in [0, 27814431486576L).
+- The socket module now supports raw packets on Linux.  The socket
+family is AF_PACKET.
+- test_capi.py is a start at running tests of the Python C API.  The tests
+are implemented by the new Modules/_testmodule.c.
+- A new extension module, _symtable, provides provisional access to the
+internal symbol table used by the Python compiler.  A higher-level
+interface will be added on top of _symtable in a future release.
+- Removed the obsolete soundex module.
+- xml.dom.minidom now uses the standard DOM exceptions. Node supports
+the isSameNode method; NamedNodeMap the get method.
+- xml.sax.expatreader supports the lexical handler property; it
+generates comment, startCDATA, and endCDATA events.
+Windows changes
+- Build procedure:  the zlib project is built in a different way that
+ensures the zlib header files used can no longer get out of synch with
+the zlib binary used.  See PCbuild\readme.txt for details.  Your old
+zlib-related directories can be deleted; you'll need to download fresh
+source for zlib and unpack it into a new directory.
+- Build:  New subproject _test for the benefit of test_capi.py (see above).
+- Build:  New subproject _symtable, for new DLL _symtable.pyd (a nascent
+interface to some Python compiler internals).
+- Build:  Subproject ucnhash is gone, since the code was folded into the
+unicodedata subproject.
+What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1?
+=================================
+Core language, builtins, and interpreter
+- There is a new Unicode companion to the PyObject_Str() API
+called PyObject_Unicode(). It behaves in the same way as the
+former, but assures that the returned value is an Unicode object
+(applying the usual coercion if necessary).
+- The comparison operators support "rich comparison overloading" (PEP
+207).  C extension types can provide a rich comparison function in
+the new tp_richcompare slot in the type object.  The cmp() function
+and the C function PyObject_Compare() first try the new rich
+comparison operators before trying the old 3-way comparison.  There
+is also a new C API PyObject_RichCompare() (which also falls back on
+the old 3-way comparison, but does not constrain the outcome of the
+rich comparison to a Boolean result).
+The rich comparison function takes two objects (at least one of
+which is guaranteed to have the type that provided the function) and
+an integer indicating the opcode, which can be Py_LT, Py_LE, Py_EQ,
+Py_NE, Py_GT, Py_GE (for <, <=, ==, !=, >, >=), and returns a Python
+object, which may be NotImplemented (in which case the tp_compare
+slot function is used as a fallback, if defined).
+Classes can overload individual comparison operators by defining one
+or more of the methods__lt__, __le__, __eq__, __ne__, __gt__,
+__ge__.  There are no explicit "reflected argument" versions of
+these; instead, __lt__ and __gt__ are each other's reflection,
+likewise for__le__ and __ge__; __eq__ and __ne__ are their own
+reflection (similar at the C level).  No other implications are
+made; in particular, Python does not assume that == is the Boolean
+inverse of !=, or that < is the Boolean inverse of >=.  This makes
+it possible to define types with partial orderings.
+Classes or types that want to implement (in)equality tests but not
+the ordering operators (i.e. unordered types) should implement ==
+and !=, and raise an error for the ordering operators.
+It is possible to define types whose rich comparison results are not
+Boolean; e.g. a matrix type might want to return a matrix of bits
+for A < B, giving elementwise comparisons.  Such types should ensure
+that any interpretation of their value in a Boolean context raises
+an exception, e.g. by defining __nonzero__ (or the tp_nonzero slot
+at the C level) to always raise an exception.
+- Complex numbers use rich comparisons to define == and != but raise
+an exception for <, <=, > and >=.  Unfortunately, this also means
+that cmp() of two complex numbers raises an exception when the two
+numbers differ.  Since it is not mathematically meaningful to compare
+complex numbers except for equality, I hope that this doesn't break
+too much code.
+- The outcome of comparing non-numeric objects of different types is
+not defined by the language, other than that it's arbitrary but
+consistent (see the Reference Manual).  An implementation detail changed
+in 2.1a1 such that None now compares less than any other object.  Code
+relying on this new behavior (like code that relied on the previous
+behavior) does so at its own risk.
+- Functions and methods now support getting and setting arbitrarily
+named attributes (PEP 232).  Functions have a new __dict__
+(a.k.a. func_dict) which hold the function attributes.  Methods get
+and set attributes on their underlying im_func.  It is a TypeError
+to set an attribute on a bound method.
+- The xrange() object implementation has been improved so that
+xrange(sys.maxint) can be used on 64-bit platforms.  There's still a
+limitation that in this case len(xrange(sys.maxint)) can't be
+calculated, but the common idiom "for i in xrange(sys.maxint)" will
+work fine as long as the index i doesn't actually reach 2**31.
+(Python uses regular ints for sequence and string indices; fixing
+that is much more work.)
+- Two changes to from...import:
+1) "from M import X" now works even if (after loading module M)
+sys.modules['M'] is not a real module; it's basically a getattr()
+operation with AttributeError exceptions changed into ImportError.
+2) "from M import *" now looks for M.__all__ to decide which names to
+import; if M.__all__ doesn't exist, it uses M.__dict__.keys() but
+filters out names starting with '_' as before.  Whether or not
+__all__ exists, there's no restriction on the type of M.
+- File objects have a new method, xreadlines().  This is the fastest
+way to iterate over all lines in a file:
+for line in file.xreadlines():
+...do something to line...
+See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for
+other file-like objects.
+- Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on
+line-by-line input.  The file.readline() method has been optimized
+quite a bit in platform-specific ways:  on systems (like Linux) that
+support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and funlockfile(), those are
+used by default.  On systems (like Windows) without getc_unlocked(),
+a complicated (but still thread-safe) method using fgets() is used by
+default.
+You can force use of the fgets() method by #define'ing
+USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE at build time (it may be faster than
+getc_unlocked()).
+You can force fgets() not to be used by #define'ing
+DONT_USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE (this is the first thing to try if std test
+test_bufio.py fails -- and let us know if it does!).
+- In addition, the fileinput module, while still slower than the other
+methods on most platforms, has been sped up too, by using
+file.readlines(sizehint).
+- Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new
+command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings.
+See the description of the warnings module below.
+- Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code.  This mostly
+affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type
+numerical operators without having to use coercion), but
+occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed
+subtly.  Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this
+is considered an improvement.  Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer
+supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with
+reflected arguments.
+- In connection with the coercion changes, a new built-in singleton
+object, NotImplemented is defined.  This can be returned for
+operations that wish to indicate they are not implemented for a
+particular combination of arguments.  From C, this is
+Py_NotImplemented.
+- The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even
+if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing
+import imp,sys,string
+magic = string.join(["\\x%.2x" % ord(c) for c in imp.get_magic()],"")
+reg = ':pyc:M::%s::%s:' % (magic, sys.executable)
+open("/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register","wb").write(reg)
+any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument
+to execve(2)).
+- %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign
+character.  In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign,
+and raised an error if the value of the long was too large
+to fit in a Python int.  In 2.0, they produced a sign if and
+only if too large to fit in an int.  This was inconsistent
+across platforms (because the size of an int varies across
+platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct().  Example:
+>>> "%x" % -0x42L
+'-42'      # in 2.1
+'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines
+>>> hex(-0x42L)
+'-0x42L'   # in all versions of Python
+The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains
+the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised
+an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int).
+%u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed
+and treated the same as %d in 2.1.  In 2.0, a negative long
+formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to
+fit in an int.  In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted
+via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int.
+- Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem().  This removes
+an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of
+a (key, value) pair).  This can be useful for algorithms that use a
+dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one
+item.  Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time;
+using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time.
+Standard library
+- In the time module, the time argument to the functions strftime,
+localtime, gmtime, asctime and ctime is now optional, defaulting to
+the current time (in the local timezone).
+- The ftplib module now defaults to passive mode, which is deemed a
+more useful default given that clients are often inside firewalls
+these days.  Note that this could break if ftplib is used to connect
+to a *server* that is inside a firewall, from outside; this is
+expected to be a very rare situation.  To fix that, you can call
+ftp.set_pasv(0).
+- The module site now treats .pth files not only for path configuration,
+but also supports extensions to the initialization code: Lines starting
+with import are executed.
+- There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for
+issuing and filtering warnings.  There are some new built-in
+exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line
+option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We
+turns warnings into errors).  warnings.warn(message[, category])
+issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as
+PyErr_Warn(category, message).
+- A new module xreadlines was added.  This exports a single factory
+function, xreadlines().  The intention is that this code is the
+absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open
+file(-like) object:
+import xreadlines
+for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file):
+...do something to line...
+This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using
+file.readlines(sizehint).  Note that if file is a real file object
+(as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent:
+for line in file.xreadlines():
+...do something to line...
+- The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left,
+bisect_right and insort_right.  The old names bisect and insort
+are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right.  XXX_right
+and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element
+compares equal to one or more elements already in the list:  the
+XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the
+right.  Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should
+continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort").
+- The new curses.panel module wraps the panel library that forms part
+of SYSV curses and ncurses.  Contributed by Thomas Gellekum.
+- The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by
+default in the TCPServer class.
+- A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of
+the caller.  This is intended only as a building block for
+higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation.
+- The pyexpat module supports a number of new handlers, which are
+available only in expat 1.2. If invocation of a callback fails, it
+will report an additional frame in the traceback. Parser objects
+participate now in garbage collection. If expat reports an unknown
+encoding, pyexpat will try to use a Python codec; that works only
+for single-byte charsets. The parser type objects is exposed as
+XMLParserObject.
+- xml.dom now offers standard definitions for symbolic node type and
+exception code constants, and a hierarchy of DOM exceptions. minidom
+was adjusted to use them.
+- The conformance of xml.dom.minidom to the DOM specification was
+improved. It detects a number of additional error cases; the
+previous/next relationship works even when the tree is modified;
+Node supports the normalize() method; NamedNodeMap, DocumentType and
+DOMImplementation classes were added; Element supports the
+hasAttribute and hasAttributeNS methods; and Text supports the splitText
+method.
+Build issues
+- For Unix (and Unix-compatible) builds, configuration and building of
+extension modules is now greatly automated.  Rather than having to
+edit the Modules/Setup file to indicate which modules should be
+built and where their include files and libraries are, a
+distutils-based setup.py script now takes care of building most
+extension modules.  All extension modules built this way are built
+as shared libraries.  Only a few modules that must be linked
+statically are still listed in the Setup file; you won't need to
+edit their configuration.
+- Python should now build out of the box on Cygwin.  If it doesn't,
+mail to Jason Tishler (jlt63 at users.sourceforge.net).
+- Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt()
+-- there's too much variation among C library getopt()
+implementations.
+- C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a
+C++ compiler if one is found.
+Windows changes
+- select module:  By default under Windows, a select() call
+can specify no more than 64 sockets.  Python now boosts
+this Microsoft default to 512.  If you need even more than
+that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE
+and recompile Python from source).
+- Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone.  The Lib/dos-8x3
+subdirectory is no more!
+What's New in Python 2.0?
+=========================
+Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6.  Older
+changes are in the file HISTORY.  If you are making the jump directly
+from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the
+HISTORY file!  Many important changes listed there.
+Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is
+the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
+http://www.amk.ca/python/2.0/.
+--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
+======================================================================
+What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)?
+==============================================
+Standard library
+- The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to
+register pickle support for extension types, not for classes.
+pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class.
+- Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented
+it from finding an existing .mo file.
+- Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib.
+- The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of
+underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases.  Whether Python
+used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform-
+dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE
+on underflow).
+- Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not
+at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to
+extend past the end of the file.
+- Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on
+Windows.  The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of
+interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp).
+- Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP
+redirect response.
+- Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was
+removed from util.  Fixed the installer used when an external zip
+program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this
+installer is in Misc/distutils.  check_lib() was modified to behave
+more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter.  The
+test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to
+use both normcase() and normpath().
+- Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom,
+pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules).
+- The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with
+-l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as
+garbage but not freed by the garbage collector.
+- The regression test for the math module was changed to test
+exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode.  Python
+cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms,
+so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and
+may fail on your platform.
+Internals
+- PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused
+test_sre to fail.
+Build issues
+- Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and
+-Wstrict-prototypes.  Users compiling Python with GCC should see
+exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the
+--with-pydebug flag.  The expected warning is for getopt() in
+Modules/main.c.  This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1.
+- Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1.
+Tools and other miscellany
+- The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new
+language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list
+comprehensions, and augmented assignments.  The new compiler should
+also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will
+always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs
+under.
+What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)?
+=====================================================
+What is release candidate 1?
+We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we
+intend to fix for the 2.0 final release.  This release should be a bit
+more stable than the previous betas.  We would like to see even more
+widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this
+release candidate.  The final release will be exactly the same unless
+any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the
+release candidate.
+All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes
+to support building Python for specific platforms.
+Core language, builtins, and interpreter
+- A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented
+assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed.
+- Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number,
+e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0.  Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin
+power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by
+platform.  On Linux, it raises a ValueError.
+- A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally
+caused errors with formats including "%%".  For example, the
+following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError.
+- Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead
+of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50).
+- In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode,
+rendering them useless.  They are now written in binary mode again.
+Standard library
+- Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object
+methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine.
+- In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that
+manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)".
+- Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter
+were fixed.
+- Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines.
+- Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with
+the file-like object interface and with StringIO.  If operations are
+performed on a closed object, an exception is raised.  The truncate
+method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size
+argument.
+- There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its
+test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now
+play when the regression test is run.
+Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work
+correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System
+(OSS).
+The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of
+crashing.  It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law
+audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the
+SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide.
+- The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was
+removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C
+readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at
+compile-time.
+- The binascii module is now enabled on Win64.
+- tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing
+programs with very long string literals.
+Internals
+- Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(),
+which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where
+the standard library is installed.  These vulnerabilities affect all
+previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very
+long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0].  The risk is greatest for a
+setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in
+Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability.
+- Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were
+triggered when errors occurred during initialization.  The solution,
+applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call
+PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's
+container attributes is complete.
+- pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and
+PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which
+provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2.
+- If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of
+bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time.
+- Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage
+collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes.
+- Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini().
+Build issues
+- configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the
+executable suffix.  This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS
+X, for example.
+- The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when
+possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX.
+- The md5 file should now compile on all platforms.
+- The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define
+POLLRDNORM and related constants.
+- Darwin (Mac OS X):  Initial support for static builds on this
+platform.
+- BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation
+process.  ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files.
+dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command
+line during build on PPC BeOS.
+- Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or
+"plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos".
+- Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets.
+- SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure.
+Tools and other miscellany
+- Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze.
+- IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode
+characters.
+What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)?
+========================================
+Core language, builtins, and interpreter
+- Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example
+"%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616".
+- Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and
+Python version number and exit immediately.
+- eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters.
+- getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the
+attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default
+encoding before lookup.
+- Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds
+checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated
+string is too long."
+- Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a
+loop.
+Standard library and extensions
+- socket module: the OpenSSL code now adds support for RAND_status()
+and EGD (Entropy Gathering Device).
+- array: reverse() method of array now works.  buffer_info() now does
+argument checking; it still takes no arguments.
+- asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing.
+- cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data.
+- CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac).
+- ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case
+letters are now correctly converted to lowercase.
+- copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically.
+- cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported.
+- cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method.
+- dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object.  Add constant
+`library' to module that names the library used.  Added doc strings
+and method names to error messages.  Uses configure to determine
+which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is
+now available options.
+- distutils: Update to version 0.9.3.
+- dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants.
+- fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD.
+- gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option.  When enabled all garbage objects
+found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage.  This is useful
+for debugging a program that creates reference cycles.
+- httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature
+of HTTP class.  Do not close socket on zero-length response.  Do not
+crash when server sends invalid content-length header.
+- mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications.
+- marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts
+are bigger than 16 bits.  When reading a long, repair the unportable
+sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines.  (It assumed
+that signed right shift sign-extends.)
+- operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for
+__contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively.
+- os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where
+fork() exists.  (popen4() is still in the works.)
+- os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double-
+clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the
+DOS "start" command).
+- os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in
+os.path.join.  os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b".
+- pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains
+a non-string repr where a string repr was expected.  This behavior
+matches cPickle.
+- posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method.
+- py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file.
+- readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and
+threads are configured.  Adds definition of rl_library_version.  (The
+latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.)
+- rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method
+getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets.
+- site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the
+standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a
+few cycles during startup since the first call to
+setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the
+encodings package.
+- socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned
+by makefile().
+- sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects.  Does not
+use buffer interface on Unicode strings.  Does not hang if group id
+is followed by whitespace.
+- StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented.
+- struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts.
+- urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and
+quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma.
+- Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids.  Set
+event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel.
+Removed some debugging prints.
+- UserList: now implements __contains__().
+- webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(),
+which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly
+to a Blue Screen freeze.
+- xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard
+XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1.
+- xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML.  Includes xml.dom.minidom
+(conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM
+tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific
+application.  Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions.  Still
+undocumented.
+- xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler
+interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML.  Some
+documentation is already available.
+- pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new,
+packagized XML support.
+C API
+- Add three new convenience functions for module initialization --
+PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and
+PyModule_AddStringConstant().
+- Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were
+removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after
+#include of stdio.h.
+- Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for
+backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions.
+- A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction().  Instead of
+either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler
+and PyOS_setsig() to set one.  A new convenience typedef
+PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers.
+- Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the
+internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default
+encoded version of a Unicode object.
+- PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects.
+- The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it
+exists).  INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if
+<limits.h> is not available.
+- PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was
+effectively useless.  It is now officially useless but preserved for
+backwards compatibility.  If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is
+set to NULL.
+- PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects
+for the attribute name.  See note on getattr() above.
+- A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode.
+PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es".
+PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a
+pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw
+UTF-16.
+- Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code).
+Internals
+- On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that
+it works when argv[0] is a relative path.
+- Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the
+unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly
+rather than by generating a copy of the object.
+- Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and
+the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers.
+- In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples.  Fixed
+bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set
+while they were still live.  Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for
+platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int).
+- Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred
+when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not.
+- On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in
+registry key.
+- On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race
+condition.
+Build and platform-specific issues
+- Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option.
+- Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension
+modules on Reliant UNIX.
+- Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!).  mmapmodule.c:
+Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined.  Added missing
+prototypes in posixmodule.c.
+- Improved support for HP-UX build.  Threads should now be correctly
+configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00).
+- Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding
+define for TELL64.
+Tools and other miscellany
+- ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__".
+- freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes.
+- IDLE:
+Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been
+created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter
+initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit
+className parameter to the Tk() constructor.
+What's new in 2.0 beta 1?
+=========================
+Source Incompatibilities
+------------------------
+None.  Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2,
+such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to
+str(long) and repr(float).
+Binary Incompatibilities
+------------------------
+- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used
+with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python
+2.0.
+- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
+Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we
+can do about this.  Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
+- Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between
+releases.
+Overview of Changes Since 1.6
+-----------------------------
+There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through
+the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list
+of all new modules is included below.  Lots of bugs have been fixed.
+The process for making major new changes to the language has changed
+since Python 1.6.  Enhancements must now be documented by a Python
+Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted.
+There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more
+detail below:
+- Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1
+- List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]
+- Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name
+- Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello"
+Other important changes:
+- Optional collection of cyclical garbage
+Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
+---------------------------------
+PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal.  A PEP is a design
+document providing information to the Python community, or describing
+a new feature for Python.  The PEP should provide a concise technical
+specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
+We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
+features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
+documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python.  The PEP
+author is responsible for building consensus within the community and
+documenting dissenting opinions.
+The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
+Augmented Assignment
+--------------------
+This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years!
+Eleven new assignment operators were added:
++= -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
+For example,
+A += B
+is similar to
+A = A + B
+except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something
+like dict[index].attr).
+However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place.  Thus,
+if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B
+(except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the
+same effect as A.extend(B)!
+Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in
+order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is
+used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the
+in-place behavior.  For classes, the method name is derived from the
+method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting
+an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place
+__add__.
+Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
+List Comprehensions
+-------------------
+This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed
+from another list (or lists).  The simplest form is:
+[<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>]
+For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9].
+This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call.
+You can also add a condition:
+[<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>]
+For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list
+of words that contain no uppercase characters.  This is more efficient
+than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call.
+You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause.  For
+example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences::
+def flatten(seq):
+return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq]
+flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []])
+This prints
+[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
+List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip
+Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed.  Described by PEP 202.
+Extended Import Statement
+-------------------------
+Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different
+name.  This can be accomplished like this:
+import foo
+bar = foo
+del foo
+but this common idiom gets old quickly.  A simple extension of the
+import statement now allows this to be written as follows:
+import foo as bar
+There's also a variant for 'from ... import':
+from foo import bar as spam
+This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this:
+import test.regrtest as regrtest
+Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this
+context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import
+statement doesn't involve expressions).
+Implemented by Thomas Wouters.  Described by PEP 221.
+Extended Print Statement
+------------------------
+Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print
+statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file
+than the default sys.stdout.
+For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now
+write:
+print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!"
+As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file
+evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used.  Thus:
+print >> None, "Hello world"
+is equivalent to
+print "Hello world"
+Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw.  Described by PEP 214.
+Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage
+---------------------------------------
+Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down
+cyclical references between Python objects.  It's no replacement for
+reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being
+correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all
+their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to
+each other.  This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann,
+and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer.
+There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the
+garbage collection.  There's also an option to the configure script
+that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection.  In 2.0b1,
+it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user
+experience with this new feature.  There are some questions about its
+performance.  If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it
+off by default in the final 2.0 release.
+Smaller Changes
+---------------
+A new function zip() was added.  zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to
+map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length;
+i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)].  When
+the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins:
+zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)].  See PEP 201.
+sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial).
+Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default).
+dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not,
+it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value.  Thus:
+dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item)
+does the same work as this common idiom:
+if not dict.has_key(key):
+dict[key] = []
+dict[key].append(item)
+There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for
+indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError.
+Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223.  Added \U
+escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits.
+The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code
+have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32.  Previous versions of Python
+were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted
+was 2**16.  This limited the size of object constructor expressions,
+e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files.  This
+limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively
+fixes the problem.  It is now much more likely that you will be
+limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python.
+The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python
+programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit.  This
+limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by
+Python code.  The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from
+overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump.  The default value is
+1000.  The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found
+by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py.
+New Modules and Packages
+------------------------
+atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits.
+imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import
+hooks.
+pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul
+Prescod.
+xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three
+subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers.  Describing these
+would fill a volume.  There's a special feature whereby a
+user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard
+xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute
+backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package.
+webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser.
+Changed Modules
+---------------
+array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and
+remove
+binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between
+binary data and its hex representation
+calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control
+over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead
+of printing them.  Also new symbolic constants for days of week,
+e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY.
+cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a
+dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object.
+ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option,
+remove_section, remove_option, set, and write.  They allow the module
+to be used for writing config files as well as reading them.
+ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now
+optionally support the RFC 959 REST command.
+gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments
+httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein.  See
+the module doc strings for details.
+locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh
+marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or
+recursive data structures
+os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid
+os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows.  popen2/popen3
+support under Unix.
+os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty
+os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix
+smtplib -- support for sending very long messages
+socket -- new function getfqdn()
+readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files.
+The readline section of the library reference manual contains an
+example.
+select -- add interface to poll system call
+shutil -- new copyfileobj function
+SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the
+HTTP server.
+Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten
+urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration,
+e.g. http_proxy.
+whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format
+Obsolete Modules
+----------------
+None.  However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete:
+stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail,
+poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound.
+Changed, New, Obsolete Tools
+----------------------------
+None.
+C-level Changes
+---------------
+Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code.
+All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the
+Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable.
+Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file,
+pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old
+header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set
+of header files.  (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly;
+they are all included by Python.h.)
+Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux
+and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor.  Mick also
+added large file support for Linux64 and Win64.
+The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently
+use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size.  In
+previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the
+concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size.  The old names,
+e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility
+at the API level, but are deprecated.
+The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by
+Fredrik Lundh.  It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow
+on Windows.
+The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object,
+tp_traverse and tp_clear.  The augmented assignment changes result in
+the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator.
+The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in
+C extension modules.  See Include/objimpl.h for details.
+PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of
+the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string.  This change
+prevents crashes caused by programmer error.
+New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable.
+PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions
+that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an
+extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done.
+XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here.
+Windows Changes
+---------------
+New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above).
+os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98.  See Microsoft
+Knowledge Base article Q150956.  The Win9x workaround described there
+is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your
+Python installation.  Note that Python uses this internally; it is not
+a standalone program.
+Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python
+on Windows NT or Windows 2000.  If you have administrator privileges,
+Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
+Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info
+under HKEY_CURRENT_USER.  The latter is sufficient for all "normal"
+uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working
+(for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly
+from CGI).
+[This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk
+installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the
+Python directory.  If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this
+wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with
+conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python
+to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files.
+[This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in
+\Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\.
+Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6
+--------------------------------------------
+The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here
+is some late-breaking news:
+New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(),
+and changes to getlocale() and setlocale().
+The new module is now enabled per default.
+It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal
+strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings
+!) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from
+cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa.
+Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA:
+http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/
+======================================================================
+=======================================
+==> Release 1.6 (September 5, 2000) <==
+=======================================
+What's new in release 1.6?
+==========================
+Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.5.2.
+Source Incompatibilities
+------------------------
+Several small incompatible library changes may trip you up:
+- The append() method for lists can no longer be invoked with more
+than one argument.  This used to append a single tuple made out of
+all arguments, but was undocumented.  To append a tuple, use
+e.g. l.append((a, b, c)).
+- The connect(), connect_ex() and bind() methods for sockets require
+exactly one argument.  Previously, you could call s.connect(host,
+port), but this was undocumented. You must now write
+s.connect((host, port)).
+- The str() and repr() functions are now different more often.  For
+long integers, str() no longer appends a 'L'.  Thus, str(1L) == '1',
+which used to be '1L'; repr(1L) is unchanged and still returns '1L'.
+For floats, repr() now gives 17 digits of precision, to ensure no
+precision is lost (on all current hardware).
+- The -X option is gone.  Built-in exceptions are now always
+classes.  Many more library modules also have been converted to
+class-based exceptions.
+Binary Incompatibilities
+------------------------
+- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x cannot be used with
+Python 1.6; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python 1.6.
+- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
+Python 1.5.x results in an immediate crash; there's not much we can do
+about this.  Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
+Overview of Changes since 1.5.2
+-------------------------------
+For this overview, I have borrowed from the document "What's New in
+Python 2.0" by Andrew Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
+http://www.amk.ca/python/2.0/ .
+There are lots of new modules and lots of bugs have been fixed.  A
+list of all new modules is included below.
+Probably the most pervasive change is the addition of Unicode support.
+We've added a new fundamental datatype, the Unicode string, a new
+build-in function unicode(), an numerous C APIs to deal with Unicode
+and encodings.  See the file Misc/unicode.txt for details, or
+http://starship.python.net/crew/lemburg/unicode-proposal.txt.
+Two other big changes, related to the Unicode support, are the
+addition of string methods and (yet another) new regular expression
+engine.
+- String methods mean that you can now say s.lower() etc. instead of
+importing the string module and saying string.lower(s) etc.  One
+peculiarity is that the equivalent of string.join(sequence,
+delimiter) is delimiter.join(sequence).  Use " ".join(sequence) for
+the effect of string.join(sequence); to make this more readable, try
+space=" " first.  Note that the maxsplit argument defaults in
+split() and replace() have changed from 0 to -1.
+- The new regular expression engine, SRE by Fredrik Lundh, is fully
+backwards compatible with the old engine, and is in fact invoked
+using the same interface (the "re" module).  You can explicitly
+invoke the old engine by import pre, or the SRE engine by importing
+sre.  SRE is faster than pre, and supports Unicode (which was the
+main reason to put effort in yet another new regular expression
+engine -- this is at least the fourth!).
+Other Changes
+-------------
+Other changes that won't break code but are nice to know about:
+Deleting objects is now safe even for deeply nested data structures.
+Long/int unifications: long integers can be used in seek() calls, as
+slice indexes.
+String formatting (s % args) has a new formatting option, '%r', which
+acts like '%s' but inserts repr(arg) instead of str(arg). (Not yet in
+alpha 1.)
+Greg Ward's "distutils" package is included: this will make
+installing, building and distributing third party packages much
+simpler.
+There's now special syntax that you can use instead of the apply()
+function.  f(*args, **kwds) is equivalent to apply(f, args, kwds).
+You can also use variations f(a1, a2, *args, **kwds) and you can leave
+one or the other out: f(*args), f(**kwds).
+The built-ins int() and long() take an optional second argument to
+indicate the conversion base -- of course only if the first argument
+is a string.  This makes string.atoi() and string.atol() obsolete.
+(string.atof() was already obsolete).
+When a local variable is known to the compiler but undefined when
+used, a new exception UnboundLocalError is raised.  This is a class
+derived from NameError so code catching NameError should still work.
+The purpose is to provide better diagnostics in the following example:
+x = 1
+def f():
+print x
+x = x+1
+This used to raise a NameError on the print statement, which confused
+even experienced Python programmers (especially if there are several
+hundreds of lines of code between the reference and the assignment to
+x :-).
+You can now override the 'in' operator by defining a __contains__
+method.  Note that it has its arguments backwards: x in a causes
+a.__contains__(x) to be called.  That's why the name isn't __in__.
+The exception AttributeError will have a more friendly error message,
+e.g.: <code>'Spam' instance has no attribute 'eggs'</code>.  This may
+<b>break code</b> that expects the message to be exactly the attribute
+name.
+New Modules in 1.6
+------------------
+UserString - base class for deriving from the string type.
+distutils - tools for distributing Python modules.
+robotparser - parse a robots.txt file, for writing web spiders.
+(Moved from Tools/webchecker/.)
+linuxaudiodev - audio for Linux.
+mmap - treat a file as a memory buffer.  (Windows and Unix.)
+sre - regular expressions (fast, supports unicode).  Currently, this
+code is very rough.  Eventually, the re module will be reimplemented
+using sre (without changes to the re API).
+filecmp - supersedes the old cmp.py and dircmp.py modules.
+tabnanny - check Python sources for tab-width dependance.  (Moved from
+Tools/scripts/.)
+urllib2 - new and improved but incompatible version of urllib (still
+experimental).
+zipfile - read and write zip archives.
+codecs - support for Unicode encoders/decoders.
+unicodedata - provides access to the Unicode 3.0 database.
+_winreg - Windows registry access.
+encodings - package which provides a large set of standard codecs --
+currently only for the new Unicode support. It has a drop-in extension
+mechanism which allows you to add new codecs by simply copying them
+into the encodings package directory. Asian codec support will
+probably be made available as separate distribution package built upon
+this technique and the new distutils package.
+Changed Modules
+---------------
+readline, ConfigParser, cgi, calendar, posix, readline, xmllib, aifc,
+chunk, wave, random, shelve, nntplib - minor enhancements.
+socket, httplib, urllib - optional OpenSSL support (Unix only).
+_tkinter - support for 8.0 up to 8.3.  Support for versions older than
+8.0 has been dropped.
+string - most of this module is deprecated now that strings have
+methods.  This no longer uses the built-in strop module, but takes
+advantage of the new string methods to provide transparent support for
+both Unicode and ordinary strings.
+Changes on Windows
+------------------
+The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk installer; instead, it
+installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the Python directory.  If
+you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this wastes some disk space
+(about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with conflincting Tcl/Tk
+installations, and makes it much easier for Python to ensure that
+Tcl/Tk can find all its files.  Note: the alpha installers don't
+include the documentation.
+The Windows installer now installs by default in \Python16\ on the
+default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-1.6\.
+Changed Tools
+-------------
+IDLE - complete overhaul.  See the <a href="../idle/">IDLE home
+page</a> for more information.  (Python 1.6 alpha 1 will come with
+IDLE 0.6.)
+Tools/i18n/pygettext.py - Python equivalent of xgettext(1).  A message
+text extraction tool used for internationalizing applications written
+in Python.
+Obsolete Modules
+----------------
+stdwin and everything that uses it.  (Get Python 1.5.2 if you need
+it. :-)
+soundex.  (Skip Montanaro has a version in Python but it won't be
+included in the Python release.)
+cmp, cmpcache, dircmp.  (Replaced by filecmp.)
+dump.  (Use pickle.)
+find.  (Easily coded using os.walk().)
+grep.  (Not very useful as a library module.)
+packmail.  (No longer has any use.)
+poly, zmod.  (These were poor examples at best.)
+strop.  (No longer needed by the string module.)
+util.  (This functionality was long ago built in elsewhere).
+whatsound.  (Use sndhdr.)
+Detailed Changes from 1.6b1 to 1.6
+----------------------------------
+- Slight changes to the CNRI license.  A copyright notice has been
+added; the requirement to indicate the nature of modifications now
+applies when making a derivative work available "to others" instead of
+just "to the public"; the version and date are updated.  The new
+license has a new handle.
+- Added the Tools/compiler package.  This is a project led by Jeremy
+Hylton to write the Python bytecode generator in Python.
+- The function math.rint() is removed.
+- In Python.h, "#define _GNU_SOURCE 1" was added.
+- Version 0.9.1 of Greg Ward's distutils is included (instead of
+version 0.9).
+- A new version of SRE is included.  It is more stable, and more
+compatible with the old RE module.  Non-matching ranges are indicated
+by -1, not None.  (The documentation said None, but the PRE
+implementation used -1; changing to None would break existing code.)
+- The winreg module has been renamed to _winreg.  (There are plans for
+a higher-level API called winreg, but this has not yet materialized in
+a form that is acceptable to the experts.)
+- The _locale module is enabled by default.
+- Fixed the configuration line for the _curses module.
+- A few crashes have been fixed, notably <file>.writelines() with a
+list containing non-string objects would crash, and there were
+situations where a lost SyntaxError could dump core.
+- The <list>.extend() method now accepts an arbitrary sequence
+argument.
+- If __str__() or __repr__() returns a Unicode object, this is
+converted to an 8-bit string.
+- Unicode string comparisons is no longer aware of UTF-16
+encoding peculiarities; it's a straight 16-bit compare.
+- The Windows installer now installs the LICENSE file and no longer
+registers the Python DLL version in the registry (this is no longer
+needed).  It now uses Tcl/Tk 8.3.2.
+- A few portability problems have been fixed, in particular a
+compilation error involving socklen_t.
+- The PC configuration is slightly friendlier to non-Microsoft
+compilers.
+======================================================================
+======================================
+==> Release 1.5.2 (April 13, 1999) <==
+======================================
+From 1.5.2c1 to 1.5.2 (final)
+=============================
+Tue Apr 13 15:44:49 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* PCbuild/python15.wse: Bump version to 1.5.2 (final)
+	* PCbuild/python15.dsp: Added shamodule.c
+	* PC/config.c: Added sha module!
+	* README, Include/patchlevel.h: Prepare for final release.
+	* Misc/ACKS:
+	More (Cameron Laird is honorary; the others are 1.5.2c1 testers).
+	* Python/thread_solaris.h:
+	While I can't really test this thoroughly, Pat Knight and the Solaris
+	man pages suggest that the proper thing to do is to add THR_NEW_LWP to
+	the flags on thr_create(), and that there really isn't a downside, so
+	I'll do that.
+	* Misc/ACKS:
+	Bunch of new names who helped iron out the last wrinkles of 1.5.2.
+	* PC/python_nt.rc:
+	Bump the myusterious M$ version number from 1,5,2,1 to 1,5,2,3.
+	(I can't even display this on NT, maybe Win/98 can?)
+	* Lib/pstats.py:
+	Fix mysterious references to jprofile that were in the source since
+	its creation.  I'm assuming these were once valid references to "Jim
+	Roskind's profile"...
+	* Lib/Attic/threading_api.py:
+	Removed; since long subsumed in Doc/lib/libthreading.tex
+	* Modules/socketmodule.c:
+	Put back __osf__ support for gethostbyname_r(); the real bug was that
+	it was being used even without threads.  This of course might be an
+	all-platform problem so now we only use the _r variant when we are
+	using threads.
+Mon Apr 12 22:51:20 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Modules/cPickle.c:
+	Fix accidentally reversed NULL test in load_mark().  Suggested by
+	Tamito Kajiyama.  (This caused a bug only on platforms where malloc(0)
+	returns NULL.)
+	* README:
+	Add note about popen2 problem on Linux noticed by Pablo Bleyer.
+	* README: Add note about -D_REENTRANT for HP-UX 10.20.
+	* Modules/Makefile.pre.in: 'clean' target should remove hassignal.
+	* PC/Attic/vc40.mak, PC/readme.txt:
+	Remove all VC++ info (except VC 1.5) from readme.txt;
+	remove the VC++ 4.0 project file; remove the unused _tkinter extern defs.
+	* README: Clarify PC build instructions (point to PCbuild).
+	* Modules/zlibmodule.c: Cast added by Jack Jansen (for Mac port).
+	* Lib/plat-sunos5/CDIO.py, Lib/plat-linux2/CDROM.py:
+	Forgot to add this file.  CDROM device parameters.
+	* Lib/gzip.py: Two different changes.
+	1. Jack Jansen reports that on the Mac, the time may be negative, and
+	solves this by adding a write32u() function that writes an unsigned
+	long.
+	2. On 64-bit platforms the CRC comparison fails; I've fixed this by
+	casting both values to be compared to "unsigned long" i.e. modulo
+	0x100000000L.
+Sat Apr 10 18:42:02 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* PC/Attic/_tkinter.def: No longer needed.
+	* Misc/ACKS: Correct missed character in Andrew Dalke's name.
+	* README: Add DEC Ultrix notes (from Donn Cave's email).
+	* configure: The usual
+	* configure.in:
+	Quote a bunch of shell variables used in test, related to long-long.
+	* Objects/fileobject.c, Modules/shamodule.c, Modules/regexpr.c:
+	casts for picky compilers.
+	* Modules/socketmodule.c:
+	3-arg gethostbyname_r doesn't really work on OSF/1.
+	* PC/vc15_w31/_.c, PC/vc15_lib/_.c, Tools/pynche/__init__.py:
+	Avoid totally empty files.
+Fri Apr  9 14:56:35 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Tools/scripts/fixps.py: Use re instead of regex.
+	Don't rewrite the file in place.
+	(Reported by Andy Dustman.)
+	* Lib/netrc.py, Lib/shlex.py: Get rid of #! line
+Thu Apr  8 23:13:37 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* PCbuild/python15.wse: Use the Tcl 8.0.5 installer.
+	Add a variable %_TCL_% that makes it easier to switch to a different version.
+======================================================================
+From 1.5.2b2 to 1.5.2c1
+=======================
+Thu Apr  8 23:13:37 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* PCbuild/python15.wse:
+	Release 1.5.2c1.  Add IDLE and Uninstall to program group.
+	Don't distribute zlib.dll.  Tweak some comments.
+	* PCbuild/zlib.dsp: Now using static zlib 1.1.3
+	* Lib/dos-8x3/userdict.py, Lib/dos-8x3/userlist.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_zli.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_use.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_pop.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_pic.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_ntp.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_gzi.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_fcn.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_cpi.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_bsd.py, Lib/dos-8x3/posixfil.py, Lib/dos-8x3/mimetype.py, Lib/dos-8x3/nturl2pa.py, Lib/dos-8x3/compilea.py, Lib/dos-8x3/exceptio.py, Lib/dos-8x3/basehttp.py:
+	The usual
+	* Include/patchlevel.h: Release 1.5.2c1
+	* README: Release 1.5.2c1.
+	* Misc/NEWS: News for the 1.5.2c1 release.
+	* Lib/test/test_strftime.py:
+	On Windows, we suddenly find, strftime() may return "" for an
+	unsupported format string.  (I guess this is because the logic for
+	deciding whether to reallocate the buffer or not has been improved.)
+	This caused the test code to crash on result[0].  Fix this by assuming
+	an empty result also means the format is not supported.
+	* Demo/tkinter/matt/window-creation-w-location.py:
+	This demo imported some private code from Matt.  Make it cripple along.
+	* Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py:
+	Delete an accidentally checked-in feature that actually broke more
+	than was worth it: when deleting a canvas item, it would try to
+	automatically delete the bindings for that item.  Since there's
+	nothing that says you can't reuse the tag and still have the bindings,
+	this is not correct.  Also, it broke at least one demo
+	(Demo/tkinter/matt/rubber-band-box-demo-1.py).
+	* Python/thread_wince.h: Win/CE thread support by Mark Hammond.
+Wed Apr  7 20:23:17 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Modules/zlibmodule.c:
+	Patch by Andrew Kuchling to unflush() (flush() for deflating).
+	Without this, if inflate() returned Z_BUF_ERROR asking for more output
+	space, we would report the error; now, we increase the buffer size and
+	try again, just as for Z_OK.
+	* Lib/test/test_gzip.py: Use binary mode for all gzip files we open.
+	* Tools/idle/ChangeLog: New change log.
+	* Tools/idle/README.txt, Tools/idle/NEWS.txt: New version.
+	* Python/pythonrun.c:
+	Alas, get rid of the Win specific hack to ask the user to press Return
+	before exiting when an error happened.  This didn't work right when
+	Python is invoked from a daemon.
+	* Tools/idle/idlever.py: Version bump awaiting impending new release.
+	(Not much has changed :-( )
+	* Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py:
+	lower, tkraise/lift hide Misc.lower, Misc.tkraise/lift,
+	so the preferred name for them is tag_lower, tag_raise
+	(similar to tag_bind, and similar to the Text widget);
+	unfortunately can't delete the old ones yet (maybe in 1.6)
+	* Python/thread.c, Python/strtod.c, Python/mystrtoul.c, Python/import.c, Python/ceval.c:
+	Changes by Mark Hammond for Windows CE.  Mostly of the form
+	  #ifdef DONT_HAVE_header_H ... #endif around #include <header.h>.
+	* Python/bltinmodule.c:
+	Remove unused variable from complex_from_string() code.
+	* Include/patchlevel.h:
+	Add the possibility of a gamma release (release candidate).
+	Add '+' to string version number to indicate we're beyond b2 now.
+	* Modules/posixmodule.c: Add extern decl for fsync() for SunOS 4.x.
+	* Lib/smtplib.py: Changes by Per Cederquist and The Dragon.
+	Per writes:
+	"""
+	The application where Signum Support uses smtplib needs to be able to
+	report good error messages to the user when sending email fails.  To
+	help in diagnosing problems it is useful to be able to report the
+	entire message sent by the server, not only the SMTP error code of the
+	offending command.
+	A lot of the functions in sendmail.py unfortunately discards the
+	message, leaving only the code.  The enclosed patch fixes that
+	problem.
+	The enclosed patch also introduces a base class for exceptions that
+	include an SMTP error code and error message, and make the code and
+	message available on separate attributes, so that surrounding code can
+	deal with them in whatever way it sees fit.  I've also added some
+	documentation to the exception classes.
+	The constructor will now raise an exception if it cannot connect to
+	the SMTP server.
+	The data() method will raise an SMTPDataError if it doesn't receive
+	the expected 354 code in the middle of the exchange.
+	According to section 5.2.10 of RFC 1123 a smtp client must accept "any
+	text, including no text at all" after the error code.  If the response
+	of a HELO command contains no text self.helo_resp will be set to the
+	empty string ("").  The patch fixes the test in the sendmail() method
+	so that helo_resp is tested against None; if it has the empty string
+	as value the sendmail() method would invoke the helo() method again.
+	The code no longer accepts a -1 reply from the ehlo() method in
+	sendmail().
+	[Text about removing SMTPRecipientsRefused deleted --GvR]
+	"""
+	and also:
+	"""
+	smtplib.py appends an extra blank line to the outgoing mail if the
+	`msg' argument to the sendmail method already contains a trailing
+	newline.  This patch should fix the problem.
+	"""
+	The Dragon writes:
+	"""
+		Mostly I just re-added the SMTPRecipientsRefused exception
+	(the exeption object now has the appropriate info in it ) [Per had
+	removed this in his patch --GvR] and tweaked the behavior of the
+	sendmail method whence it throws the newly added SMTPHeloException (it
+	was closing the connection, which it shouldn't.  whatever catches the
+	exception should do that. )
+		I pondered the change of the return values to tuples all around,
+	and after some thinking I decided that regularizing the return values was
+	too much of the Right Thing (tm) to not do.
+		My one concern is that code expecting an integer & getting a tuple
+	may fail silently.
+	(i.e. if it's doing :
+	      x.somemethod() >= 400:
+	expecting an integer, the expression will always be true if it gets a
+	tuple instead. )
+		However, most smtplib code I've seen only really uses the
+	sendmail() method, so this wouldn't bother it.  Usually code I've seen
+	that calls the other methods usually only calls helo() and ehlo() for
+	doing ESMTP, a feature which was not in the smtplib included with 1.5.1,
+	and thus I would think not much code uses it yet.
+	"""
+Tue Apr  6 19:38:18 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/test/test_ntpath.py:
+	Fix the tests now that splitdrive() no longer treats UNC paths special.
+	(Some tests converted to splitunc() tests.)
+	* Lib/ntpath.py:
+	Withdraw the UNC support from splitdrive().  Instead, a new function
+	splitunc() parses UNC paths.  The contributor of the UNC parsing in
+	splitdrive() doesn't like it, but I haven't heard a good reason to
+	keep it, and it causes some problems.  (I think there's a
+	philosophical problem -- to me, the split*() functions are purely
+	syntactical, and the fact that \\foo is not a valid path doesn't mean
+	that it shouldn't be considered an absolute path.)
+	Also (quite separately, but strangely related to the philosophical
+	issue above) fix abspath() so that if win32api exists, it doesn't fail
+	when the path doesn't actually exist -- if GetFullPathName() fails,
+	fall back on the old strategy (join with getcwd() if neccessary, and
+	then use normpath()).
+	* configure.in, configure, config.h.in, acconfig.h:
+	For BeOS PowerPC.  Chris Herborth.
+Mon Apr  5 21:54:14 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Modules/timemodule.c:
+	Jonathan Giddy notes, and Chris Lawrence agrees, that some comments on
+	#else/#endif are wrong, and that #if HAVE_TM_ZONE should be #ifdef.
+	* Misc/ACKS:
+	Bunch of new contributors, including 9 who contributed to the Docs,
+	reported by Fred.
+Mon Apr  5 18:37:59 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/gzip.py:
+	Oops, missed mode parameter to open().
+	* Lib/gzip.py:
+	Made the default mode 'rb' instead of 'r', for better cross-platform
+	support.  (Based on comment on the documentation by Bernhard Reiter
+	<bernhard@csd.uwm.edu>).
+Fri Apr  2 22:18:25 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Tools/scripts/dutree.py:
+	For reasons I dare not explain, this script should always execute
+	main() when imported (in other words, it is not usable as a module).
+Thu Apr  1 15:32:30 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/test/test_cpickle.py: Jonathan Giddy write:
+	In test_cpickle.py, the module os got imported, but the line to remove
+	the temp file has gone missing.
+Tue Mar 30 20:17:31 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/BaseHTTPServer.py: Per Cederqvist writes:
+	If you send something like "PUT / HTTP/1.0" to something derived from
+	BaseHTTPServer that doesn't define do_PUT, you will get a response
+	that begins like this:
+		HTTP/1.0 501 Unsupported method ('do_PUT')
+		Server: SimpleHTTP/0.3 Python/1.5
+		Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 18:53:53 GMT
+	The server should complain about 'PUT' instead of 'do_PUT'.  This
+	patch should fix the problem.
+Mon Mar 29 20:33:21 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/smtplib.py: Patch by Per Cederqvist, who writes:
+	"""
+	 - It needlessly used the makefile() method for each response that is
+	   read from the SMTP server.
+	 - If the remote SMTP server closes the connection unexpectedly the
+	   code raised an IndexError.  It now raises an SMTPServerDisconnected
+	   exception instead.
+	 - The code now checks that all lines in a multiline response actually
+	   contains an error code.
+	"""
+	The Dragon approves.
+Mon Mar 29 20:25:40 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/compileall.py:
+	When run as a script, report failures in the exit code as well.
+	Patch largely based on changes by Andrew Dalke, as discussed in the
+	distutils-sig.
+Mon Mar 29 20:23:41 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/urllib.py:
+	Hack so that if a 302 or 301 redirect contains a relative URL, the
+	right thing "just happens" (basejoin() with old URL).
+	* Modules/cPickle.c:
+	Protection against picling to/from closed (real) file.
+	The problem was reported by Moshe Zadka.
+	* Lib/test/test_cpickle.py:
+	Test protection against picling to/from closed (real) file.
+	* Modules/timemodule.c: Chris Lawrence writes:
+	"""
+	The GNU folks, in their infinite wisdom, have decided not to implement
+	altzone in libc6; this would not be horrible, except that timezone
+	(which is implemented) includes the current DST setting (i.e. timezone
+	for Central is 18000 in summer and 21600 in winter).  So Python's
+	timezone and altzone variables aren't set correctly during DST.
+	Here's a patch relative to 1.5.2b2 that (a) makes timezone and altzone
+	show the "right" thing on Linux (by using the tm_gmtoff stuff
+	available in BSD, which is how the GLIBC manual claims things should
+	be done) and (b) should cope with the southern hemisphere.  In pursuit
+	of (b), I also took the liberty of renaming the "summer" and "winter"
+	variables to "july" and "jan".  This patch should also make certain
+	time calculations on Linux actually work right (like the tz-aware
+	functions in the rfc822 module).
+	(It's hard to find DST that's currently being used in the southern
+	hemisphere; I tested using Africa/Windhoek.)
+	"""
+	* Lib/test/output/test_gzip:
+	Jonathan Giddy discovered this file was missing.
+	* Modules/shamodule.c:
+	Avoid warnings from AIX compiler.  Reported by Vladimir (AIX is my
+	middlename) Marangozov, patch coded by Greg Stein.
+	* Tools/idle/ScriptBinding.py, Tools/idle/PyShell.py:
+	At Tim Peters' recommendation, add a dummy flush() method to PseudoFile.
+Sun Mar 28 17:55:32 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Tools/scripts/ndiff.py: Tim Peters writes:
+	I should have waited overnight <wink/sigh>.  Nothing wrong with the one I
+	sent, but I couldn't resist going on to add new -r1 / -r2 cmdline options
+	for recreating the original files from ndiff's output.  That's attached, if
+	you're game!  Us Windows guys don't usually have a sed sitting around
+	<wink>.
+Sat Mar 27 13:34:01 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Tools/scripts/ndiff.py: Tim Peters writes:
+	Attached is a cleaned-up version of ndiff (added useful module
+	docstring, now echo'ed in case of cmd line mistake); added -q option
+	to suppress initial file identification lines; + other minor cleanups,
+	& a slightly faster match engine.
+Fri Mar 26 22:36:00 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Tools/scripts/dutree.py:
+	During display, if EPIPE is raised, it's probably because a pager was
+	killed.  Discard the error in that case, but propogate it otherwise.
+Fri Mar 26 16:20:45 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/test/output/test_userlist, Lib/test/test_userlist.py:
+	Test suite for UserList.
+	* Lib/UserList.py: Use isinstance() where appropriate.
+	Reformatted with 4-space indent.
+Fri Mar 26 16:11:40 1999  Barry Warsaw  <bwarsaw@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Tools/pynche/PyncheWidget.py:
+	Helpwin.__init__(): The text widget should get focus.
+	* Tools/pynche/pyColorChooser.py:
+	Removed unnecessary import `from PyncheWidget import PyncheWidget'
+Fri Mar 26 15:32:05 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/test/output/test_userdict, Lib/test/test_userdict.py:
+	Test suite for UserDict
+	* Lib/UserDict.py: Improved a bunch of things.
+	The constructor now takes an optional dictionary.
+	Use isinstance() where appropriate.
+Thu Mar 25 22:38:49 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/test/output/test_pickle, Lib/test/output/test_cpickle, Lib/test/test_pickle.py, Lib/test/test_cpickle.py:
+	Basic regr tests for pickle/cPickle
+	* Lib/pickle.py:
+	Don't use "exec" in find_class().  It's slow, unnecessary, and (as AMK
+	points out) it doesn't work in JPython Applets.
+Thu Mar 25 21:50:27 1999  Andrew Kuchling  <akuchlin@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/test/test_gzip.py:
+	Added a simple test suite for gzip.  It simply opens a temp file,
+	writes a chunk of compressed data, closes it, writes another chunk, and
+	reads the contents back to verify that they are the same.
+	* Lib/gzip.py:
+	Based on a suggestion from bruce@hams.com, make a trivial change to
+	allow using the 'a' flag as a mode for opening a GzipFile.  gzip
+	files, surprisingly enough, can be concatenated and then decompressed;
+	the effect is to concatenate the two chunks of data.
+	If we support it on writing, it should also be supported on reading.
+	This *wasn't* trivial, and required rearranging the code in the
+	reading path, particularly the _read() method.
+	Raise IOError instead of RuntimeError in two cases, 'Not a gzipped file'
+	and 'Unknown compression method'
+Thu Mar 25 21:25:01 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/test/test_b1.py:
+	Add tests for float() and complex() with string args (Nick/Stephanie
+	Lockwood).
+Thu Mar 25 21:21:08 1999  Andrew Kuchling  <akuchlin@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Modules/zlibmodule.c:
+	Add an .unused_data attribute to decompressor objects.  If .unused_data
+	is not an empty string, this means that you have arrived at the
+	end of the stream of compressed data, and the contents of .unused_data are
+	whatever follows the compressed stream.
+Thu Mar 25 21:16:07 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Python/bltinmodule.c:
+	Patch by Nick and Stephanie Lockwood to implement complex() with a string
+	argument.  This closes TODO item 2.19.
+Wed Mar 24 19:09:00 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Tools/webchecker/wcnew.py: Added Samuel Bayer's new webchecker.
+	Unfortunately his code breaks wcgui.py in a way that's not easy
+	to fix.  I expect that this is a temporary situation --
+	eventually Sam's changes will be merged back in.
+	(The changes add a -t option to specify exceptions to the -x
+	option, and explicit checking for #foo style fragment ids.)
+	* Objects/dictobject.c:
+	Vladimir Marangozov contributed updated comments.
+	* Objects/bufferobject.c: Folded long lines.
+	* Lib/test/output/test_sha, Lib/test/test_sha.py:
+	Added Jeremy's test code for the sha module.
+	* Modules/shamodule.c, Modules/Setup.in:
+	Added Greg Stein and Andrew Kuchling's sha module.
+	Fix comments about zlib version and URL.
+	* Lib/test/test_bsddb.py: Remove the temp file when we're done.
+	* Include/pythread.h: Conform to standard boilerplate.
+	* configure.in, configure, BeOS/linkmodule, BeOS/ar-fake:
+	Chris Herborth: the new compiler in R4.1 needs some new options to work...
+	* Modules/socketmodule.c:
+	Implement two suggestions by Jonathan Giddy: (1) in AIX, clear the
+	data struct before calling gethostby{name,addr}_r(); (2) ignore the
+	3/5/6 args determinations made by the configure script and switch on
+	platform identifiers instead:
+	AIX, OSF have 3 args
+	Sun, SGI have 5 args
+	Linux has 6 args
+	On all other platforms, undef HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R altogether.
+	* Modules/socketmodule.c:
+	Vladimir Marangozov implements the AIX 3-arg gethostbyname_r code.
+	* Lib/mailbox.py:
+	Add readlines() to _Subfile class.  Not clear who would need it, but
+	Chris Lawrence sent me a broken version; this one is a tad simpler and
+	more conforming to the standard.
+Tue Mar 23 23:05:34 1999  Jeremy Hylton  <jhylton@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/gzip.py: use struct instead of bit-manipulate in Python
+Tue Mar 23 19:00:55 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Modules/Makefile.pre.in:
+	Add $(EXE) to various occurrences of python so it will work on Cygwin
+	with egcs (after setting EXE=.exe).  Patch by Norman Vine.
+	* configure, configure.in:
+	Ack!  It never defined HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R so that code was never tested!
+Mon Mar 22 22:25:39 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Include/thread.h:
+	Adding thread.h -- unused but for b/w compatibility.
+	As requested by Bill Janssen.
+	* configure.in, configure:
+	Add code to test for all sorts of gethostbyname_r variants,
+	donated by David Arnold.
+	* config.h.in, acconfig.h:
+	Add symbols for gethostbyname_r variants (sigh).
+	* Modules/socketmodule.c: Clean up pass for the previous patches.
+	- Use HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R_6_ARG instead of testing for Linux and
+	glibc2.
+	- If gethostbyname takes 3 args, undefine HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R --
+	don't know what code should be used.
+	- New symbol USE_GETHOSTBYNAME_LOCK defined iff the lock should be used.
+	- Modify the gethostbyaddr() code to also hold on to the lock until
+	after it is safe to release, overlapping with the Python lock.
+	(Note: I think that it could in theory be possible that Python code
+	executed while gethostbyname_lock is held could attempt to reacquire
+	the lock -- e.g. in a signal handler or destructor.  I will simply say
+	"don't do that then.")
+	* Modules/socketmodule.c: Jonathan Giddy writes:
+	Here's a patch to fix the race condition, which wasn't fixed by Rob's
+	patch.  It holds the gethostbyname lock until the results are copied out,
+	which means that this lock and the Python global lock are held at the same
+	time.  This shouldn't be a problem as long as the gethostbyname lock is
+	always acquired when the global lock is not held.
+Mon Mar 22 19:25:30 1999  Andrew Kuchling  <akuchlin@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Modules/zlibmodule.c:
+	Fixed the flush() method of compression objects; the test for
+	    the end of loop was incorrect, and failed when the flushmode != Z_FINISH.
+	    Logic cleaned up and commented.
+	* Lib/test/test_zlib.py:
+	Added simple test for the flush() method of compression objects, trying the
+	    different flush values Z_NO_FLUSH, Z_SYNC_FLUSH, Z_FULL_FLUSH.
+Mon Mar 22 15:28:08 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/shlex.py:
+	Bug reported by Tobias Thelen: missing "self." in assignment target.
+Fri Mar 19 21:50:11 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Modules/arraymodule.c:
+	Use an unsigned cast to avoid a warning in VC++.
+	* Lib/dospath.py, Lib/ntpath.py:
+	New code for split() by Tim Peters, behaves more like posixpath.split().
+	* Objects/floatobject.c:
+	Fix a problem with Vladimir's PyFloat_Fini code: clear the free list; if
+	a block cannot be freed, add its free items back to the free list.
+	This is necessary to avoid leaking when Python is reinitialized later.
+	* Objects/intobject.c:
+	Fix a problem with Vladimir's PyInt_Fini code: clear the free list; if
+	a block cannot be freed, add its free items back to the free list, and
+	add its valid ints back to the small_ints array if they are in range.
+	This is necessary to avoid leaking when Python is reinitialized later.
+	* Lib/types.py:
+	Added BufferType, the type returned by the new builtin buffer().  Greg Stein.
+	* Python/bltinmodule.c:
+	New builtin buffer() creates a derived read-only buffer from any
+	object that supports the buffer interface (e.g. strings, arrays).
+	* Objects/bufferobject.c:
+	Added check for negative offset for PyBuffer_FromObject and check for
+	negative size for PyBuffer_FromMemory.  Greg Stein.
+Thu Mar 18 15:10:44 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/urlparse.py: Sjoerd Mullender writes:
+	If a filename on Windows starts with \\, it is converted to a URL
+	which starts with ////.  If this URL is passed to urlparse.urlparse
+	you get a path that starts with // (and an empty netloc).  If you pass
+	the result back to urlparse.urlunparse, you get a URL that starts with
+	//, which is parsed differently by urlparse.urlparse.  The fix is to
+	add the (empty) netloc with accompanying slashes if the path in
+	urlunparse starts with //.  Do this for all schemes that use a netloc.
+	* Lib/nturl2path.py: Sjoerd Mullender writes:
+	Pathnames of files on other hosts in the same domain
+	(\\host\path\to\file) are not translated correctly to URLs and back.
+	The URL should be something like file:////host/path/to/file.
+	Note that a combination of drive letter and remote host is not
+	possible.
+Wed Mar 17 22:30:10 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/urlparse.py:
+	Delete non-standard-conforming code in urljoin() that would use the
+	netloc from the base url as the default netloc for the resulting url
+	even if the schemes differ.
+	Once upon a time, when the web was wild, this was a valuable hack
+	because some people had a URL referencing an ftp server colocated with
+	an http server without having the host in the ftp URL (so they could
+	replicate it or change the hostname easily).
+	More recently, after the file: scheme got added back to the list of
+	schemes that accept a netloc, it turns out that this caused weirdness
+	when joining an http: URL with a file: URL -- the resulting file: URL
+	would always inherit the host from the http: URL because the file:
+	scheme supports a netloc but in practice never has one.
+	There are two reasons to get rid of the old, once-valuable hack,
+	instead of removing the file: scheme from the uses_netloc list.  One,
+	the RFC says that file: uses the netloc syntax, and does not endorse
+	the old hack.  Two, neither netscape 4.5 nor IE 4.0 support the old
+	hack.
+	* Include/ceval.h, Include/abstract.h:
+	Add DLL level b/w compat for PySequence_In and PyEval_CallObject
+Tue Mar 16 21:54:50 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py: Bug reported by Jim Robinson:
+	An attempt to execute grid_slaves with arguments (0,0) results in
+	*all* of the slaves being returned, not just the slave associated with
+	row 0, column 0.  This is because the test for arguments in the method
+	does not test to see if row (and column) does not equal None, but
+	rather just whether is evaluates to non-false.  A value of 0 fails
+	this test.
+Tue Mar 16 14:17:48 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Modules/cmathmodule.c:
+	Docstring fix:  acosh() returns the hyperbolic arccosine, not the
+	hyperbolic cosine.  Problem report via David Ascher by one of his
+	students.
+Mon Mar 15 21:40:59 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* configure.in:
+	Should test for gethost*by*name_r, not for gethostname_r (which
+	doesn't exist and doesn't make sense).
+	* Modules/socketmodule.c:
+	Patch by Rob Riggs for Linux -- glibc2 has a different argument
+	converntion for gethostbyname_r() etc. than Solaris!
+	* Python/thread_pthread.h: Rob Riggs wrote:
+	"""
+	Spec says that on success pthread_create returns 0. It does not say
+	that an error code will be < 0. Linux glibc2 pthread_create() returns
+	ENOMEM (12) when one exceed process limits. (It looks like it should
+	return EAGAIN, but that's another story.)
+	For reference, see:
+	http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xsh/pthread_create.html
+	"""
+	[I have a feeling that similar bugs were fixed before; perhaps someone
+	could check that all error checks no check for != 0?]
+	* Tools/bgen/bgen/bgenObjectDefinition.py:
+	New mixin class that defines cmp and hash that use
+	the ob_itself pointer.  This allows (when using the mixin)
+	different Python objects pointing to the same C object and
+	behaving well as dictionary keys.
+	Or so sez Jack Jansen...
+	* Lib/urllib.py: Yet another patch by Sjoerd Mullender:
+	Don't convert URLs to URLs using pathname2url.
+Fri Mar 12 22:15:43 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/cmd.py: Patch by Michael Scharf.  He writes:
+	    The module cmd requires for each do_xxx command a help_xxx
+	    function. I think this is a little old fashioned.
+	    Here is a patch: use the docstring as help if no help_xxx
+	    function can be found.
+	[I'm tempted to rip out all the help_* functions from pdb, but I'll
+	resist it.  Any takers?  --Guido]
+	* Tools/freeze/freeze.py: Bug submitted by Wayne Knowles, who writes:
+	   Under Windows, python freeze.py -o hello hello.py
+	   creates all the correct files in the hello subdirectory, but the
+	   Makefile has the directory prefix in it for frozen_extensions.c
+	   nmake fails because it tries to locate hello/frozen_extensions.c
+	(His fix adds a call to os.path.basename() in the appropriate place.)
+	* Objects/floatobject.c, Objects/intobject.c:
+	Vladimir has restructured his code somewhat so that the blocks are now
+	represented by an explicit structure.  (There are still too many casts
+	in the code, but that may be unavoidable.)
+	Also added code so that with -vv it is very chatty about what it does.
+	* Demo/zlib/zlibdemo.py, Demo/zlib/minigzip.py:
+	Change #! line to modern usage; also chmod +x
+	* Demo/pdist/rrcs, Demo/pdist/rcvs, Demo/pdist/rcsbump:
+	Change #! line to modern usage
+	* Lib/nturl2path.py, Lib/urllib.py: From: Sjoerd Mullender
+	The filename to URL conversion didn't properly quote special
+	characters.
+	The URL to filename didn't properly unquote special chatacters.
+	* Objects/floatobject.c:
+	OK, try again.  Vladimir gave me a fix for the alignment bus error,
+	so here's his patch again.  This time it works (at least on Solaris,
+	Linux and Irix).
+Thu Mar 11 23:21:23 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Tools/idle/PathBrowser.py:
+	Don't crash when sys.path contains an empty string.
+	* Tools/idle/PathBrowser.py:
+	- Don't crash in the case where a superclass is a string instead of a
+	pyclbr.Class object; this can happen when the superclass is
+	unrecognizable (to pyclbr), e.g. when module renaming is used.
+	- Show a watch cursor when calling pyclbr (since it may take a while
+	recursively parsing imported modules!).
+Thu Mar 11 16:04:04 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/mimetypes.py:
+	Added .rdf and .xsl as application/xml types.  (.rdf is for the
+	Resource Description Framework, a metadata encoding, and .xsl is for
+	the Extensible Stylesheet Language.)
+Thu Mar 11 13:26:23 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/test/output/test_popen2, Lib/test/test_popen2.py:
+	Test for popen2 module, by Chris Tismer.
+	* Objects/floatobject.c:
+	Alas, Vladimir's patch caused a bus error (probably double
+	alignment?), and I didn't test it.  Withdrawing it for now.
+Wed Mar 10 22:55:47 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Objects/floatobject.c:
+	Patch by Vladimir Marangoz to allow freeing of the allocated blocks of
+	floats on finalization.
+	* Objects/intobject.c:
+	Patch by Vladimir Marangoz to allow freeing of the allocated blocks of
+	integers on finalization.
+	* Tools/idle/EditorWindow.py, Tools/idle/Bindings.py:
+	Add PathBrowser to File module
+	* Tools/idle/PathBrowser.py:
+	"Path browser" - 4 scrolled lists displaying:
+	    directories on sys.path
+	    modules in selected directory
+	    classes in selected module
+	    methods of selected class
+	Sinlge clicking in a directory, module or class item updates the next
+	column with info about the selected item.  Double clicking in a
+	module, class or method item opens the file (and selects the clicked
+	item if it is a class or method).
+	I guess eventually I should be using a tree widget for this, but the
+	ones I've seen don't work well enough, so for now I use the old
+	Smalltalk or NeXT style multi-column hierarchical browser.
+	* Tools/idle/MultiScrolledLists.py:
+	New utility: multiple scrolled lists in parallel
+	* Tools/idle/ScrolledList.py: - White background.
+	- Display "(None)" (or text of your choosing) when empty.
+	- Don't set the focus.
+Tue Mar  9 19:31:21 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/urllib.py:
+	open_http also had the 'data is None' test backwards.  don't call with the
+	extra argument if data is None.
+	* Demo/embed/demo.c:
+	Call Py_SetProgramName() instead of redefining getprogramname(),
+	reflecting changes in the runtime around 1.5 or earlier.
+	* Python/ceval.c:
+	Always test for an error return (usually NULL or -1) without setting
+	an exception.
+	* Modules/timemodule.c: Patch by Chris Herborth for BeOS code.
+	He writes:
+	I had an off-by-1000 error in floatsleep(),
+	and the problem with time.clock() is that it's not implemented properly
+	on QNX... ANSI says it's supposed to return _CPU_ time used by the
+	process, but on QNX it returns the amount of real time used... so I was
+	confused.
+	* Tools/bgen/bgen/macsupport.py: Small change by Jack Jansen.
+	Test for self.returntype behaving like OSErr rather than being it.
+Thu Feb 25 16:14:58 1999  Jeremy Hylton  <jhylton@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/urllib.py:
+	http_error had the 'data is None' test backwards.  don't call with the
+	extra argument if data is None.
+	* Lib/urllib.py: change indentation from 8 spaces to 4 spaces
+	* Lib/urllib.py: pleasing the tabnanny
+Thu Feb 25 14:26:02 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/colorsys.py:
+	Oops, one more "x, y, z" to convert...
+	* Lib/colorsys.py:
+	Adjusted comment at the top to be less confusing, following Fredrik
+	Lundh's example.
+	Converted comment to docstring.
+Wed Feb 24 18:49:15 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/toaiff.py:
+	Use sndhdr instead of the obsolete whatsound module.
+Wed Feb 24 18:42:38 1999  Jeremy Hylton  <jhylton@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/urllib.py:
+	When performing a POST request, i.e. when the second argument to
+	urlopen is used to specify form data, make sure the second argument is
+	threaded through all of the http_error_NNN calls.  This allows error
+	handlers like the redirect and authorization handlers to properly
+	re-start the connection.
+Wed Feb 24 16:25:17 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/mhlib.py: Patch by Lars Wirzenius:
+		o the initial comment is wrong: creating messages is already
+		  implemented
+		o Message.getbodytext: if the mail or it's part contains an
+		  empty content-transfer-encoding header, the code used to
+		  break; the change below treats an empty encoding value the same
+		  as the other types that do not need decoding
+		o SubMessage.getbodytext was missing the decode argument; the
+		  change below adds it; I also made it unconditionally return
+		  the raw text if decoding was not desired, because my own
+		  routines needed that (and it was easier than rewriting my
+		  own routines ;-)
+Wed Feb 24 00:35:43 1999  Barry Warsaw  <bwarsaw@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Python/bltinmodule.c (initerrors):
+	Make sure that the exception tuples ("base-classes" when
+	string-based exceptions are used) reflect the real class hierarchy,
+	i.e. that SystemExit derives from Exception not StandardError.
+	* Lib/exceptions.py:
+	Document the correct class hierarchy for SystemExit.  It is not an
+	error and so it derives from Exception and not SystemError.  The
+	docstring was incorrect but the implementation was fine.
+Tue Feb 23 23:07:51 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/shutil.py:
+	Add import sys, needed by reference to sys.exc_info() in rmtree().
+	Discovered by Mitch Chapman.
+	* config.h.in:
+	Now that we don't have AC_CHECK_LIB(m, pow), the HAVE_LIBM symbol
+	disappears.  It wasn't used anywhere anyway...
+	* Modules/arraymodule.c:
+	Carefully check for overflow when allocating the memory for fromfile
+	-- someone tried to pass in sys.maxint and got bitten by the bogus
+	calculations.
+	* configure.in:
+	Get rid of AC_CHECK_LIB(m, pow) since this is taken care of later with
+	LIBM (from --with-libm=...); this actually broke the customizability
+	offered by the latter option.  Thanks go to Clay Spence for reporting
+	this.
+	* Lib/test/test_dl.py:
+	1. Print the error message (carefully) when a dl.open() fails in verbose mode.
+	2. When no test case worked, raise ImportError instead of failing.
+	* Python/bltinmodule.c:
+	Patch by Tim Peters to improve the range checks for range() and
+	xrange(), especially for platforms where int and long are different
+	sizes (so sys.maxint isn't actually the theoretical limit for the
+	length of a list, but the largest C int is -- sys.maxint is the
+	largest Python int, which is actually a C long).
+	* Makefile.in:
+	1. Augment the DG/UX rule so it doesn't break the BeOS build.
+	2. Add $(EXE) to various occurrences of python so it will work on
+	   Cygwin with egcs (after setting EXE=.exe).  These patches by
+	   Norman Vine.
+	* Lib/posixfile.py:
+	According to Jeffrey Honig, bsd/os 2.0 - 4.0 should be added to the
+	list (of bsd variants that have a different lock structure).
+	* Lib/test/test_fcntl.py:
+	According to Jeffrey Honig, bsd/os 4.0 should be added to the list.
+	* Modules/timemodule.c:
+	Patch by Tadayoshi Funaba (with some changes) to be smarter about
+	guessing what happened when strftime() returns 0.  Is it buffer
+	overflow or was the result simply 0 bytes long?  (This happens for an
+	empty format string, or when the format string is a single %Z and the
+	timezone is unknown.)  if the buffer is at least 256 times as long as
+	the format, assume the latter.
+Mon Feb 22 19:01:42 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/urllib.py:
+	As Des Barry points out, we need to call pathname2url(file) in two
+	calls to addinfourl() in open_file().
+	* Modules/Setup.in: Document *static* -- in two places!
+	* Modules/timemodule.c:
+	We don't support leap seconds, so the seconds field of a time 9-tuple
+	should be in the range [0-59].  Noted by Tadayoshi Funaba.
+	* Modules/stropmodule.c:
+	In atoi(), don't use isxdigit() to test whether the last character
+	converted was a "digit" -- use isalnum().  This test is there only to
+	guard against "+" or "-" being interpreted as a valid int literal.
+	Reported by Takahiro Nakayama.
+	* Lib/os.py:
+	As Finn Bock points out, _P_WAIT etc. don't have a leading underscore
+	so they don't need to be treated specially here.
+Mon Feb 22 15:38:58 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Misc/NEWS:
+	Typo:  "apparentlt" --> "apparently"
+Mon Feb 22 15:38:46 1999  Guido van Rossum  <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/urlparse.py: Steve Clift pointed out that 'file' allows a netloc.
+	* Modules/posixmodule.c:
+	The docstring for ttyname(..) claims a second "mode" argument. The
+	actual code does not allow such an argument.  (Finn Bock.)
+	* Lib/lib-old/poly.py:
+	Dang.  Even though this is obsolete code, somebody found a bug, and I
+	fix it.  Oh well.
+Thu Feb 18 20:51:50 1999  Fred Drake  <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
+	* Lib/pyclbr.py:
+	Bow to font-lock at the end of the docstring, since it throws stuff
+	off.
+	Make sure the path paramter to readmodule() is a list before adding it
+	with sys.path, or the addition could fail.
+======================================================================
+From 1.5.2b1 to 1.5.2b2
+=======================
+General
+-------
+- Many memory leaks fixed.
+- Many small bugs fixed.
+- Command line option -OO (or -O -O) suppresses inclusion of doc
+strings in resulting bytecode.
+Windows-specific changes
+------------------------
+- New built-in module winsound provides an interface to the Win32
+PlaySound() call.
+- Re-enable the audioop module in the config.c file.
+- On Windows, support spawnv() and associated P_* symbols.
+- Fixed the conversion of times() return values on Windows.
+- Removed freeze from the installer -- it doesn't work without the
+source tree.  (See FAQ 8.11.)
+- On Windows 95/98, the Tkinter module now is smart enough to find
+Tcl/Tk even when the PATH environment variable hasn't been set -- when
+the import of _tkinter fails, it searches in a standard locations,
+patches os.environ["PATH"], and tries again.  When it still fails, a
+clearer error message is produced.  This should avoid most
+installation problems with Tkinter use (e.g. in IDLE).
+- The -i option doesn't make any calls to set[v]buf() for stdin --
+this apparently screwed up _kbhit() and the _tkinter main loop.
+- The ntpath module (and hence, os.path on Windows) now parses out UNC
+paths (e.g. \\host\mountpoint\dir\file) as "drive letters", so that
+splitdrive() will \\host\mountpoint as the drive and \dir\file as the
+path.  ** EXPERIMENTAL **
+- Added a hack to the exit code so that if (1) the exit status is
+nonzero and (2) we think we have our own DOS box (i.e. we're not
+started from a command line shell), we print a message and wait for
+the user to hit a key before the DOS box is closed.
+- Updated the installer to WISE 5.0g.  Added a dialog warning about
+the imminent Tcl installation.  Added a dialog to specify the program
+group name in the start menu.  Upgraded the Tcl installer to Tcl
+8.0.4.
+Changes to intrinsics
+---------------------
+- The repr() or str() of a module object now shows the __file__
+attribute (i.e., the file which it was loaded), or the string
+"(built-in)" if there is no __file__ attribute.
+- The range() function now avoids overflow during its calculations (if
+at all possible).
+- New info string sys.hexversion, which is an integer encoding the
+version in hexadecimal.  In other words, hex(sys.hexversion) ==
+0x010502b2 for Python 1.5.2b2.
+New or improved ports
+---------------------
+- Support for Nextstep descendants (future Mac systems).
+- Improved BeOS support.
+- Support dynamic loading of shared libraries on NetBSD platforms that
+use ELF (i.e., MIPS and Alpha systems).
+Configuration/build changes
+---------------------------
+- The Lib/test directory is no longer included in the default module
+search path (sys.path) -- "test" has been a package ever since 1.5.
+- Now using autoconf 2.13.
+New library modules
+-------------------
+- New library modules asyncore and asynchat: these form Sam Rushing's
+famous asynchronous socket library.  Sam has gracefully allowed me to
+incorporate these in the standard Python library.
+- New module statvfs contains indexing constants for [f]statvfs()
+return tuple.
+Changes to the library
+----------------------
+- The wave module (platform-independent support for Windows sound
+files) has been fixed to actually make it work.
+- The sunau module (platform-independent support for Sun/NeXT sound
+files) has been fixed to work across platforms.  Also, a weird
+encoding bug in the header of the audio test data file has been
+corrected.
+- Fix a bug in the urllib module that occasionally tripped up
+webchecker and other ftp retrieves.
+- ConfigParser's get() method now accepts an optional keyword argument
+(vars) that is substituted on top of the defaults that were setup in
+__init__.  You can now also have recusive references in your
+configuration file.
+- Some improvements to the Queue module, including a put_nowait()
+module and an optional "block" second argument, to get() and put(),
+defaulting to 1.
+- The updated xmllib module is once again compatible with the version
+present in Python 1.5.1 (this was accidentally broken in 1.5.2b1).
+- The bdb module (base class for the debugger) now supports
+canonicalizing pathnames used in breakpoints.  The derived class must
+override the new canonical() method for this to work.  Also changed
+clear_break() to the backwards compatible old signature, and added
+clear_bpbynumber() for the new functionality.
+- In sgmllib (and hence htmllib), recognize attributes even if they
+don't have space in front of them.  I.e.  '<a
+name="foo"href="bar.html">' will now have two attributes recognized.
+- In the debugger (pdb), change clear syntax to support three
+alternatives: clear; clear file:line; clear bpno bpno ...
+- The os.path module now pretends to be a submodule within the os
+"package", so you can do things like "from os.path import exists".
+- The standard exceptions now have doc strings.
+- In the smtplib module, exceptions are now classes.  Also avoid
+inserting a non-standard space after "TO" in rcpt() command.
+- The rfc822 module's getaddrlist() method now uses all occurrences of
+the specified header instead of just the first.  Some other bugfixes
+too (to handle more weird addresses found in a very large test set,
+and to avoid crashes on certain invalid dates), and a small test
+module has been added.
+- Fixed bug in urlparse in the common-case code for HTTP URLs; it
+would lose the query, fragment, and/or parameter information.
+- The sndhdr module no longer supports whatraw() -- it depended on a
+rare extenral program.
+- The UserList module/class now supports the extend() method, like
+real list objects.
+- The uu module now deals better with trailing garbage generated by
+some broke uuencoders.
+- The telnet module now has an my_interact() method which uses threads
+instead of select.  The interact() method uses this by default on
+Windows (where the single-threaded version doesn't work).
+- Add a class to mailbox.py for dealing with qmail directory
+mailboxes.  The test code was extended to notice these being used as
+well.
+Changes to extension modules
+----------------------------
+- Support for the [f]statvfs() system call, where it exists.
+- Fixed some bugs in cPickle where bad input could cause it to dump
+core.
+- Fixed cStringIO to make the writelines() function actually work.
+- Added strop.expandtabs() so string.expandtabs() is now much faster.
+- Added fsync() and fdatasync(), if they appear to exist.
+- Support for "long files" (64-bit seek pointers).
+- Fixed a bug in the zlib module's flush() function.
+- Added access() system call.  It returns 1 if access granted, 0 if
+not.
+- The curses module implements an optional nlines argument to
+w.scroll().  (It then calls wscrl(win, nlines) instead of scoll(win).)
+Changes to tools
+----------------
+- Some changes to IDLE; see Tools/idle/NEWS.txt.
+- Latest version of Misc/python-mode.el included.
+Changes to Tkinter
+------------------
+- Avoid tracebacks when an image is deleted after its root has been
+destroyed.
+Changes to the Python/C API
+---------------------------
+- When parentheses are used in a PyArg_Parse[Tuple]() call, any
+sequence is now accepted, instead of requiring a tuple.  This is in
+line with the general trend towards accepting arbitrary sequences.
+- Added PyModule_GetFilename().
+- In PyNumber_Power(), remove unneeded and even harmful test for float
+to the negative power (which is already and better done in
+floatobject.c).
+- New version identification symbols; read patchlevel.h for info.  The
+version numbers are now exported by Python.h.
+- Rolled back the API version change -- it's back to 1007!
+- The frozenmain.c function calls PyInitFrozenExtensions().
+- Added 'N' format character to Py_BuildValue -- like 'O' but doesn't
+INCREF.
+======================================================================
+From 1.5.2a2 to 1.5.2b1
+=======================
+Changes to intrinsics
+---------------------
+- New extension NotImplementedError, derived from RuntimeError.  Not
+used, but recommended use is for "abstract" methods to raise this.
+- The parser will now spit out a warning or error when -t or -tt is
+used for parser input coming from a string, too.
+- The code generator now inserts extra SET_LINENO opcodes when
+compiling multi-line argument lists.
+- When comparing bound methods, use identity test on the objects, not
+equality test.
+New or improved ports
+---------------------
+- Chris Herborth has redone his BeOS port; it now works on PowerPC
+(R3/R4) and x86 (R4 only).  Threads work too in this port.
+Renaming
+--------
+- Thanks to Chris Herborth, the thread primitives now have proper Py*
+names in the source code (they already had those for the linker,
+through some smart macros; but the source still had the old, un-Py
+names).
+Configuration/build changes
+---------------------------
+- Improved support for FreeBSD/3.
+- Check for pthread_detach instead of pthread_create in libc.
+- The makesetup script now searches EXECINCLUDEPY before INCLUDEPY.
+- Misc/Makefile.pre.in now also looks at Setup.thread and Setup.local.
+Otherwise modules such as thread didn't get incorporated in extensions.
+New library modules
+-------------------
+- shlex.py by Eric Raymond provides a lexical analyzer class for
+simple shell-like syntaxes.
+- netrc.py by Eric Raymond provides a parser for .netrc files.  (The
+undocumented Netrc class in ftplib.py is now obsolete.)
+- codeop.py is a new module that contains the compile_command()
+function that was previously in code.py.  This is so that JPython can
+provide its own version of this function, while still sharing the
+higher-level classes in code.py.
+- turtle.py is a new module for simple turtle graphics.  I'm still
+working on it; let me know if you use this to teach Python to children
+or other novices without prior programming experience.
+Obsoleted library modules
+-------------------------
+- poly.py and zmod.py have been moved to Lib/lib-old to emphasize
+their status of obsoleteness.  They don't do a particularly good job
+and don't seem particularly relevant to the Python core.
+New tools
+---------
+- I've added IDLE: my Integrated DeveLopment Environment for Python.
+Requires Tcl/Tk (and Tkinter).  Works on Windows and Unix (and should
+work on Macintosh, but I haven't been able to test it there; it does
+depend on new features in 1.5.2 and perhaps even new features in
+1.5.2b1, especially the new code module).  This is very much a work in
+progress.  I'd like to hear how people like it compared to PTUI (or
+any other IDE they are familiar with).
+- New tools by Barry Warsaw:
+= audiopy: controls the Solaris Audio device
+= pynche:  The PYthonically Natural Color and Hue Editor
+= world:   Print mappings between country names and DNS country codes
+New demos
+---------
+- Demo/scripts/beer.py prints the lyrics to an arithmetic drinking
+song.
+- Demo/tkinter/guido/optionmenu.py shows how to do an option menu in
+Tkinter.  (By Fredrik Lundh -- not by me!)
+Changes to the library
+----------------------
+- compileall.py now avoids recompiling .py files that haven't changed;
+it adds a -f option to force recompilation.
+- New version of xmllib.py by Sjoerd Mullender (0.2 with latest
+patches).
+- nntplib.py: statparse() no longer lowercases the message-id.
+- types.py: use type(__stdin__) for FileType.
+- urllib.py: fix translations for filenames with "funny" characters.
+Patch by Sjoerd Mullender.  Note that if you subclass one of the
+URLopener classes, and you have copied code from the old urllib.py,
+your subclass may stop working.  A long-term solution is to provide
+more methods so that you don't have to copy code.
+- cgi.py: In read_multi, allow a subclass to override the class we
+instantiate when we create a recursive instance, by setting the class
+variable 'FieldStorageClass' to the desired class.  By default, this
+is set to None, in which case we use self.__class__ (as before).
+Also, a patch by Jim Fulton to pass additional arguments to recursive
+calls to the FieldStorage constructor from its read_multi method.
+- UserList.py: In __getslice__, use self.__class__ instead of
+UserList.
+- In SimpleHTTPServer.py, the server specified in test() should be
+BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer, in case the request handler should want to
+reference the two attributes added by BaseHTTPServer.server_bind.  (By
+Jeff Rush, for Bobo).  Also open the file in binary mode, so serving
+images from a Windows box might actually work.
+- In CGIHTTPServer.py, the list of acceptable formats is -split-
+on spaces but -joined- on commas, resulting in double commas
+in the joined text.  (By Jeff Rush.)
+- SocketServer.py, patch by Jeff Bauer: a minor change to declare two
+new threaded versions of Unix Server classes, using the ThreadingMixIn
+class: ThreadingUnixStreamServer, ThreadingUnixDatagramServer.
+- bdb.py: fix bomb on deleting a temporary breakpoint: there's no
+method do_delete(); do_clear() was meant.  By Greg Ward.
+- getopt.py: accept a non-list sequence for the long options (request
+by Jack Jansen).  Because it might be a common mistake to pass a
+single string, this situation is treated separately.  Also added
+docstrings (copied from the library manual) and removed the (now
+redundant) module comments.
+- tempfile.py: improvements to avoid security leaks.
+- code.py: moved compile_command() to new module codeop.py.
+- pickle.py: support pickle format 1.3 (binary float added).  By Jim
+Fulton. Also get rid of the undocumented obsolete Pickler dump_special
+method.
+- uu.py: Move 'import sys' to top of module, as noted by Tim Peters.
+- imaplib.py: fix problem with some versions of IMAP4 servers that
+choose to mix the case in their CAPABILITIES response.
+- cmp.py: use (f1, f2) as cache key instead of f1 + ' ' + f2.  Noted
+by Fredrik Lundh.
+Changes to extension modules
+----------------------------
+- More doc strings for several modules were contributed by Chris
+Petrilli: math, cmath, fcntl.
+- Fixed a bug in zlibmodule.c that could cause core dumps on
+decompression of rarely occurring input.
+- cPickle.c: new version from Jim Fulton, with Open Source copyright
+notice.  Also, initialize self->safe_constructors early on to prevent
+crash in early dealloc.
+- cStringIO.c: new version from Jim Fulton, with Open Source copyright
+notice.  Also fixed a core dump in cStringIO.c when doing seeks.
+- mpzmodule.c: fix signed character usage in mpz.mpz(stringobjecty).
+- readline.c: Bernard Herzog pointed out that rl_parse_and_bind
+modifies its argument string (bad function!), so we make a temporary
+copy.
+- sunaudiodev.c: Barry Warsaw added more smarts to get the device and
+control pseudo-device, per audio(7I).
+Changes to tools
+----------------
+- New, improved version of Barry Warsaw's Misc/python-mode.el (editing
+support for Emacs).
+- tabnanny.py: added a -q ('quiet') option to tabnanny, which causes
+only the names of offending files to be printed.
+- freeze: when printing missing modules, also print the module they
+were imported from.
+- untabify.py: patch by Detlef Lannert to implement -t option
+(set tab size).
+Changes to Tkinter
+------------------
+- grid_bbox(): support new Tk API: grid bbox ?column row? ?column2
+row2?
+- _tkinter.c: RajGopal Srinivasan noted that the latest code (1.5.2a2)
+doesn't work when running in a non-threaded environment.  He added
+some #ifdefs that fix this.
+Changes to the Python/C API
+---------------------------
+- Bumped API version number to 1008 -- enough things have changed!
+- There's a new macro, PyThreadState_GET(), which does the same work
+as PyThreadState_Get() without the overhead of a function call (it
+also avoids the error check).  The two top calling locations of
+PyThreadState_Get() have been changed to use this macro.
+- All symbols intended for export from a DLL or shared library are now
+marked as such (with the DL_IMPORT() macro) in the header file that
+declares them.  This was needed for the BeOS port, and should also
+make some other ports easier.  The PC port no longer needs the file
+with exported symbols (PC/python_nt.def).  There's also a DL_EXPORT
+macro which is only used for init methods in extension modules, and
+for Py_Main().
+Invisible changes to internals
+------------------------------
+- Fixed a bug in new_buffersize() in fileobject.c which could
+return a buffer size that was way too large.
+- Use PySys_WriteStderr instead of fprintf in most places.
+- dictobject.c: remove dead code discovered by Vladimir Marangozov.
+- tupleobject.c: make tuples less hungry -- an extra item was
+allocated but never used.  Tip by Vladimir Marangozov.
+- mymath.h: Metrowerks PRO4 finally fixes the hypot snafu.  (Jack
+Jansen)
+- import.c: Jim Fulton fixes a reference count bug in
+PyEval_GetGlobals.
+- glmodule.c: check in the changed version after running the stubber
+again -- this solves the conflict with curses over the 'clear' entry
+point much nicer.  (Jack Jansen had checked in the changes to cstubs
+eons ago, but I never regenrated glmodule.c :-( )
+- frameobject.c: fix reference count bug in PyFrame_New.  Vladimir
+Marangozov.
+- stropmodule.c: add a missing DECREF in an error exit.  Submitted by
+Jonathan Giddy.
+======================================================================
+From 1.5.2a1 to 1.5.2a2
+=======================
+General
+-------
+- It is now a syntax error to have a function argument without a
+default following one with a default.
+- __file__ is now set to the .py file if it was parsed (it used to
+always be the .pyc/.pyo file).
+- Don't exit with a fatal error during initialization when there's a
+problem with the exceptions.py module.
+- New environment variable PYTHONOPTIMIZE can be used to set -O.
+- New version of python-mode.el for Emacs.
+Miscellaneous fixed bugs
+------------------------
+- No longer print the (confusing) error message about stack underflow
+while compiling.
+- Some threading and locking bugs fixed.
+- When errno is zero, report "Error", not "Success".
+Documentation
+-------------
+- Documentation will be released separately.
+- Doc strings added to array and md5 modules by Chris Petrilli.
+Ports and build procedure
+-------------------------
+- Stop installing when a move or copy fails.
+- New version of the OS/2 port code by Jeff Rush.
+- The makesetup script handles absolute filenames better.
+- The 'new' module is now enabled by default in the Setup file.
+- I *think* I've solved the problem with the Linux build blowing up
+sometimes due to a conflict between sigcheck/intrcheck and
+signalmodule.
+Built-in functions
+------------------
+- The second argument to apply() can now be any sequence, not just a
+tuple.
+Built-in types
+--------------
+- Lists have a new method: L1.extend(L2) is equivalent to the common
+idiom L1[len(L1):] = L2.
+- Better error messages when a sequence is indexed with a non-integer.
+- Bettter error message when calling a non-callable object (include
+the type in the message).
+Python services
+---------------
+- New version of cPickle.c fixes some bugs.
+- pickle.py: improved instantiation error handling.
+- code.py: reworked quite a bit.  New base class
+InteractiveInterpreter and derived class InteractiveConsole.  Fixed
+several problems in compile_command().
+- py_compile.py: print error message and continue on syntax errors.
+Also fixed an old bug with the fstat code (it was never used).
+- pyclbr.py: support submodules of packages.
+String Services
+---------------
+- StringIO.py: raise the right exception (ValueError) for attempted
+I/O on closed StringIO objects.
+- re.py: fixed a bug in subn(), which caused .groups() to fail inside
+the replacement function called by sub().
+- The struct module has a new format 'P': void * in native mode.
+Generic OS Services
+-------------------
+- Module time: Y2K robustness.  2-digit year acceptance depends on
+value of time.accept2dyear, initialized from env var PYTHONY2K,
+default 0.  Years 00-68 mean 2000-2068, while 69-99 mean 1969-1999
+(POSIX or X/Open recommendation).
+- os.path: normpath(".//x") should return "x", not "/x".
+- getpass.py: fall back on default_getpass() when sys.stdin.fileno()
+doesn't work.
+- tempfile.py: regenerate the template after a fork() call.
+Optional OS Services
+--------------------
+- In the signal module, disable restarting interrupted system calls
+when we have siginterrupt().
+Debugger
+--------
+- No longer set __args__; this feature is no longer supported and can
+affect the debugged code.
+- cmd.py, pdb.py and bdb.py have been overhauled by Richard Wolff, who
+added aliases and some other useful new features, e.g. much better
+breakpoint support: temporary breakpoint, disabled breakpoints,
+breakpoints with ignore counts, and conditions; breakpoints can be set
+on a file before it is loaded.
+Profiler
+--------
+- Changes so that JPython can use it.  Also fix the calibration code
+so it actually works again
+.
+Internet Protocols and Support
+------------------------------
+- imaplib.py: new version from Piers Lauder.
+- smtplib.py: change sendmail() method to accept a single string or a
+list or strings as the destination (commom newbie mistake).
+- poplib.py: LIST with a msg argument fixed.
+- urlparse.py: some optimizations for common case (http).
+- urllib.py: support content-length in info() for ftp protocol;
+support for a progress meter through a third argument to
+urlretrieve(); commented out gopher test (the test site is dead).
+Internet Data handling
+----------------------
+- sgmllib.py: support tags with - or . in their name.
+- mimetypes.py: guess_type() understands 'data' URLs.
+Restricted Execution
+--------------------
+- The classes rexec.RModuleLoader and rexec.RModuleImporter no
+longer exist.
+Tkinter
+-------
+- When reporting an exception, store its info in sys.last_*.  Also,
+write all of it to stderr.
+- Added NS, EW, and NSEW constants, for grid's sticky option.
+- Fixed last-minute bug in 1.5.2a1 release: need to include "mytime.h".
+- Make bind variants without a sequence return a tuple of sequences
+(formerly it returned a string, which wasn't very convenient).
+- Add image commands to the Text widget (these are new in Tk 8.0).
+- Added new listbox and canvas methods: {xview,yview}_{scroll,moveto}.)
+- Improved the thread code (but you still can't call update() from
+another thread on Windows).
+- Fixed unnecessary references to _default_root in the new dialog
+modules.
+- Miscellaneous problems fixed.
+Windows General
+---------------
+- Call LoadLibraryEx(..., ..., LOAD_WITH_ALTERED_SEARCH_PATH) to
+search for dependent dlls in the directory containing the .pyd.
+- In debugging mode, call DebugBreak() in Py_FatalError().
+Windows Installer
+-----------------
+- Install zlib.dll in the DLLs directory instead of in the win32
+system directory, to avoid conflicts with other applications that have
+their own zlib.dll.
+Test Suite
+----------
+- test_long.py: new test for long integers, by Tim Peters.
+- regrtest.py: improved so it can be used for other test suites as
+well.
+- test_strftime.py: use re to compare test results, to support legal
+variants (e.g. on Linux).
+Tools and Demos
+---------------
+- Four new scripts in Tools/scripts: crlf.py and lfcr.py (to
+remove/add Windows style '\r\n' line endings), untabify.py (to remove
+tabs), and rgrep.yp (reverse grep).
+- Improvements to Tools/freeze/.  Each Python module is now written to
+its own C file.  This prevents some compilers or assemblers from
+blowing up on large frozen programs, and saves recompilation time if
+only a few modules are changed.  Other changes too, e.g. new command
+line options -x and -i.
+- Much improved (and smaller!) version of Tools/scripts/mailerdaemon.py.
+Python/C API
+------------
+- New mechanism to support extensions of the type object while
+remaining backward compatible with extensions compiled for previous
+versions of Python 1.5.  A flags field indicates presence of certain
+fields.
+- Addition to the buffer API to differentiate access to bytes and
+8-bit characters (in anticipation of Unicode characters).
+- New argument parsing format t# ("text") to indicate 8-bit
+characters; s# simply means 8-bit bytes, for backwards compatibility.
+- New object type, bufferobject.c is an example and can be used to
+create buffers from memory.
+- Some support for 64-bit longs, including some MS platforms.
+- Many calls to fprintf(stderr, ...) have been replaced with calls to
+PySys_WriteStderr(...).
+- The calling context for PyOS_Readline() has changed: it must now be
+called with the interpreter lock held!  It releases the lock around
+the call to the function pointed to by PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer
+(default PyOS_StdioReadline()).
+- New APIs PyLong_FromVoidPtr() and PyLong_AsVoidPtr().
+- Renamed header file "thread.h" to "pythread.h".
+- The code string of code objects may now be anything that supports the
+buffer API.
+======================================================================
+From 1.5.1 to 1.5.2a1
+=====================
+General
+-------
+- When searching for the library, a landmark that is a compiled module
+(string.pyc or string.pyo) is also accepted.
+- When following symbolic links to the python executable, use a loop
+so that a symlink to a symlink can work.
+- Added a hack so that when you type 'quit' or 'exit' at the
+interpreter, you get a friendly explanation of how to press Ctrl-D (or
+Ctrl-Z) to exit.
+- New and improved Misc/python-mode.el (Python mode for Emacs).
+- Revert a new feature in Unix dynamic loading: for one or two
+revisions, modules were loaded using the RTLD_GLOBAL flag.  It turned
+out to be a bad idea.
+Miscellaneous fixed bugs
+------------------------
+- All patches on the patch page have been integrated.  (But much more
+has been done!)
+- Several memory leaks plugged (e.g. the one for classes with a
+__getattr__ method).
+- Removed the only use of calloc().  This triggered an obscure bug on
+multiprocessor Sparc Solaris 2.6.
+- Fix a peculiar bug that would allow "import sys.time" to succeed
+(believing the built-in time module to be a part of the sys package).
+- Fix a bug in the overflow checking when converting a Python long to
+a C long (failed to convert -2147483648L, and some other cases).
+Documentation
+-------------
+- Doc strings have been added to many extension modules: __builtin__,
+errno, select, signal, socket, sys, thread, time.  Also to methods of
+list objects (try [].append.__doc__).  A doc string on a type will now
+automatically be propagated to an instance if the instance has methods
+that are accessed in the usual way.
+- The documentation has been expanded and the formatting improved.
+(Remember that the documentation is now unbundled and has its own
+release cycle though; see http://www.python.org/doc/.)
+- Added Misc/Porting -- a mini-FAQ on porting to a new platform.
+Ports and build procedure
+-------------------------
+- The BeOS port is now integrated.  Courtesy Chris Herborth.
+- Symbol files for FreeBSD 2.x and 3.x have been contributed
+(Lib/plat-freebsd[23]/*).
+- Support HPUX 10.20 DCE threads.
+- Finally fixed the configure script so that (on SGI) if -OPT:Olimit=0
+works, it won't also use -Olimit 1500 (which gives a warning for every
+file).  Also support the SGI_ABI environment variable better.
+- The makesetup script now understands absolute pathnames ending in .o
+in the module -- it assumes it's a file for which we have no source.
+- Other miscellaneous improvements to the configure script and
+Makefiles.
+- The test suite now uses a different sound sample.
+Built-in functions
+------------------
+- Better checks for invalid input to int(), long(), string.atoi(),
+string.atol().  (Formerly, a sign without digits would be accepted as
+a legal ways to spell zero.)
+- Changes to map() and filter() to use the length of a sequence only
+as a hint -- if an IndexError happens earlier, take that.  (Formerly,
+this was considered an error.)
+- Experimental feature in getattr(): a third argument can specify a
+default (instead of raising AttributeError).
+- Implement round() slightly different, so that for negative ndigits
+no additional errors happen in the last step.
+- The open() function now adds the filename to the exception when it
+fails.
+Built-in exceptions
+-------------------
+- New standard exceptions EnvironmentError and PosixError.
+EnvironmentError is the base class for IOError and PosixError;
+PosixError is the same as os.error.  All this so that either exception
+class can be instantiated with a third argument indicating a filename.
+The built-in function open() and most os/posix functions that take a
+filename argument now use this.
+Built-in types
+--------------
+- List objects now have an experimental pop() method; l.pop() returns
+and removes the last item; l.pop(i) returns and removes the item at
+i.  Also, the sort() method is faster again.  Sorting is now also
+safer: it is impossible for the sorting function to modify the list
+while the sort is going on (which could cause core dumps).
+- Changes to comparisons: numbers are now smaller than any other type.
+This is done to prevent the circularity where [] < 0L < 1 < [] is
+true.  As a side effect, cmp(None, 0) is now positive instead of
+negative.  This *shouldn't* affect any working code, but I've found
+that the change caused several "sleeping" bugs to become active, so
+beware!
+- Instance methods may now have other callable objects than just
+Python functions as their im_func.  Use new.instancemethod() or write
+your own C code to create them; new.instancemethod() may be called
+with None for the instance to create an unbound method.
+- Assignment to __name__, __dict__ or __bases__ of a class object is
+now allowed (with stringent type checks); also allow assignment to
+__getattr__ etc.  The cached values for __getattr__ etc. are
+recomputed after such assignments (but not for derived classes :-( ).
+- Allow assignment to some attributes of function objects: func_code,
+func_defaults and func_doc / __doc__.  (With type checks except for
+__doc__ / func_doc .)
+Python services
+---------------
+- New tests (in Lib/test): reperf.py (regular expression benchmark),
+sortperf.py (list sorting benchmark), test_MimeWriter.py (test case
+for the MimeWriter module).
+- Generalized test/regrtest.py so that it is useful for testing other
+packages.
+- The ihooks.py module now understands package imports.
+- In code.py, add a class that subsumes Fredrik Lundh's
+PythonInterpreter class.  The interact() function now uses this.
+- In rlcompleter.py, in completer(), return None instead of raising an
+IndexError when there are no more completions left.
+- Fixed the marshal module to test for certain common kinds of invalid
+input.  (It's still not foolproof!)
+- In the operator module, add an alias (now the preferred name)
+"contains" for "sequenceincludes".
+String Services
+---------------
+- In the string and strop modules, in the replace() function, treat an
+empty pattern as an error (since it's not clear what was meant!).
+- Some speedups to re.py, especially the string substitution and split
+functions.  Also added new function/method findall(), to find all
+occurrences of a given substring.
+- In cStringIO, add better argument type checking and support the
+readonly 'closed' attribute (like regular files).
+- In the struct module, unsigned 1-2 byte sized formats no longer
+result in long integer values.
+Miscellaneous services
+----------------------
+- In whrandom.py, added new method and function randrange(), same as
+choice(range(start, stop, step)) but faster.  This addresses the
+problem that randint() was accidentally defined as taking an inclusive
+range.  Also, randint(a, b) is now redefined as randrange(a, b+1),
+adding extra range and type checking to its arguments!
+- Add some semi-thread-safety to random.gauss() (it used to be able to
+crash when invoked from separate threads; now the worst it can do is
+give a duplicate result occasionally).
+- Some restructuring and generalization done to cmd.py.
+- Major upgrade to ConfigParser.py; converted to using 're', added new
+exceptions, support underscore in section header and option name.  No
+longer add 'name' option to every section; instead, add '__name__'.
+- In getpass.py, don't use raw_input() to ask for the password -- we
+don't want it to show up in the readline history!  Also don't catch
+interrupts (the try-finally already does all necessary cleanup).
+Generic OS Services
+-------------------
+- New functions in os.py: makedirs(), removedirs(), renames().  New
+variable: linesep (the line separator as found in binary files,
+i.e. '\n' on Unix, '\r\n' on DOS/Windows, '\r' on Mac.  Do *not* use
+this with files opened in (default) text mode; the line separator used
+will always be '\n'!
+- Changes to the 'os.path' submodule of os.py: added getsize(),
+getmtime(), getatime() -- these fetch the most popular items from the
+stat return tuple.
+- In the time module, add strptime(), if it exists.  (This parses a
+time according to a format -- the inverse of strftime().)  Also,
+remove the call to mktime() from strftime() -- it messed up the
+formatting of some non-local times.
+- In the socket module, added a new function gethostbyname_ex().
+Also, don't use #ifdef to test for some symbols that are enums on some
+platforms (and should exist everywhere).
+Optional OS Services
+--------------------
+- Some fixes to gzip.py.  In particular, the readlines() method now
+returns the lines *with* trailing newline characters, like readlines()
+of regular file objects.  Also, it didn't work together with cPickle;
+fixed that.
+- In whichdb.py, support byte-swapped dbhash (bsddb) files.
+- In anydbm.py, look at the type of an existing database to determine
+which module to use to open it.  (The anydbm.error exception is now a
+tuple.)
+Unix Services
+-------------
+- In the termios module, in tcsetattr(), initialize the structure vy
+calling tcgetattr().
+- Added some of the "wait status inspection" macros as functions to
+the posix module (and thus to the os module): WEXITSTATUS(),
+WIFEXITED(), WIFSIGNALED(), WIFSTOPPED(), WSTOPSIG(), WTERMSIG().
+- In the syslog module, make the default facility more intuitive
+(matching the docs).
+Debugger
+--------
+- In pdb.py, support for setting breaks on files/modules that haven't
+been loaded yet.
+Internet Protocols and Support
+------------------------------
+- Changes in urllib.py; sped up unquote() and quote().  Fixed an
+obscure bug in quote_plus().  Added urlencode(dict) -- convenience
+function for sending a POST request with urlopen().  Use the getpass
+module to ask for a password.  Rewrote the (test) main program so that
+when used as a script, it can retrieve one or more URLs to stdout.
+Use -t to run the self-test.  Made the proxy code work again.
+- In cgi.py, treat "HEAD" the same as "GET", so that CGI scripts don't
+fail when someone asks for their HEAD.  Also, for POST, set the
+default content-type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded.  Also, in
+FieldStorage.__init__(), when method='GET', always get the query
+string from environ['QUERY_STRING'] or sys.argv[1] -- ignore an
+explicitly passed in fp.
+- The smtplib.py module now supports ESMTP and has improved standard
+compliance, for picky servers.
+- Improved imaplib.py.
+- Fixed UDP support in SocketServer.py (it never worked).
+- Fixed a small bug in CGIHTTPServer.py.
+Internet Data handling
+----------------------
+- In rfc822.py, add a new class AddressList.  Also support a new
+overridable method, isheader().  Also add a get() method similar to
+dictionaries (and make getheader() an alias for it).  Also, be smarter
+about seekable (test whether fp.tell() works) and test for presence of
+unread() method before trying seeks.
+- In sgmllib.py, restore the call to report_unbalanced() that was lost
+long ago.  Also some other improvements: handle <? processing
+instructions >, allow . and - in entity names, and allow \r\n as line
+separator.
+- Some restructuring and generalization done to multifile.py; support
+a 'seekable' flag.
+Restricted Execution
+--------------------
+- Improvements to rexec.py: package support; support a (minimal)
+sys.exc_info().  Also made the (test) main program a bit fancier (you
+can now use it to run arbitrary Python scripts in restricted mode).
+Tkinter
+-------
+- On Unix, Tkinter can now safely be used from a multi-threaded
+application.  (Formerly, no threads would make progress while
+Tkinter's mainloop() was active, because it didn't release the Python
+interpreter lock.)  Unfortunately, on Windows, threads other than the
+main thread should not call update() or update_idletasks() because
+this will deadlock the application.
+- An interactive interpreter that uses readline and Tkinter no longer
+uses up all available CPU time.
+- Even if readline is not used, Tk windows created in an interactive
+interpreter now get continuously updated.  (This even works in Windows
+as long as you don't hit a key.)
+- New demos in Demo/tkinter/guido/: brownian.py, redemo.py, switch.py.
+- No longer register Tcl_finalize() as a low-level exit handler.  It
+may call back into Python, and that's a bad idea.
+- Allow binding of Tcl commands (given as a string).
+- Some minor speedups; replace explicitly coded getint() with int() in
+most places.
+- In FileDialog.py, remember the directory of the selected file, if
+given.
+- Change the names of all methods in the Wm class: they are now
+wm_title(), etc.  The old names (title() etc.) are still defined as
+aliases.
+- Add a new method of interpreter objects, interpaddr().  This returns
+the address of the Tcl interpreter object, as an integer.  Not very
+useful for the Python programmer, but this can be called by another C
+extension that needs to make calls into the Tcl/Tk C API and needs to
+get the address of the Tcl interpreter object.  A simple cast of the
+return value to (Tcl_Interp *) will do the trick.
+Windows General
+---------------
+- Don't insist on proper case for module source files if the filename
+is all uppercase (e.g. FOO.PY now matches foo; but FOO.py still
+doesn't).  This should address problems with this feature on
+oldfashioned filesystems (Novell servers?).
+Windows Library
+---------------
+- os.environ is now all uppercase, but accesses are case insensitive,
+and the putenv() calls made as a side effect of changing os.environ
+are case preserving.
+- Removed samefile(), sameopenfile(), samestat() from os.path (aka
+ntpath.py) -- these cannot be made to work reliably (at least I
+wouldn't know how).
+- Fixed os.pipe() so that it returns file descriptors acceptable to
+os.read() and os.write() (like it does on Unix), rather than Windows
+file handles.
+- Added a table of WSA error codes to socket.py.
+- In the select module, put the (huge) file descriptor arrays on the
+heap.
+- The getpass module now raises KeyboardInterrupt when it sees ^C.
+- In mailbox.py, fix tell/seek when using files opened in text mode.
+- In rfc822.py, fix tell/seek when using files opened in text mode.
+- In the msvcrt extension module, release the interpreter lock for
+calls that may block: _locking(), _getch(), _getche().  Also fix a
+bogus error return when open_osfhandle() doesn't have the right
+argument list.
+Windows Installer
+-----------------
+- The registry key used is now "1.5" instead of "1.5.x" -- so future
+versions of 1.5 and Mark Hammond's win32all installer don't need to be
+resynchronized.
+Windows Tools
+-------------
+- Several improvements to freeze specifically for Windows.
+Windows Build Procedure
+-----------------------
+- The VC++ project files and the WISE installer have been moved to the
+PCbuild subdirectory, so they are distributed in the same subdirectory
+where they must be used.  This avoids confusion.
+- New project files for Windows 3.1 port by Jim Ahlstrom.
+- Got rid of the obsolete subdirectory PC/setup_nt/.
+- The projects now use distinct filenames for the .exe, .dll, .lib and
+.pyd files built in debug mode (by appending "_d" to the base name,
+before the extension).  This makes it easier to switch between the two
+and get the right versions.  There's a pragma in config.h that directs
+the linker to include the appropriate .lib file (so python15.lib no
+longer needs to be explicit in your project).
+- The installer now installs more files (e.g. config.h).  The idea is
+that you shouldn't need the source distribution if you want build your
+own extensions in C or C++.
+Tools and Demos
+---------------
+- New script nm2def.py by Marc-Andre Lemburg, to construct
+PC/python_nt.def automatically (some hand editing still required).
+- New tool ndiff.py: Tim Peters' text diffing tool.
+- Various and sundry improvements to the freeze script.
+- The script texi2html.py (which was part of the Doc tree but is no
+longer used there) has been moved to the Tools/scripts subdirectory.
+- Some generalizations in the webchecker code.  There's now a
+primnitive gui for websucker.py: wsgui.py.  (In Tools/webchecker/.)
+- The ftpmirror.py script now handles symbolic links properly, and
+also files with multiple spaces in their names.
+- The 1.5.1 tabnanny.py suffers an assert error if fed a script whose
+last line is both indented and lacks a newline.  This is now fixed.
+Python/C API
+------------
+- Added missing prototypes for PyEval_CallFunction() and
+PyEval_CallMethod().
+- New macro PyList_SET_ITEM().
+- New macros to access object members for PyFunction, PyCFunction
+objects.
+- New APIs PyImport_AppendInittab() an PyImport_ExtendInittab() to
+dynamically add one or many entries to the table of built-in modules.
+- New macro Py_InitModule3(name, methods, doc) which calls
+Py_InitModule4() with appropriate arguments.  (The -4 variant requires
+you to pass an obscure version number constant which is always the same.)
+- New APIs PySys_WriteStdout() and PySys_WriteStderr() to write to
+sys.stdout or sys.stderr using a printf-like interface.  (Used in
+_tkinter.c, for example.)
+- New APIs for conversion between Python longs and C 'long long' if
+your compiler supports it.
+- PySequence_In() is now called PySequence_Contains().
+(PySequence_In() is still supported for b/w compatibility; it is
+declared obsolete because its argument order is confusing.)
+- PyDict_GetItem() and PyDict_GetItemString() are changed so that they
+*never* raise an exception -- (even if the hash() fails, simply clear
+the error).  This was necessary because there is lots of code out
+there that already assumes this.
+- Changes to PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_List() to use the
+length of a sequence only as a hint -- if an IndexError happens
+earlier, take that.  (Formerly, this was considered an error.)
+- Reformatted abstract.c to give it a more familiar "look" and fixed
+many error checking bugs.
+- Add NULL pointer checks to all calls of a C function through a type
+object and extensions (e.g. nb_add).
+- The code that initializes sys.path now calls Py_GetPythonHome()
+instead of getenv("PYTHONHOME").  This, together with the new API
+Py_SetPythonHome(), makes it easier for embedding applications to
+change the notion of Python's "home" directory (where the libraries
+etc. are sought).
+- Fixed a very old bug in the parsing of "O?" format specifiers.
+======================================================================
+========================================
+==> Release 1.5.1 (October 31, 1998) <==
+========================================
+From 1.5 to 1.5.1
+=================
+General
+-------
+- The documentation is now unbundled.  It has also been extensively
+modified (mostly to implement a new and more uniform formatting
+style).  We figure that most people will prefer to download one of the
+preformatted documentation sets (HTML, PostScript or PDF) and that
+only a minority have a need for the LaTeX or FrameMaker sources.  Of
+course, the unbundled documentation sources still released -- just not
+in the same archive file, and perhaps not on the same date.
+- All bugs noted on the errors page (and many unnoted) are fixed.  All
+new bugs take their places.
+- No longer a core dump when attempting to print (or repr(), or str())
+a list or dictionary that contains an instance of itself; instead, the
+recursive entry is printed as [...] or {...}.  See Py_ReprEnter() and
+Py_ReprLeave() below.  Comparisons of such objects still go beserk,
+since this requires a different kind of fix; fortunately, this is a
+less common scenario in practice.
+Syntax change
+-------------
+- The raise statement can now be used without arguments, to re-raise
+a previously set exception.  This should be used after catching an
+exception with an except clause only, either in the except clause or
+later in the same function.
+Import and module handling
+--------------------------
+- The implementation of import has changed to use a mutex (when
+threading is supported).  This means that when two threads
+simultaneously import the same module, the import statements are
+serialized.  Recursive imports are not affected.
+- Rewrote the finalization code almost completely, to be much more
+careful with the order in which modules are destroyed.  Destructors
+will now generally be able to reference built-in names such as None
+without trouble.
+- Case-insensitive platforms such as Mac and Windows require the case
+of a module's filename to match the case of the module name as
+specified in the import statement (see below).
+- The code for figuring out the default path now distinguishes between
+files, modules, executable files, and directories.  When expecting a
+module, we also look for the .pyc or .pyo file.
+Parser/tokenizer changes
+------------------------
+- The tokenizer can now warn you when your source code mixes tabs and
+spaces for indentation in a manner that depends on how much a tab is
+worth in spaces.  Use "python -t" or "python -v" to enable this
+option.  Use "python -tt" to turn the warnings into errors.  (See also
+tabnanny.py and tabpolice.py below.)
+- Return unsigned characters from tok_nextc(), so '\377' isn't
+mistaken for an EOF character.
+- Fixed two pernicious bugs in the tokenizer that only affected AIX.
+One was actually a general bug that was triggered by AIX's smaller I/O
+buffer size.  The other was a bug in the AIX optimizer's loop
+unrolling code; swapping two statements made the problem go away.
+Tools, demos and miscellaneous files
+------------------------------------
+- There's a new version of Misc/python-mode.el (the Emacs mode for
+Python) which is much smarter about guessing the indentation style
+used in a particular file.  Lots of other cool features too!
+- There are two new tools in Tools/scripts: tabnanny.py and
+tabpolice.py, implementing two different ways of checking whether a
+file uses indentation in a way that is sensitive to the interpretation
+of a tab.  The preferred module is tabnanny.py (by Tim Peters).
+- Some new demo programs:
+	Demo/tkinter/guido/paint.py -- Dave Mitchell
+	Demo/sockets/unixserver.py -- Piet van Oostrum
+- Much better freeze support.  The freeze script can now freeze
+hierarchical module names (with a corresponding change to import.c),
+and has a few extra options (e.g. to suppress freezing specific
+modules).  It also does much more on Windows NT.
+- Version 1.0 of the faq wizard is included (only very small changes
+since version 0.9.0).
+- New feature for the ftpmirror script: when removing local files
+(i.e., only when -r is used), do a recursive delete.
+Configuring and building Python
+-------------------------------
+- Get rid of the check for -linet -- recent Sequent Dynix systems don't
+need this any more and apparently it screws up their configuration.
+- Some changes because gcc on SGI doesn't support '-all'.
+- Changed the build rules to use $(LIBRARY) instead of
+-L.. -lpython$(VERSION)
+since the latter trips up the SunOS 4.1.x linker (sigh).
+- Fix the bug where the '# dgux is broken' comment in the Makefile
+tripped over Make on some platforms.
+- Changes for AIX: install the python.exp file; properly use
+$(srcdir); the makexp_aix script now removes C++ entries of the form
+Class::method.
+- Deleted some Makefile targets only used by the (long obsolete)
+gMakefile hacks.
+Extension modules
+-----------------
+- Performance and threading improvements to the socket and bsddb
+modules, by Christopher Lindblad of Infoseek.
+- Added operator.__not__ and operator.not_.
+- In the thread module, when a thread exits due to an unhandled
+exception, don't store the exception information in sys.last_*; it
+prevents proper calling of destructors of local variables.
+- Fixed a number of small bugs in the cPickle module.
+- Changed find() and rfind() in the strop module so that
+find("x","",2) returns -1, matching the implementation in string.py.
+- In the time module, be more careful with the result of ctime(), and
+test for HAVE_MKTIME before usinmg mktime().
+- Doc strings contributed by Mitch Chapman to the termios, pwd, gdbm
+modules.
+- Added the LOG_SYSLOG constant to the syslog module, if defined.
+Standard library modules
+------------------------
+- All standard library modules have been converted to an indentation
+style using either only tabs or only spaces -- never a mixture -- if
+they weren't already consistent according to tabnanny.  This means
+that the new -t option (see above) won't complain about standard
+library modules.
+- New standard library modules:
+	threading -- GvR and the thread-sig
+		Java style thread objects -- USE THIS!!!
+	getpass -- Piers Lauder
+		simple utilities to prompt for a password and to
+		retrieve the current username
+	imaplib -- Piers Lauder
+		interface for the IMAP4 protocol
+	poplib -- David Ascher, Piers Lauder
+		interface for the POP3 protocol
+	smtplib -- Dragon De Monsyne
+		interface for the SMTP protocol
+- Some obsolete modules moved to a separate directory (Lib/lib-old)
+which is *not* in the default module search path:
+	Para
+	addpack
+	codehack
+	fmt
+	lockfile
+	newdir
+	ni
+	rand
+	tb
+- New version of the PCRE code (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions --
+the re module and the supporting pcre extension) by Andrew Kuchling.
+Incompatible new feature in re.sub(): the handling of escapes in the
+replacement string has changed.
+- Interface change in the copy module: a __deepcopy__ method is now
+called with the memo dictionary as an argument.
+- Feature change in the tokenize module: differentiate between NEWLINE
+token (an official newline) and NL token (a newline that the grammar
+ignores).
+- Several bugfixes to the urllib module.  It is now truly thread-safe,
+and several bugs and a portability problem have been fixed.  New
+features, all due to Sjoerd Mullender: When creating a temporary file,
+it gives it an appropriate suffix.  Support the "data:" URL scheme.
+The open() method uses the tempcache.
+- New version of the xmllib module (this time with a test suite!) by
+Sjoerd Mullender.
+- Added debugging code to the telnetlib module, to be able to trace
+the actual traffic.
+- In the rfc822 module, added support for deleting a header (still no
+support for adding headers, though).  Also fixed a bug where an
+illegal address would cause a crash in getrouteaddr(), fixed a
+sign reversal in mktime_tz(), and use the local timezone by default
+(the latter two due to Bill van Melle).
+- The normpath() function in the dospath and ntpath modules no longer
+does case normalization -- for that, use the separate function
+normcase() (which always existed); normcase() has been sped up and
+fixed (it was the cause of a crash in Mark Hammond's installer in
+certain locales).
+- New command supported by the ftplib module: rmd(); also fixed some
+minor bugs.
+- The profile module now uses a different timer function by default --
+time.clock() is generally better than os.times().  This makes it work
+better on Windows NT, too.
+- The tempfile module now recovers when os.getcwd() raises an
+exception.
+- Fixed some bugs in the random module; gauss() was subtly wrong, and
+vonmisesvariate() should return a full circle.  Courtesy Mike Miller,
+Lambert Meertens (gauss()), and Magnus Kessler (vonmisesvariate()).
+- Better default seed in the whrandom module, courtesy Andrew Kuchling.
+- Fix slow close() in shelve module.
+- The Unix mailbox class in the mailbox module is now more robust when
+a line begins with the string "From " but is definitely not the start
+of a new message.  The pattern used can be changed by overriding a
+method or class variable.
+- Added a rmtree() function to the copy module.
+- Fixed several typos in the pickle module.  Also fixed problems when
+unpickling in restricted execution environments.
+- Added docstrings and fixed a typo in the py_compile and compileall
+modules.  At Mark Hammond's repeated request, py_compile now append a
+newline to the source if it needs one.  Both modules support an extra
+parameter to specify the purported source filename (to be used in
+error messages).
+- Some performance tweaks by Jeremy Hylton to the gzip module.
+- Fixed a bug in the merge order of dictionaries in the ConfigParser
+module.  Courtesy Barry Warsaw.
+- In the multifile module, support the optional second parameter to
+seek() when possible.
+- Several fixes to the gopherlib module by Lars Marius Garshol.  Also,
+urlparse now correctly handles Gopher URLs with query strings.
+- Fixed a tiny bug in format_exception() in the traceback module.
+Also rewrite tb_lineno() to be compatible with JPython (and not
+disturb the current exception!); by Jim Hugunin.
+- The httplib module is more robust when servers send a short response
+-- courtesy Tim O'Malley.
+Tkinter and friends
+-------------------
+- Various typos and bugs fixed.
+- New module Tkdnd implements a drag-and-drop protocol (within one
+application only).
+- The event_*() widget methods have been restructured slightly -- they
+no longer use the default root.
+- The interfaces for the bind*() and unbind() widget methods have been
+redesigned; the bind*() methods now return the name of the Tcl command
+created for the callback, and this can be passed as a optional
+argument to unbind() in order to delete the command (normally, such
+commands are automatically unbound when the widget is destroyed, but
+for some applications this isn't enough).
+- Variable objects now have trace methods to interface to Tcl's
+variable tracing facilities.
+- Image objects now have an optional keyword argument, 'master', to
+specify a widget (tree) to which they belong.  The image_names() and
+image_types() calls are now also widget methods.
+- There's a new global call, Tkinter.NoDefaultRoot(), which disables
+all use of the default root by the Tkinter library.  This is useful to
+debug applications that are in the process of being converted from
+relying on the default root to explicit specification of the root
+widget.
+- The 'exit' command is deleted from the Tcl interpreter, since it
+provided a loophole by which one could (accidentally) exit the Python
+interpreter without invoking any cleanup code.
+- Tcl_Finalize() is now registered as a Python low-level exit handle,
+so Tcl will be finalized when Python exits.
+The Python/C API
+----------------
+- New function PyThreadState_GetDict() returns a per-thread dictionary
+intended for storing thread-local global variables.
+- New functions Py_ReprEnter() and Py_ReprLeave() use the per-thread
+dictionary to allow recursive container types to detect recursion in
+their repr(), str() and print implementations.
+- New function PyObject_Not(x) calculates (not x) according to Python's
+standard rules (basically, it negates the outcome PyObject_IsTrue(x).
+- New function _PyModule_Clear(), which clears a module's dictionary
+carefully without removing the __builtins__ entry.  This is implied
+when a module object is deallocated (this used to clear the dictionary
+completely).
+- New function PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(), which extends
+PyImport_ExecCodeModule() by adding an extra parameter to pass it the
+true file.
+- New functions Py_GetPythonHome() and Py_SetPythonHome(), intended to
+allow embedded applications to force a different value for PYTHONHOME.
+- New global flag Py_FrozenFlag is set when this is a "frozen" Python
+binary; it suppresses warnings about not being able to find the
+standard library directories.
+- New global flag Py_TabcheckFlag is incremented by the -t option and
+causes the tokenizer to issue warnings or errors about inconsistent
+mixing of tabs and spaces for indentation.
+Miscellaneous minor changes and bug fixes
+-----------------------------------------
+- Improved the error message when an attribute of an attribute-less
+object is requested -- include the name of the attribute and the type
+of the object in the message.
+- Sped up int(), long(), float() a bit.
+- Fixed a bug in list.sort() that would occasionally dump core.
+- Fixed a bug in PyNumber_Power() that caused numeric arrays to fail
+when taken tothe real power.
+- Fixed a number of bugs in the file reading code, at least one of
+which could cause a core dump on NT, and one of which would
+occasionally cause file.read() to return less than the full contents
+of the file.
+- Performance hack by Vladimir Marangozov for stack frame creation.
+- Make sure setvbuf() isn't used unless HAVE_SETVBUF is defined.
+Windows 95/NT
+-------------
+- The .lib files are now part of the distribution; they are collected
+in the subdirectory "libs" of the installation directory.
+- The extension modules (.pyd files) are now collected in a separate
+subdirectory of the installation directory named "DLLs".
+- The case of a module's filename must now match the case of the
+module name as specified in the import statement.  This is an
+experimental feature -- if it turns out to break in too many
+situations, it will be removed (or disabled by default) in the future.
+It can be disabled on a per-case basis by setting the environment
+variable PYTHONCASEOK (to any value).
+======================================================================
+=====================================
+==> Release 1.5 (January 3, 1998) <==
+=====================================
+From 1.5b2 to 1.5
+=================
+- Newly documentated module: BaseHTTPServer.py, thanks to Greg Stein.
+- Added doc strings to string.py, stropmodule.c, structmodule.c,
+thanks to Charles Waldman.
+- Many nits fixed in the manuals, thanks to Fred Drake and many others
+(especially Rob Hooft and Andrew Kuchling).  The HTML version now uses
+HTML markup instead of inline GIF images for tables; only two images
+are left (for obsure bits of math).  The index of the HTML version has
+also been much improved.  Finally, it is once again possible to
+generate an Emacs info file from the library manual (but I don't
+commit to supporting this in future versions).
+- New module: telnetlib.py (a simple telnet client library).
+- New tool: Tools/versioncheck/, by Jack Jansen.
+- Ported zlibmodule.c and bsddbmodule.c to NT; The project file for MS
+DevStudio 5.0 now includes new subprojects to build the zlib and bsddb
+extension modules.
+- Many small changes again to Tkinter.py -- mostly bugfixes and adding
+missing routines.  Thanks to Greg McFarlane for reporting a bunch of
+problems and proofreading my fixes.
+- The re module and its documentation are up to date with the latest
+version released to the string-sig (Dec. 22).
+- Stop test_grp.py from failing when the /etc/group file is empty
+(yes, this happens!).
+- Fix bug in integer conversion (mystrtoul.c) that caused
+4294967296==0 to be true!
+- The VC++ 4.2 project file should be complete again.
+- In tempfile.py, use a better template on NT, and add a new optional
+argument "suffix" with default "" to specify a specific extension for
+the temporary filename (needed sometimes on NT but perhaps also handy
+elsewhere).
+- Fixed some bugs in the FAQ wizard, and converted it to use re
+instead of regex.
+- Fixed a mysteriously undetected error in dlmodule.c (it was using a
+totally bogus routine name to raise an exception).
+- Fixed bug in import.c which wasn't using the new "dos-8x3" name yet.
+- Hopefully harmless changes to the build process to support shared
+libraries on DG/UX.  This adds a target to create
+libpython$(VERSION).so; however this target is *only* for DG/UX.
+- Fixed a bug in the new format string error checking in getargs.c.
+- A simple fix for infinite recursion when printing __builtins__:
+reset '_' to None before printing and set it to the printed variable
+*after* printing (and only when printing is successful).
+- Fixed lib-tk/SimpleDialog.py to keep the dialog visible even if the
+parent window is not (Skip Montanaro).
+- Fixed the two most annoying problems with ftp URLs in
+urllib.urlopen(); an empty file now correctly raises an error, and it
+is no longer required to explicitly close the returned "file" object
+before opening another ftp URL to the same host and directory.
+======================================================================
+From 1.5b1 to 1.5b2
+===================
+- Fixed a bug in cPickle.c that caused it to crash right away because
+the version string had a different format.
+- Changes in pickle.py and cPickle.c: when unpickling an instance of a
+class that doesn't define the __getinitargs__() method, the __init__()
+constructor is no longer called.  This makes a much larger group of
+classes picklable by default, but may occasionally change semantics.
+To force calling __init__() on unpickling, define a __getinitargs__()
+method.  Other changes too, in particular cPickle now handles classes
+defined in packages correctly.  The same change applies to copying
+instances with copy.py.  The cPickle.c changes and some pickle.py
+changes are courtesy Jim Fulton.
+- Locale support in he "re" (Perl regular expressions) module.  Use
+the flag re.L (or re.LOCALE) to enable locale-specific matching
+rules for \w and \b.  The in-line syntax for this flag is (?L).
+- The built-in function isinstance(x, y) now also succeeds when y is
+a type object and type(x) is y.
+- repr() and str() of class and instance objects now reflect the
+package/module in which the class is defined.
+- Module "ni" has been removed.  (If you really need it, it's been
+renamed to "ni1".  Let me know if this causes any problems for you.
+Package authors are encouraged to write __init__.py files that
+support both ni and 1.5 package support, so the same version can be
+used with Python 1.4 as well as 1.5.)
+- The thread module is now automatically included when threads are
+configured.  (You must remove it from your existing Setup file,
+since it is now in its own Setup.thread file.)
+- New command line option "-x" to skip the first line of the script;
+handy to make executable scripts on non-Unix platforms.
+- In importdl.c, add the RTLD_GLOBAL to the dlopen() flags.  I
+haven't checked how this affects things, but it should make symbols
+in one shared library available to the next one.
+- The Windows installer now installs in the "Program Files" folder on
+the proper volume by default.
+- The Windows configuration adds a new main program, "pythonw", and
+registers a new extension, ".pyw" that invokes this.  This is a
+pstandard Python interpreter that does not pop up a console window;
+handy for pure Tkinter applications.  All output to the original
+stdout and stderr is lost; reading from the original stdin yields
+EOF.  Also, both python.exe and pythonw.exe now have a pretty icon
+(a green snake in a box, courtesy Mark Hammond).
+- Lots of improvements to emacs-mode.el again.  See Barry's web page:
+http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html.
+- Lots of improvements and additions to the library reference manual;
+many by Fred Drake.
+- Doc strings for the following modules: rfc822.py, posixpath.py,
+ntpath.py, httplib.py.  Thanks to Mitch Chapman and Charles Waldman.
+- Some more regression testing.
+- An optional 4th (maxsplit) argument to strop.replace().
+- Fixed handling of maxsplit in string.splitfields().
+- Tweaked os.environ so it can be pickled and copied.
+- The portability problems caused by indented preprocessor commands
+and C++ style comments should be gone now.
+- In random.py, added Pareto and Weibull distributions.
+- The crypt module is now disabled in Modules/Setup.in by default; it
+is rarely needed and causes errors on some systems where users often
+don't know how to deal with those.
+- Some improvements to the _tkinter build line suggested by Case Roole.
+- A full suite of platform specific files for NetBSD 1.x, submitted by
+Anders Andersen.
+- New Solaris specific header STROPTS.py.
+- Moved a confusing occurrence of *shared* from the comments in
+Modules/Setup.in (people would enable this one instead of the real
+one, and get disappointing results).
+- Changed the default mode for directories to be group-writable when
+the installation process creates them.
+- Check for pthread support in "-l_r" for FreeBSD/NetBSD, and support
+shared libraries for both.
+- Support FreeBSD and NetBSD in posixfile.py.
+- Support for the "event" command, new in Tk 4.2.  By Case Roole.
+- Add Tix_SafeInit() support to tkappinit.c.
+- Various bugs fixed in "re.py" and "pcre.c".
+- Fixed a bug (broken use of the syntax table) in the old "regexpr.c".
+- In frozenmain.c, stdin is made unbuffered too when PYTHONUNBUFFERED
+is set.
+- Provide default blocksize for retrbinary in ftplib.py (Skip
+Montanaro).
+- In NT, pick the username up from different places in user.py (Jeff
+Bauer).
+- Patch to urlparse.urljoin() for ".." and "..#1", Marc Lemburg.
+- Many small improvements to Jeff Rush' OS/2 support.
+- ospath.py is gone; it's been obsolete for so many years now...
+- The reference manual is now set up to prepare better HTML (still
+using webmaker, alas).
+- Add special handling to /Tools/freeze for Python modules that are
+imported implicitly by the Python runtime: 'site' and 'exceptions'.
+- Tools/faqwiz 0.8.3 -- add an option to suppress URL processing
+inside <PRE>, by "Scott".
+- Added ConfigParser.py, a generic parser for sectioned configuration
+files.
+- In _localemodule.c, LC_MESSAGES is not always defined; put it
+between #ifdefs.
+- Typo in resource.c: RUSAGE_CHILDERN -> RUSAGE_CHILDREN.
+- Demo/scripts/newslist.py: Fix the way the version number is gotten
+out of the RCS revision.
+- PyArg_Parse[Tuple] now explicitly check for bad characters at the
+end of the format string.
+- Revamped PC/example_nt to support VC++ 5.x.
+- <listobject>.sort() now uses a modified quicksort by Raymund Galvin,
+after studying the GNU libg++ quicksort.  This should be much faster
+if there are lots of duplicates, and otherwise at least as good.
+- Added "uue" as an alias for "uuencode" to mimetools.py.  (Hm, the
+uudecode bug where it complaints about trailing garbage is still there
+:-( ).
+- pickle.py requires integers in text mode to be in decimal notation
+(it used to accept octal and hex, even though it would only generate
+decimal numbers).
+- In string.atof(), don't fail when the "re" module is unavailable.
+Plug the ensueing security leak by supplying an empty __builtins__
+directory to eval().
+- A bunch of small fixes and improvements to Tkinter.py.
+- Fixed a buffer overrun in PC/getpathp.c.
+======================================================================
+From 1.5a4 to 1.5b1
+===================
+- The Windows NT/95 installer now includes full HTML of all manuals.
+It also has a checkbox that lets you decide whether to install the
+interpreter and library.  The WISE installer script for the installer
+is included in the source tree as PC/python15.wse, and so are the
+icons used for Python files.  The config.c file for the Windows build
+is now complete with the pcre module.
+- sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 can now arbitrary objects; their str() is
+evaluated for the prompt.
+- The reference manual is brought up to date (more or less -- it still
+needs work, e.g. in the area of package import).
+- The icons used by latex2html are now included in the Doc
+subdirectory (mostly so that tarring up the HTML files can be fully
+automated).  A simple index.html is also added to Doc (it only works
+after you have successfully run latex2html).
+- For all you would-be proselytizers out there: a new version of
+Misc/BLURB describes Python more concisely, and Misc/comparisons
+compares Python to several other languages.  Misc/BLURB.WINDOWS
+contains a blurb specifically aimed at Windows programmers (by Mark
+Hammond).
+- A new version of the Python mode for Emacs is included as
+Misc/python-mode.el.  There are too many new features to list here.
+See http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for more info.
+- New module fileinput makes iterating over the lines of a list of
+files easier.  (This still needs some more thinking to make it more
+extensible.)
+- There's full OS/2 support, courtesy Jeff Rush.  To build the OS/2
+version, see PC/readme.txt and PC/os2vacpp.  This is for IBM's Visual
+Age C++ compiler.  I expect that Jeff will also provide a binary
+release for this platform.
+- On Linux, the configure script now uses '-Xlinker -export-dynamic'
+instead of '-rdynamic' to link the main program so that it exports its
+symbols to shared libraries it loads dynamically.  I hope this doesn't
+break on older Linux versions; it is needed for mklinux and appears to
+work on Linux 2.0.30.
+- Some Tkinter resstructuring: the geometry methods that apply to a
+master are now properly usable on toplevel master widgets.  There's a
+new (internal) widget class, BaseWidget.  New, longer "official" names
+for the geometry manager methods have been added,
+e.g. "grid_columnconfigure()" instead of "columnconfigure()".  The old
+shorter names still work, and where there's ambiguity, pack wins over
+place wins over grid.  Also, the bind_class method now returns its
+value.
+- New, RFC-822 conformant parsing of email addresses and address lists
+in the rfc822 module, courtesy Ben Escoto.
+- New, revamped tkappinit.c with support for popular packages (PIL,
+TIX, BLT, TOGL).  For the last three, you need to execute the Tcl
+command "load {} Tix" (or Blt, or Togl) to gain access to them.
+The Modules/Setup line for the _tkinter module has been rewritten
+using the cool line-breaking feature of most Bourne shells.
+- New socket method connect_ex() returns the error code from connect()
+instead of raising an exception on errors; this makes the logic
+required for asynchronous connects simpler and more efficient.
+- New "locale" module with (still experimental) interface to the
+standard C library locale interface, courtesy Martin von Loewis.  This
+does not repeat my mistake in 1.5a4 of always calling
+setlocale(LC_ALL, "").  In fact, we've pretty much decided that
+Python's standard numerical formatting operations should always use
+the conventions for the C locale; the locale module contains utility
+functions to format numbers according to the user specified locale.
+(All this is accomplished by an explicit call to setlocale(LC_NUMERIC,
+"C") after locale-changing calls.)  See the library manual. (Alas, the
+promised changes to the "re" module for locale support have not been
+materialized yet.  If you care, volunteer!)
+- Memory leak plugged in Py_BuildValue when building a dictionary.
+- Shared modules can now live inside packages (hierarchical module
+namespaces).  No changes to the shared module itself are needed.
+- Improved policy for __builtins__: this is a module in __main__ and a
+dictionary everywhere else.
+- Python no longer catches SIGHUP and SIGTERM by default.  This was
+impossible to get right in the light of thread contexts.  If you want
+your program to clean up when a signal happens, use the signal module
+to set up your own signal handler.
+- New Python/C API PyNumber_CoerceEx() does not return an exception
+when no coercion is possible.  This is used to fix a problem where
+comparing incompatible numbers for equality would raise an exception
+rather than return false as in Python 1.4 -- it once again will return
+false.
+- The errno module is changed again -- the table of error messages
+(errorstr) is removed.  Instead, you can use os.strerror().  This
+removes redundance and a potential locale dependency.
+- New module xmllib, to parse XML files.  By Sjoerd Mullender.
+- New C API PyOS_AfterFork() is called after fork() in posixmodule.c.
+It resets the signal module's notion of what the current process ID
+and thread are, so that signal handlers will work after (and across)
+calls to os.fork().
+- Fixed most occurrences of fatal errors due to missing thread state.
+- For vgrind (a flexible source pretty printer) fans, there's a simple
+Python definition in Misc/vgrindefs, courtesy Neale Pickett.
+- Fixed memory leak in exec statement.
+- The test.pystone module has a new function, pystones(loops=LOOPS),
+which returns a (benchtime, stones) tuple.  The main() function now
+calls this and prints the report.
+- Package directories now *require* the presence of an __init__.py (or
+__init__.pyc) file before they are considered as packages.  This is
+done to prevent accidental subdirectories with common names from
+overriding modules with the same name.
+- Fixed some strange exceptions in __del__ methods in library modules
+(e.g. urllib).  This happens because the builtin names are already
+deleted by the time __del__ is called.  The solution (a hack, but it
+works) is to set some instance variables to 0 instead of None.
+- The table of built-in module initializers is replaced by a pointer
+variable.  This makes it possible to switch to a different table at
+run time, e.g. when a collection of modules is loaded from a shared
+library.  (No example code of how to do this is given, but it is
+possible.)  The table is still there of course, its name prefixed with
+an underscore and used to initialize the pointer.
+- The warning about a thread still having a frame now only happens in
+verbose mode.
+- Change the signal finialization so that it also resets the signal
+handlers.  After this has been called, our signal handlers are no
+longer active!
+- New version of tokenize.py (by Ka-Ping Yee) recognizes raw string
+literals.  There's now also a test fort this module.
+- The copy module now also uses __dict__.update(state) instead of
+going through individual attribute assignments, for class instances
+without a __setstate__ method.
+- New module reconvert translates old-style (regex module) regular
+expressions to new-style (re module, Perl-style) regular expressions.
+- Most modules that used to use the regex module now use the re
+module.  The grep module has a new pgrep() function which uses
+Perl-style regular expressions.
+- The (very old, backwards compatibility) regexp.py module has been
+deleted.
+- Restricted execution (rexec): added the pcre module (support for the
+re module) to the list of trusted extension modules.
+- New version of Jim Fulton's CObject object type, adds
+PyCObject_FromVoidPtrAndDesc() and PyCObject_GetDesc() APIs.
+- Some patches to Lee Busby's fpectl mods that accidentally didn't
+make it into 1.5a4.
+- In the string module, add an optional 4th argument to count(),
+matching find() etc.
+- Patch for the nntplib module by Charles Waldman to add optional user
+and password arguments to NNTP.__init__(), for nntp servers that need
+them.
+- The str() function for class objects now returns
+"modulename.classname" instead of returning the same as repr().
+- The parsing of \xXX escapes no longer relies on sscanf().
+- The "sharedmodules" subdirectory of the installation is renamed to
+"lib-dynload".  (You may have to edit your Modules/Setup file to fix
+this in an existing installation!)
+- Fixed Don Beaudry's mess-up with the OPT test in the configure
+script.  Certain SGI platforms will still issue a warning for each
+compile; there's not much I can do about this since the compiler's
+exit status doesn't indicate that I was using an obsolete option.
+- Fixed Barry's mess-up with {}.get(), and added test cases for it.
+- Shared libraries didn't quite work under AIX because of the change
+in status of the GNU readline interface.  Fix due to by Vladimir
+Marangozov.
+======================================================================
+From 1.5a3 to 1.5a4
+===================
+- faqwiz.py: version 0.8; Recognize https:// as URL; <html>...</html>
+feature; better install instructions; removed faqmain.py (which was an
+older version).
+- nntplib.py: Fixed some bugs reported by Lars Wirzenius (to Debian)
+about the treatment of lines starting with '.'.  Added a minimal test
+function.
+- struct module: ignore most whitespace in format strings.
+- urllib.py: close the socket and temp file in URLopener.retrieve() so
+that multiple retrievals using the same connection work.
+- All standard exceptions are now classes by default; use -X to make
+them strings (for backward compatibility only).
+- There's a new standard exception hierarchy, defined in the standard
+library module exceptions.py (which you never need to import
+explicitly).  See
+http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/stdexceptions.html for
+more info.
+- Three new C API functions:
+- int PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches(obj1, obj2)
+Returns 1 if obj1 and obj2 are the same object, or if obj1 is an
+instance of type obj2, or of a class derived from obj2
+- int PyErr_ExceptionMatches(obj)
+Higher level wrapper around PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches() which uses
+PyErr_Occurred() as obj1.  This will be the more commonly called
+function.
+- void PyErr_NormalizeException(typeptr, valptr, tbptr)
+Normalizes exceptions, and places the normalized values in the
+arguments.  If type is not a class, this does nothing.  If type is a
+class, then it makes sure that value is an instance of the class by:
+1. if instance is of the type, or a class derived from type, it does
+nothing.
+2. otherwise it instantiates the class, using the value as an
+argument.  If value is None, it uses an empty arg tuple, and if
+the value is a tuple, it uses just that.
+- Another new C API function: PyErr_NewException() creates a new
+exception class derived from Exception; when -X is given, it creates a
+new string exception.
+- core interpreter: remove the distinction between tuple and list
+unpacking; allow an arbitrary sequence on the right hand side of any
+unpack instruction.  (UNPACK_LIST and UNPACK_TUPLE now do the same
+thing, which should really be called UNPACK_SEQUENCE.)
+- classes: Allow assignments to an instance's __dict__ or __class__,
+so you can change ivars (including shared ivars -- shock horror) and
+change classes dynamically.  Also make the check on read-only
+attributes of classes less draconic -- only the specials names
+__dict__, __bases__, __name__ and __{get,set,del}attr__ can't be
+assigned.
+- Two new built-in functions: issubclass() and isinstance().  Both
+take classes as their second arguments.  The former takes a class as
+the first argument and returns true iff first is second, or is a
+subclass of second.  The latter takes any object as the first argument
+and returns true iff first is an instance of the second, or any
+subclass of second.
+- configure: Added configuration tests for presence of alarm(),
+pause(), and getpwent().
+- Doc/Makefile: changed latex2html targets.
+- classes: Reverse the search order for the Don Beaudry hook so that
+the first class with an applicable hook wins.  Makes more sense.
+- Changed the checks made in Py_Initialize() and Py_Finalize().  It is
+now legal to call these more than once.  The first call to
+Py_Initialize() initializes, the first call to Py_Finalize()
+finalizes.  There's also a new API, Py_IsInitalized() which checks
+whether we are already initialized (in case you want to leave things
+as they were).
+- Completely disable the declarations for malloc(), realloc() and
+free().  Any 90's C compiler has these in header files, and the tests
+to decide whether to suppress the declarations kept failing on some
+platforms.
+- *Before* (instead of after) signalmodule.o is added, remove both
+intrcheck.o and sigcheck.o.  This should get rid of warnings in ar or
+ld on various systems.
+- Added reop to PC/config.c
+- configure: Decided to use -Aa -D_HPUX_SOURCE on HP-UX platforms.
+Removed outdated HP-UX comments from README.  Added Cray T3E comments.
+- Various renames of statically defined functions that had name
+conflicts on some systems, e.g. strndup (GNU libc), join (Cray),
+roundup (sys/types.h).
+- urllib.py: Interpret three slashes in file: URL as local file (for
+Netscape on Windows/Mac).
+- copy.py: Make sure the objects returned by __getinitargs__() are
+kept alive (in the memo) to avoid a certain kind of nasty crash.  (Not
+easily reproducable because it requires a later call to
+__getinitargs__() to return a tuple that happens to be allocated at
+the same address.)
+- Added definition of AR to toplevel Makefile.  Renamed @buildno temp
+file to buildno1.
+- Moved Include/assert.h to Parser/assert.h, which seems to be the
+only place where it's needed.
+- Tweaked the dictionary lookup code again for some more speed
+(Vladimir Marangozov).
+- NT build: Changed the way python15.lib is included in the other
+projects.  Per Mark Hammond's suggestion, add it to the extra libs in
+Settings instead of to the project's source files.
+- regrtest.py: Change default verbosity so that there are only three
+levels left: -q, default and -v.  In default mode, the name of each
+test is now printed.  -v is the same as the old -vv.  -q is more quiet
+than the old default mode.
+- Removed the old FAQ from the distribution.  You now have to get it
+from the web!
+- Removed the PC/make_nt.in file from the distribution; it is no
+longer needed.
+- Changed the build sequence so that shared modules are built last.
+This fixes things for AIX and doesn't hurt elsewhere.
+- Improved test for GNU MP v1 in mpzmodule.c
+- fileobject.c: ftell() on Linux discards all buffered data; changed
+read() code to use lseek() instead to get the same effect
+- configure.in, configure, importdl.c: NeXT sharedlib fixes
+- tupleobject.c: PyTuple_SetItem asserts refcnt==1
+- resource.c: Different strategy regarding whether to declare
+getrusage() and getpagesize() -- #ifdef doesn't work, Linux has
+conflicting decls in its headers.  Choice: only declare the return
+type, not the argument prototype, and not on Linux.
+- importdl.c, configure*: set sharedlib extensions properly for NeXT
+- configure*, Makefile.in, Modules/Makefile.pre.in: AIX shared libraries
+fixed; moved addition of PURIFY to LINKCC to configure
+- reopmodule.c, regexmodule.c, regexpr.c, zlibmodule.c: needed casts
+added to shup up various compilers.
+- _tkinter.c: removed buggy mac #ifndef
+- Doc: various Mac documentation changes, added docs for 'ic' module
+- PC/make_nt.in: deleted
+- test_time.py, test_strftime.py: tweaks to catch %Z (which may return
+"")
+- test_rotor.py: print b -> print `b`
+- Tkinter.py: (tagOrId) -> (tagOrId,)
+- Tkinter.py: the Tk class now also has a configure() method and
+friends (they have been moved to the Misc class to accomplish this).
+- dict.get(key[, default]) returns dict[key] if it exists, or default
+if it doesn't.  The default defaults to None.  This is quicker for
+some applications than using either has_key() or try:...except
+KeyError:....
+- Tools/webchecker/: some small changes to webchecker.py; added
+websucker.py (a simple web site mirroring script).
+- Dictionary objects now have a get() method (also in UserDict.py).
+dict.get(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists and default
+otherwise; default defaults to None.
+- Tools/scripts/logmerge.py: print the author, too.
+- Changes to import: support for "import a.b.c" is now built in.  See
+http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html
+for more info.  Most important deviations from "ni.py": __init__.py is
+executed in the package's namespace instead of as a submodule; and
+there's no support for "__" or "__domain__".  Note that "ni.py" is not
+changed to match this -- it is simply declared obsolete (while at the
+same time, it is documented...:-( ).
+Unfortunately, "ihooks.py" has not been upgraded (but see "knee.py"
+for an example implementation of hierarchical module import written in
+Python).
+- More changes to import: the site.py module is now imported by
+default when Python is initialized; use -S to disable it.  The site.py
+module extends the path with several more directories: site-packages
+inside the lib/python1.5/ directory, site-python in the lib/
+directory, and pathnames mentioned in *.pth files found in either of
+those directories.  See
+http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html
+for more info.
+- Changes to standard library subdirectory names: those subdirectories
+that are not packages have been renamed with a hypen in their name,
+e.g. lib-tk, lib-stdwin, plat-win, plat-linux2, plat-sunos5, dos-8x3.
+The test suite is now a package -- to run a test, you must now use
+"import test.test_foo".
+- A completely new re.py module is provided (thanks to Andrew
+Kuchling, Tim Peters and Jeffrey Ollie) which uses Philip Hazel's
+"pcre" re compiler and engine.  For a while, the "old" re.py (which
+was new in 1.5a3!) will be kept around as re1.py.  The "old" regex
+module and underlying parser and engine are still present -- while
+regex is now officially obsolete, it will probably take several major
+release cycles before it can be removed.
+- The posix module now has a strerror() function which translates an
+error code to a string.
+- The emacs.py module (which was long obsolete) has been removed.
+- The universal makefile Misc/Makefile.pre.in now features an
+"install" target.  By default, installed shared libraries go into
+$exec_prefix/lib/python$VERSION/site-packages/.
+- The install-sh script is installed with the other configuration
+specific files (in the config/ subdirectory).
+- It turns out whatsound.py and sndhdr.py were identical modules.
+Since there's also an imghdr.py file, I propose to make sndhdr.py the
+official one.  For compatibility, whatsound.py imports * from
+sndhdr.py.
+- Class objects have a new attribute, __module__, giving the name of
+the module in which they were declared.  This is useful for pickle and
+for printing the full name of a class exception.
+- Many extension modules no longer issue a fatal error when their
+initialization fails; the importing code now checks whether an error
+occurred during module initialization, and correctly propagates the
+exception to the import statement.
+- Most extension modules now raise class-based exceptions (except when
+-X is used).
+- Subtle changes to PyEval_{Save,Restore}Thread(): always swap the
+thread state -- just don't manipulate the lock if it isn't there.
+- Fixed a bug in Python/getopt.c that made it do the wrong thing when
+an option was a single '-'.  Thanks to Andrew Kuchling.
+- New module mimetypes.py will guess a MIME type from a filename's
+extension.
+- Windows: the DLL version is now settable via a resource rather than
+being hardcoded.  This can be used for "branding" a binary Python
+distribution.
+- urllib.py is now threadsafe -- it now uses re instead of regex, and
+sys.exc_info() instead of sys.exc_{type,value}.
+- Many other library modules that used to use
+sys.exc_{type,value,traceback} are now more thread-safe by virtue of
+using sys.exc_info().
+- The functions in popen2 have an optional buffer size parameter.
+Also, the command argument can now be either a string (passed to the
+shell) or a list of arguments (passed directly to execv).
+- Alas, the thread support for _tkinter released with 1.5a3 didn't
+work.  It's been rewritten.  The bad news is that it now requires a
+modified version of a file in the standard Tcl distribution, which you
+must compile with a -I option pointing to the standard Tcl source
+tree.  For this reason, the thread support is disabled by default.
+- The errno extension module adds two tables: errorcode maps errno
+numbers to errno names (e.g. EINTR), and errorstr maps them to
+message strings.  (The latter is redundant because the new call
+posix.strerror() now does the same, but alla...)  (Marc-Andre Lemburg)
+- The readline extension module now provides some interfaces to
+internal readline routines that make it possible to write a completer
+in Python.  An example completer, rlcompleter.py, is provided.
+	When completing a simple identifier, it completes keywords,
+	built-ins and globals in __main__; when completing
+	NAME.NAME..., it evaluates (!) the expression up to the last
+	dot and completes its attributes.
+	It's very cool to do "import string" type "string.", hit the
+	completion key (twice), and see the list of names defined by
+	the string module!
+	Tip: to use the tab key as the completion key, call
+	    readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
+- The traceback.py module has a new function tb_lineno() by Marc-Andre
+Lemburg which extracts the line number from the linenumber table in
+the code object.  Apparently the traceback object doesn't contains the
+right linenumber when -O is used.  Rather than guessing whether -O is
+on or off, the module itself uses tb_lineno() unconditionally.
+- Fixed Demo/tkinter/matt/canvas-moving-or-creating.py: change bind()
+to tag_bind() so it works again.
+- The pystone script is now a standard library module.  Example use:
+"import test.pystone; test.pystone.main()".
+- The import of the readline module in interactive mode is now also
+attempted when -i is specified.  (Yes, I know, giving in to Marc-Andre
+Lemburg, who asked for this. :-)
+- rfc822.py: Entirely rewritten parseaddr() function by Sjoerd
+Mullender, to be closer to the standard.  This fixes the getaddr()
+method.  Unfortunately, getaddrlist() is as broken as ever, since it
+splits on commas without regard for RFC 822 quoting conventions.
+- pprint.py: correctly emit trailing "," in singleton tuples.
+- _tkinter.c: export names for its type objects, TkappType and
+TkttType.
+- pickle.py: use __module__ when defined; fix a particularly hard to
+reproduce bug that confuses the memo when temporary objects are
+returned by custom pickling interfaces; and a semantic change: when
+unpickling the instance variables of an instance, use
+inst.__dict__.update(value) instead of a for loop with setattr() over
+the value.keys().  This is more consistent (the pickling doesn't use
+getattr() either but pickles inst.__dict__) and avoids problems with
+instances that have a __setattr__ hook.  But it *is* a semantic change
+(because the setattr hook is no longer used).  So beware!
+- config.h is now installed (at last) in
+$exec_prefix/include/python1.5/.  For most sites, this means that it
+is actually in $prefix/include/python1.5/, with all the other Python
+include files, since $prefix and $exec_prefix are the same by
+default.
+- The imp module now supports parts of the functionality to implement
+import of hierarchical module names.  It now supports find_module()
+and load_module() for all types of modules.  Docstrings have been
+added for those functions in the built-in imp module that are still
+relevant (some old interfaces are obsolete).  For a sample
+implementation of hierarchical module import in Python, see the new
+library module knee.py.
+- The % operator on string objects now allows arbitrary nested parens
+in a %(...)X style format.  (Brad Howes)
+- Reverse the order in which Setup and Setup.local are passed to the
+makesetup script.  This allows variable definitions in Setup.local to
+override definitions in Setup.  (But you'll still have to edit Setup
+if you want to disable modules that are enabled by default, or if such
+modules need non-standard options.)
+- Added PyImport_ImportModuleEx(name, globals, locals, fromlist); this
+is like PyImport_ImporModule(name) but receives the globals and locals
+dict and the fromlist arguments as well.  (The name is a char*; the
+others are PyObject*s).
+- The 'p' format in the struct extension module alloded to above is
+new in 1.5a4.
+- The types.py module now uses try-except in a few places to make it
+more likely that it can be imported in restricted mode.  Some type
+names are undefined in that case, e.g. CodeType (inaccessible),
+FileType (not always accessible), and TracebackType and FrameType
+(inaccessible).
+- In urllib.py: added separate administration of temporary files
+created y URLopener.retrieve() so cleanup() can properly remove them.
+The old code removed everything in tempcache which was a bad idea if
+the user had passed a non-temp file into it.  Also, in basejoin(),
+interpret relative paths starting in "../".  This is necessary if the
+server uses symbolic links.
+- The Windows build procedure and project files are now based on
+Microsoft Visual C++ 5.x.  The build now takes place in the PCbuild
+directory.  It is much more robust, and properly builds separate Debug
+and Release versions.  (The installer will be added shortly.)
+- Added casts and changed some return types in regexpr.c to avoid
+compiler warnings or errors on some platforms.
+- The AIX build tools for shared libraries now supports VPATH.  (Donn
+Cave)
+- By default, disable the "portable" multimedia modules audioop,
+imageop, and rgbimg, since they don't work on 64-bit platforms.
+- Fixed a nasty bug in cStringIO.c when code was actually using the
+close() method (the destructors would try to free certain fields a
+second time).
+- For those who think they need it, there's a "user.py" module.  This
+is *not* imported by default, but can be imported to run user-specific
+setup commands, ~/.pythonrc.py.
+- Various speedups suggested by Fredrik Lundh, Marc-Andre Lemburg,
+Vladimir Marangozov, and others.
+- Added os.altsep; this is '/' on DOS/Windows, and None on systems
+with a sane filename syntax.
+- os.py: Write out the dynamic OS choice, to avoid exec statements.
+Adding support for a new OS is now a bit more work, but I bet that
+'dos' or 'nt' will cover most situations...
+- The obsolete exception AccessError is now really gone.
+- Tools/faqwiz/: New installation instructions show how to maintain
+multiple FAQs.  Removed bootstrap script from end of faqwiz.py module.
+Added instructions to bootstrap script, too.  Version bumped to 0.8.1.
+Added <html>...</html> feature suggested by Skip Montanaro.  Added
+leading text for Roulette, default to 'Hit Reload ...'.  Fix typo in
+default SRCDIR.
+- Documentation for the relatively new modules "keyword" and "symbol"
+has been added (to the end of the section on the parser extension
+module).
+- In module bisect.py, but functions have two optional argument 'lo'
+and 'hi' which allow you to specify a subsequence of the array to
+operate on.
+- In ftplib.py, changed most methods to return their status (even when
+it is always "200 OK") rather than swallowing it.
+- main() now calls setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), if setlocale() and
+<locale.h> are defined.
+- Changes to configure.in, the configure script, and both
+Makefile.pre.in files, to support SGI's SGI_ABI platform selection
+environment variable.
+======================================================================
+From 1.4 to 1.5a3
+=================
+Security
+--------
+- If you are using the setuid script C wrapper (Misc/setuid-prog.c),
+please use the new version.  The old version has a huge security leak.
+Miscellaneous
+-------------
+- Because of various (small) incompatible changes in the Python
+bytecode interpreter, the magic number for .pyc files has changed
+again.
+- The default module search path is now much saner.  Both on Unix and
+Windows, it is essentially derived from the path to the executable
+(which can be overridden by setting the environment variable
+$PYTHONHOME).  The value of $PYTHONPATH on Windows is now inserted in
+front of the default path, like in Unix (instead of overriding the
+default path).  On Windows, the directory containing the executable is
+added to the end of the path.
+- A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs has been included.  Also,
+a new file ccpy-style.el has been added to configure Emacs cc-mode for
+the preferred style in Python C sources.
+- On Unix, when using sys.argv[0] to insert the script directory in
+front of sys.path, expand a symbolic link.  You can now install a
+program in a private directory and have a symbolic link to it in a
+public bin directory, and it will put the private directory in the
+module search path.  Note that the symlink is expanded in sys.path[0]
+but not in sys.argv[0], so you can still tell the name by which you
+were invoked.
+- It is now recommended to use ``#!/usr/bin/env python'' instead of
+``#!/usr/local/bin/python'' at the start of executable scripts, except
+for CGI scripts.  It has been determined that the use of /usr/bin/env
+is more portable than that of /usr/local/bin/python -- scripts almost
+never have to be edited when the Python interpreter lives in a
+non-standard place.  Note that this doesn't work for CGI scripts since
+the python executable often doesn't live in the HTTP server's default
+search path.
+- The silly -s command line option and the corresponding
+PYTHONSUPPRESS environment variable (and the Py_SuppressPrint global
+flag in the Python/C API) are gone.
+- Most problems on 64-bit platforms should now be fixed.  Andrew
+Kuchling helped.  Some uncommon extension modules are still not
+clean (image and audio ops?).
+- Fixed a bug where multiple anonymous tuple arguments would be mixed up
+when using the debugger or profiler (reported by Just van Rossum).
+The simplest example is ``def f((a,b),(c,d)): print a,b,c,d''; this
+would print the wrong value when run under the debugger or profiler.
+- The hacks that the dictionary implementation used to speed up
+repeated lookups of the same C string were removed; these were a
+source of subtle problems and don't seem to serve much of a purpose
+any longer.
+- All traces of support for the long dead access statement have been
+removed from the sources.
+- Plugged the two-byte memory leak in the tokenizer when reading an
+interactive EOF.
+- There's a -O option to the interpreter that removes SET_LINENO
+instructions and assert statements (see below); it uses and produces
+.pyo files instead of .pyc files.  The speedup is only a few percent
+in most cases.  The line numbers are still available in the .pyo file,
+as a separate table (which is also available in .pyc files).  However,
+the removal of the SET_LINENO instructions means that the debugger
+(pdb) can't set breakpoints on lines in -O mode.  The traceback module
+contains a function to extract a line number from the code object
+referenced in a traceback object.  In the future it should be possible
+to write external bytecode optimizers that create better optimized
+.pyo files, and there should be more control over optimization;
+consider the -O option a "teaser".  Without -O, the assert statement
+actually generates code that first checks __debug__; if this variable
+is false, the assertion is not checked.  __debug__ is a built-in
+variable whose value is initialized to track the -O flag (it's true
+iff -O is not specified).  With -O, no code is generated for assert
+statements, nor for code of the form ``if __debug__: <something>''.
+Sorry, no further constant folding happens.
+Performance
+-----------
+- It's much faster (almost twice for pystone.py -- see
+Tools/scripts).  See the entry on string interning below.
+- Some speedup by using separate free lists for method objects (both
+the C and the Python variety) and for floating point numbers.
+- Big speedup by allocating frame objects with a single malloc() call.
+The Python/C API for frames is changed (you shouldn't be using this
+anyway).
+- Significant speedup by inlining some common opcodes for common operand
+types (e.g.  i+i, i-i, and list[i]).  Fredrik Lundh.
+- Small speedup by reordering the method tables of some common
+objects (e.g. list.append is now first).
+- Big optimization to the read() method of file objects.  A read()
+without arguments now attempts to use fstat to allocate a buffer of
+the right size; for pipes and sockets, it will fall back to doubling
+the buffer size.  While that the improvement is real on all systems,
+it is most dramatic on Windows.
+Documentation
+-------------
+- Many new pieces of library documentation were contributed, mostly by
+Andrew Kuchling.  Even cmath is now documented!  There's also a
+chapter of the library manual, "libundoc.tex", which provides a
+listing of all undocumented modules, plus their status (e.g. internal,
+obsolete, or in need of documentation).  Also contributions by Sue
+Williams, Skip Montanaro, and some module authors who succumbed to
+pressure to document their own contributed modules :-).  Note that
+printing the documentation now kills fewer trees -- the margins have
+been reduced.
+- I have started documenting the Python/C API. Unfortunately this project
+hasn't been completed yet.  It will be complete before the final release of
+Python 1.5, though.  At the moment, it's better to read the LaTeX source
+than to attempt to run it through LaTeX and print the resulting dvi file.
+- The posix module (and hence os.py) now has doc strings!  Thanks to Neil
+Schemenauer.  I received a few other contributions of doc strings.  In most
+other places, doc strings are still wishful thinking...
+Language changes
+----------------
+- Private variables with leading double underscore are now a permanent
+feature of the language.  (These were experimental in release 1.4.  I have
+favorable experience using them; I can't label them "experimental"
+forever.)
+- There's new string literal syntax for "raw strings".  Prefixing a string
+literal with the letter r (or R) disables all escape processing in the
+string; for example, r'\n' is a two-character string consisting of a
+backslash followed by the letter n.  This combines with all forms of string
+quotes; it is actually useful for triple quoted doc strings which might
+contain references to \n or \t.  An embedded quote prefixed with a
+backslash does not terminate the string, but the backslash is still
+included in the string; for example, r'\'' is a two-character string
+consisting of a backslash and a quote.  (Raw strings are also
+affectionately known as Robin strings, after their inventor, Robin
+Friedrich.)
+- There's a simple assert statement, and a new exception
+AssertionError.  For example, ``assert foo > 0'' is equivalent to ``if
+not foo > 0: raise AssertionError''.  Sorry, the text of the asserted
+condition is not available; it would be too complicated to generate
+code for this (since the code is generated from a parse tree).
+However, the text is displayed as part of the traceback!
+- The raise statement has a new feature: when using "raise SomeClass,
+somevalue" where somevalue is not an instance of SomeClass, it
+instantiates SomeClass(somevalue).  In 1.5a4, if somevalue is an
+instance of a *derived* class of SomeClass, the exception class raised
+is set to somevalue.__class__, and SomeClass is ignored after that.
+- Duplicate keyword arguments are now detected at compile time;
+f(a=1,a=2) is now a syntax error.
+Changes to builtin features
+---------------------------
+- There's a new exception FloatingPointError (used only by Lee Busby's
+patches to catch floating point exceptions, at the moment).
+- The obsolete exception ConflictError (presumably used by the long
+obsolete access statement) has been deleted.
+- There's a new function sys.exc_info() which returns the tuple
+(sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback) in a thread-safe way.
+- There's a new variable sys.executable, pointing to the executable file
+for the Python interpreter.
+- The sort() methods for lists no longer uses the C library qsort(); I
+wrote my own quicksort implementation, with lots of help (in the form
+of a kind of competition) from Tim Peters.  This solves a bug in
+dictionary comparisons on some Solaris versions when Python is built
+with threads, and makes sorting lists even faster.
+- The semantics of comparing two dictionaries have changed, to make
+comparison of unequal dictionaries faster.  A shorter dictionary is
+always considered smaller than a larger dictionary.  For dictionaries
+of the same size, the smallest differing element determines the
+outcome (which yields the same results as before in this case, without
+explicit sorting).  Thanks to Aaron Watters for suggesting something
+like this.
+- The semantics of try-except have changed subtly so that calling a
+function in an exception handler that itself raises and catches an
+exception no longer overwrites the sys.exc_* variables.  This also
+alleviates the problem that objects referenced in a stack frame that
+caught an exception are kept alive until another exception is caught
+-- the sys.exc_* variables are restored to their previous value when
+returning from a function that caught an exception.
+- There's a new "buffer" interface.  Certain objects (e.g. strings and
+arrays) now support the "buffer" protocol.  Buffer objects are acceptable
+whenever formerly a string was required for a write operation; mutable
+buffer objects can be the target of a read operation using the call
+f.readinto(buffer).  A cool feature is that regular expression matching now
+also work on array objects.  Contribution by Jack Jansen.  (Needs
+documentation.)
+- String interning: dictionary lookups are faster when the lookup
+string object is the same object as the key in the dictionary, not
+just a string with the same value.  This is done by having a pool of
+"interned" strings.  Most names generated by the interpreter are now
+automatically interned, and there's a new built-in function intern(s)
+that returns the interned version of a string.  Interned strings are
+not a different object type, and interning is totally optional, but by
+interning most keys a speedup of about 15% was obtained for the
+pystone benchmark.
+- Dictionary objects have several new methods; clear() and copy() have
+the obvious semantics, while update(d) merges the contents of another
+dictionary d into this one, overriding existing keys.  The dictionary
+implementation file is now called dictobject.c rather than the
+confusing mappingobject.c.
+- The intrinsic function dir() is much smarter; it looks in __dict__,
+__members__ and __methods__.
+- The intrinsic functions int(), long() and float() can now take a
+string argument and then do the same thing as string.atoi(),
+string.atol(), and string.atof().  No second 'base' argument is
+allowed, and complex() does not take a string (nobody cared enough).
+- When a module is deleted, its globals are now deleted in two phases.
+In the first phase, all variables whose name begins with exactly one
+underscore are replaced by None; in the second phase, all variables
+are deleted.  This makes it possible to have global objects whose
+destructors depend on other globals.  The deletion order within each
+phase is still random.
+- It is no longer an error for a function to be called without a
+global variable __builtins__ -- an empty directory will be provided
+by default.
+- Guido's corollary to the "Don Beaudry hook": it is now possible to
+do metaprogramming by using an instance as a base class.  Not for the
+faint of heart; and undocumented as yet, but basically if a base class
+is an instance, its class will be instantiated to create the new
+class.  Jim Fulton will love it -- it also works with instances of his
+"extension classes", since it is triggered by the presence of a
+__class__ attribute on the purported base class.  See
+Demo/metaclasses/index.html for an explanation and see that directory
+for examples.
+- Another change is that the Don Beaudry hook is now invoked when
+*any* base class is special.  (Up to 1.5a3, the *last* special base
+class is used; in 1.5a4, the more rational choice of the *first*
+special base class is used.)
+- New optional parameter to the readlines() method of file objects.
+This indicates the number of bytes to read (the actual number of bytes
+read will be somewhat larger due to buffering reading until the end of
+the line).  Some optimizations have also been made to speed it up (but
+not as much as read()).
+- Complex numbers no longer have the ".conj" pseudo attribute; use
+z.conjugate() instead, or complex(z.real, -z.imag).  Complex numbers
+now *do* support the __members__ and __methods__ special attributes.
+- The complex() function now looks for a __complex__() method on class
+instances before giving up.
+- Long integers now support arbitrary shift counts, so you can now
+write 1L<<1000000, memory permitting.  (Python 1.4 reports "outrageous
+shift count for this.)
+- The hex() and oct() functions have been changed so that for regular
+integers, they never emit a minus sign.  For example, on a 32-bit
+machine, oct(-1) now returns '037777777777' and hex(-1) returns
+'0xffffffff'.  While this may seem inconsistent, it is much more
+useful.  (For long integers, a minus sign is used as before, to fit
+the result in memory :-)
+- The hash() function computes better hashes for several data types,
+including strings, floating point numbers, and complex numbers.
+New extension modules
+---------------------
+- New extension modules cStringIO.c and cPickle.c, written by Jim
+Fulton and other folks at Digital Creations.  These are much more
+efficient than their Python counterparts StringIO.py and pickle.py,
+but don't support subclassing.  cPickle.c clocks up to 1000 times
+faster than pickle.py; cStringIO.c's improvement is less dramatic but
+still significant.
+- New extension module zlibmodule.c, interfacing to the free zlib
+library (gzip compatible compression).  There's also a module gzip.py
+which provides a higher level interface.  Written by Andrew Kuchling
+and Jeremy Hylton.
+- New module readline; see the "miscellaneous" section above.
+- New Unix extension module resource.c, by Jeremy Hylton, provides
+access to getrlimit(), getrusage(), setrusage(), getpagesize(), and
+related symbolic constants.
+- New extension puremodule.c, by Barry Warsaw, which interfaces to the
+Purify(TM) C API.  See also the file Misc/PURIFY.README.  It is also
+possible to enable Purify by simply setting the PURIFY Makefile
+variable in the Modules/Setup file.
+Changes in extension modules
+----------------------------
+- The struct extension module has several new features to control byte
+order and word size.  It supports reading and writing IEEE floats even
+on platforms where this is not the native format.  It uses uppercase
+format codes for unsigned integers of various sizes (always using
+Python long ints for 'I' and 'L'), 's' with a size prefix for strings,
+and 'p' for "Pascal strings" (with a leading length byte, included in
+the size; blame Hannu Krosing; new in 1.5a4).  A prefix '>' forces
+big-endian data and '<' forces little-endian data; these also select
+standard data sizes and disable automatic alignment (use pad bytes as
+needed).
+- The array module supports uppercase format codes for unsigned data
+formats (like the struct module).
+- The fcntl extension module now exports the needed symbolic
+constants.  (Formerly these were in FCNTL.py which was not available
+or correct for all platforms.)
+- The extension modules dbm, gdbm and bsddb now check that the
+database is still open before making any new calls.
+- The dbhash module is no more.  Use bsddb instead.  (There's a third
+party interface for the BSD 2.x code somewhere on the web; support for
+bsddb will be deprecated.)
+- The gdbm module now supports a sync() method.
+- The socket module now has some new functions: getprotobyname(), and
+the set {ntoh,hton}{s,l}().
+- Various modules now export their type object: socket.SocketType,
+array.ArrayType.
+- The socket module's accept() method now returns unknown addresses as
+a tuple rather than raising an exception.  (This can happen in
+promiscuous mode.)  Theres' also a new function getprotobyname().
+- The pthread support for the thread module now works on most platforms.
+- STDWIN is now officially obsolete.  Support for it will eventually
+be removed from the distribution.
+- The binascii extension module is now hopefully fully debugged.
+(XXX Oops -- Fredrik Lundh promised me a uuencode fix that I never
+received.)
+- audioop.c: added a ratecv() function; better handling of overflow in
+add().
+- posixmodule.c: now exports the O_* flags (O_APPEND etc.).  On
+Windows, also O_TEXT and O_BINARY.  The 'error' variable (the
+exception is raises) is renamed -- its string value is now "os.error",
+so newbies don't believe they have to import posix (or nt) to catch
+it when they see os.error reported as posix.error.  The execve()
+function now accepts any mapping object for the environment.
+- A new version of the al (audio library) module for SGI was
+contributed by Sjoerd Mullender.
+- The regex module has a new function get_syntax() which retrieves the
+syntax setting set by set_syntax().  The code was also sanitized,
+removing worries about unclean error handling.  See also below for its
+successor, re.py.
+- The "new" module (which creates new objects of various types) once
+again has a fully functioning new.function() method.  Dangerous as
+ever!  Also, new.code() has several new arguments.
+- A problem has been fixed in the rotor module: on systems with signed
+characters, rotor-encoded data was not portable when the key contained
+8-bit characters.  Also, setkey() now requires its argument rather
+than having broken code to default it.
+- The sys.builtin_module_names variable is now a tuple.  Another new
+variables in sys is sys.executable (the full path to the Python
+binary, if known).
+- The specs for time.strftime() have undergone some revisions.  It
+appears that not all format characters are supported in the same way
+on all platforms.  Rather than reimplement it, we note these
+differences in the documentation, and emphasize the shared set of
+features.  There's also a thorough test set (that occasionally finds
+problems in the C library implementation, e.g. on some Linuxes),
+thanks to Skip Montanaro.
+- The nis module seems broken when used with NIS+; unfortunately
+nobody knows how to fix it.  It should still work with old NIS.
+New library modules
+-------------------
+- New (still experimental) Perl-style regular expression module,
+re.py, which uses a new interface for matching as well as a new
+syntax; the new interface avoids the thread-unsafety of the regex
+interface.  This comes with a helper extension reopmodule.c and vastly
+rewritten regexpr.c.  Most work on this was done by Jeffrey Ollie, Tim
+Peters, and Andrew Kuchling.  See the documentation libre.tex.  In
+1.5, the old regex module is still fully supported; in the future, it
+will become obsolete.
+- New module gzip.py; see zlib above.
+- New module keyword.py exports knowledge about Python's built-in
+keywords.  (New version by Ka-Ping Yee.)
+- New module pprint.py (with documentation) which supports
+pretty-printing of lists, tuples, & dictionaries recursively.  By Fred
+Drake.
+- New module code.py.  The function code.compile_command() can
+determine whether an interactively entered command is complete or not,
+distinguishing incomplete from invalid input.  (XXX Unfortunately,
+this seems broken at this moment, and I don't have the time to fix
+it.  It's probably better to add an explicit interface to the parser
+for this.)
+- There is now a library module xdrlib.py which can read and write the
+XDR data format as used by Sun RPC, for example.  It uses the struct
+module.
+Changes in library modules
+--------------------------
+- Module codehack.py is now completely obsolete.
+- The pickle.py module has been updated to make it compatible with the
+new binary format that cPickle.c produces.  By default it produces the
+old all-ASCII format compatible with the old pickle.py, still much
+faster than pickle.py; it will read both formats automatically.  A few
+other updates have been made.
+- A new helper module, copy_reg.py, is provided to register extensions
+to the pickling code.
+- Revamped module tokenize.py is much more accurate and has an
+interface that makes it a breeze to write code to colorize Python
+source code.  Contributed by Ka-Ping Yee.
+- In ihooks.py, ModuleLoader.load_module() now closes the file under
+all circumstances.
+- The tempfile.py module has a new class, TemporaryFile, which creates
+an open temporary file that will be deleted automatically when
+closed.  This works on Windows and MacOS as well as on Unix.  (Jim
+Fulton.)
+- Changes to the cgi.py module: Most imports are now done at the
+top of the module, which provides a speedup when using ni (Jim
+Fulton).  The problem with file upload to a Windows platform is solved
+by using the new tempfile.TemporaryFile class; temporary files are now
+always opened in binary mode (Jim Fulton).  The cgi.escape() function
+now takes an optional flag argument that quotes '"' to '&quot;'.  It
+is now possible to invoke cgi.py from a command line script, to test
+cgi scripts more easily outside an http server.  There's an optional
+limit to the size of uploads to POST (Skip Montanaro).  Added a
+'strict_parsing' option to all parsing functions (Jim Fulton).  The
+function parse_qs() now uses urllib.unquote() on the name as well as
+the value of fields (Clarence Gardner).  The FieldStorage class now
+has a __len__() method.
+- httplib.py: the socket object is no longer closed; all HTTP/1.*
+responses are now accepted; and it is now thread-safe (by not using
+the regex module).
+- BaseHTTPModule.py: treat all HTTP/1.* versions the same.
+- The popen2.py module is now rewritten using a class, which makes
+access to the standard error stream and the process id of the
+subprocess possible.
+- Added timezone support to the rfc822.py module, in the form of a
+getdate_tz() method and a parsedate_tz() function; also a mktime_tz().
+Also added recognition of some non-standard date formats, by Lars
+Wirzenius, and RFC 850 dates (Chris Lawrence).
+- mhlib.py: various enhancements, including almost compatible parsing
+of message sequence specifiers without invoking a subprocess.  Also
+added a createmessage() method by Lars Wirzenius.
+- The StringIO.StringIO class now supports readline(nbytes).  (Lars
+Wirzenius.)  (Of course, you should be using cStringIO for performance.)
+- UserDict.py supports the new dictionary methods as well.
+- Improvements for whrandom.py by Tim Peters: use 32-bit arithmetic to
+speed it up, and replace 0 seed values by 1 to avoid degeneration.
+A bug was fixed in the test for invalid arguments.
+- Module ftplib.py: added support for parsing a .netrc file (Fred
+Drake).  Also added an ntransfercmd() method to the FTP class, which
+allows access to the expected size of a transfer when available, and a
+parse150() function to the module which parses the corresponding 150
+response.
+- urllib.py: the ftp cache is now limited to 10 entries.  Added
+quote_plus() and unquote_plus() functions which are like quote() and
+unquote() but also replace spaces with '+' or vice versa, for
+encoding/decoding CGI form arguments.  Catch all errors from the ftp
+module.  HTTP requests now add the Host: header line.  The proxy
+variable names are now mapped to lower case, for Windows.  The
+spliturl() function no longer erroneously throws away all data past
+the first newline.  The basejoin() function now intereprets "../"
+correctly.  I *believe* that the problems with "exception raised in
+__del__" under certain circumstances have been fixed (mostly by
+changes elsewher in the interpreter).
+- In urlparse.py, there is a cache for results in urlparse.urlparse();
+its size limit is set to 20.  Also, new URL schemes shttp, https, and
+snews are "supported".
+- shelve.py: use cPickle and cStringIO when available.  Also added
+a sync() method, which calls the database's sync() method if there is
+one.
+- The mimetools.py module now uses the available Python modules for
+decoding quoted-printable, uuencode and base64 formats, rather than
+creating a subprocess.
+- The python debugger (pdb.py, and its base class bdb.py) now support
+conditional breakpoints.  See the docs.
+- The modules base64.py, uu.py and quopri.py can now be used as simple
+command line utilities.
+- Various small fixes to the nntplib.py module that I can't bother to
+document in detail.
+- Sjoerd Mullender's mimify.py module now supports base64 encoding and
+includes functions to handle the funny encoding you sometimes see in mail
+headers.  It is now documented.
+- mailbox.py: Added BabylMailbox.  Improved the way the mailbox is
+gotten from the environment.
+- Many more modules now correctly open files in binary mode when this
+is necessary on non-Unix platforms.
+- The copying functions in the undocumented module shutil.py are
+smarter.
+- The Writer classes in the formatter.py module now have a flush()
+method.
+- The sgmllib.py module accepts hyphens and periods in the middle of
+attribute names.  While this is against the SGML standard, there is
+some HTML out there that uses this...
+- The interface for the Python bytecode disassembler module, dis.py,
+has been enhanced quite a bit.  There's now one main function,
+dis.dis(), which takes almost any kind of object (function, module,
+class, instance, method, code object) and disassembles it; without
+arguments it disassembles the last frame of the last traceback.  The
+other functions have changed slightly, too.
+- The imghdr.py module recognizes new image types: BMP, PNG.
+- The string.py module has a new function replace(str, old, new,
+[maxsplit]) which does substring replacements.  It is actually
+implemented in C in the strop module.  The functions [r]find() an
+[r]index() have an optional 4th argument indicating the end of the
+substring to search, alsoo implemented by their strop counterparts.
+(Remember, never import strop -- import string uses strop when
+available with zero overhead.)
+- The string.join() function now accepts any sequence argument, not
+just lists and tuples.
+- The string.maketrans() requires its first two arguments to be
+present.  The old version didn't require them, but there's not much
+point without them, and the documentation suggests that they are
+required, so we fixed the code to match the documentation.
+- The regsub.py module has a function clear_cache(), which clears its
+internal cache of compiled regular expressions.  Also, the cache now
+takes the current syntax setting into account.  (However, this module
+is now obsolete -- use the sub() or subn() functions or methods in the
+re module.)
+- The undocumented module Complex.py has been removed, now that Python
+has built-in complex numbers.  A similar module remains as
+Demo/classes/Complex.py, as an example.
+Changes to the build process
+----------------------------
+- The way GNU readline is configured is totally different.  The
+--with-readline configure option is gone.  It is now an extension
+module, which may be loaded dynamically.  You must enable it (and
+specify the correct libraries to link with) in the Modules/Setup file.
+Importing the module installs some hooks which enable command line
+editing.  When the interpreter shell is invoked interactively, it
+attempts to import the readline module; when this fails, the default
+input mechanism is used.  The hook variables are PyOS_InputHook and
+PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer.  (Code contributed by Lee Busby, with
+ideas from William Magro.)
+- New build procedure: a single library, libpython1.5.a, is now built,
+which contains absolutely everything except for a one-line main()
+program (which calls Py_Main(argc, argv) to start the interpreter
+shell).  This makes life much simpler for applications that need to
+embed Python.  The serial number of the build is now included in the
+version string (sys.version).
+- As far as I can tell, neither gcc -Wall nor the Microsoft compiler
+emits a single warning any more when compiling Python.
+- A number of new Makefile variables have been added for special
+situations, e.g. LDLAST is appended to the link command.  These are
+used by editing the Makefile or passing them on the make command
+line.
+- A set of patches from Lee Busby has been integrated that make it
+possible to catch floating point exceptions.  Use the configure option
+--with-fpectl to enable the patches; the extension modules fpectl and
+fpetest provide control to enable/disable and test the feature,
+respectively.
+- The support for shared libraries under AIX is now simpler and more
+robust.  Thanks to Vladimir Marangozov for revamping his own patches!
+- The Modules/makesetup script now reads a file Setup.local as well as
+a file Setup.  Most changes to the Setup script can be done by editing
+Setup.local instead, which makes it easier to carry a particular setup
+over from one release to the next.
+- The Modules/makesetup script now copies any "include" lines it
+encounters verbatim into the output Makefile.  It also recognizes .cxx
+and .cpp as C++ source files.
+- The configure script is smarter about C compiler options; e.g. with
+gcc it uses -O2 and -g when possible, and on some other platforms it
+uses -Olimit 1500 to avoid a warning from the optimizer about the main
+loop in ceval.c (which has more than 1000 basic blocks).
+- The configure script now detects whether malloc(0) returns a NULL
+pointer or a valid block (of length zero).  This avoids the nonsense
+of always adding one byte to all malloc() arguments on most platforms.
+- The configure script has a new option, --with-dec-threads, to enable
+DEC threads on DEC Alpha platforms.  Also, --with-threads is now an
+alias for --with-thread (this was the Most Common Typo in configure
+arguments).
+- Many changes in Doc/Makefile; amongst others, latex2html is now used
+to generate HTML from all latex documents.
+Change to the Python/C API
+--------------------------
+- Because some interfaces have changed, the PYTHON_API macro has been
+bumped.  Most extensions built for the old API version will still run,
+but I can't guarantee this.  Python prints a warning message on
+version mismatches; it dumps core when the version mismatch causes a
+serious problem :-)
+- I've completed the Grand Renaming, with the help of Roger Masse and
+Barry Warsaw.  This makes reading or debugging the code much easier.
+Many other unrelated code reorganizations have also been carried out.
+The allobjects.h header file is gone; instead, you would have to
+include Python.h followed by rename2.h.  But you're better off running
+Tools/scripts/fixcid.py -s Misc/RENAME on your source, so you can omit
+the rename2.h; it will disappear in the next release.
+- Various and sundry small bugs in the "abstract" interfaces have been
+fixed.  Thanks to all the (involuntary) testers of the Python 1.4
+version!  Some new functions have been added, e.g. PySequence_List(o),
+equivalent to list(o) in Python.
+- New API functions PyLong_FromUnsignedLong() and
+PyLong_AsUnsignedLong().
+- The API functions in the file cgensupport.c are no longer
+supported.  This file has been moved to Modules and is only ever
+compiled when the SGI specific 'gl' module is built.
+- PyObject_Compare() can now raise an exception.  Check with
+PyErr_Occurred().  The comparison function in an object type may also
+raise an exception.
+- The slice interface uses an upper bound of INT_MAX when no explicit
+upper bound is given (e.x. for a[1:]).  It used to ask the object for
+its length and do the calculations.
+- Support for multiple independent interpreters.  See Doc/api.tex,
+functions Py_NewInterpreter() and Py_EndInterpreter().  Since the
+documentation is incomplete, also see the new Demo/pysvr example
+(which shows how to use these in a threaded application) and the
+source code.
+- There is now a Py_Finalize() function which "de-initializes"
+Python.  It is possible to completely restart the interpreter
+repeatedly by calling Py_Finalize() followed by Py_Initialize().  A
+change of functionality in Py_Initialize() means that it is now a
+fatal error to call it while the interpreter is already initialized.
+The old, half-hearted Py_Cleanup() routine is gone.  Use of Py_Exit()
+is deprecated (it is nothing more than Py_Finalize() followed by
+exit()).
+- There are no known memory leaks left.  While Py_Finalize() doesn't
+free *all* allocated memory (some of it is hard to track down),
+repeated calls to Py_Finalize() and Py_Initialize() do not create
+unaccessible heap blocks.
+- There is now explicit per-thread state.  (Inspired by, but not the
+same as, Greg Stein's free threading patches.)
+- There is now better support for threading C applications.  There are
+now explicit APIs to manipulate the interpreter lock.  Read the source
+or the Demo/pysvr example; the new functions are
+PyEval_{Acquire,Release}{Lock,Thread}().
+- The test macro DEBUG has changed to Py_DEBUG, to avoid interference
+with other libraries' DEBUG macros.  Likewise for any other test
+macros that didn't yet start with Py_.
+- New wrappers around malloc() and friends: Py_Malloc() etc. call
+malloc() and call PyErr_NoMemory() when it fails; PyMem_Malloc() call
+just malloc().  Use of these wrappers could be essential if multiple
+memory allocators exist (e.g. when using certain DLL setups under
+Windows).  (Idea by Jim Fulton.)
+- New C API PyImport_Import() which uses whatever __import__() hook
+that is installed for the current execution environment.  By Jim
+Fulton.
+- It is now possible for an extension module's init function to fail
+non-fatally, by calling one of the PyErr_* functions and returning.
+- The PyInt_AS_LONG() and PyFloat_AS_DOUBLE() macros now cast their
+argument to the proper type, like the similar PyString macros already
+did.  (Suggestion by Marc-Andre Lemburg.)  Similar for PyList_GET_SIZE
+and PyList_GET_ITEM.
+- Some of the Py_Get* function, like Py_GetVersion() (but not yet
+Py_GetPath()) are now declared as returning a const char *.  (More
+should follow.)
+- Changed the run-time library to check for exceptions after object
+comparisons.  PyObject_Compare() can now return an exception; use
+PyErr_Occurred() to check (there is *no* special return value).
+- PyFile_WriteString() and Py_Flushline() now return error indicators
+instead of clearing exceptions.  This fixes an obscure bug where using
+these would clear a pending exception, discovered by Just van Rossum.
+- There's a new function, PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(), which parses
+an argument list including keyword arguments.  Contributed by Geoff
+Philbrick.
+- PyArg_GetInt() is gone.
+- It's no longer necessary to include graminit.h when calling one of
+the extended parser API functions.  The three public grammar start
+symbols are now in Python.h as Py_single_input, Py_file_input, and
+Py_eval_input.
+- The CObject interface has a new function,
+PyCObject_Import(module, name).  It calls PyCObject_AsVoidPtr()
+on the object referenced by "module.name".
+Tkinter
+-------
+- On popular demand, _tkinter once again installs a hook for readline
+that processes certain Tk events while waiting for the user to type
+(using PyOS_InputHook).
+- A patch by Craig McPheeters plugs the most obnoxious memory leaks,
+caused by command definitions referencing widget objects beyond their
+lifetime.
+- New standard dialog modules: tkColorChooser.py, tkCommonDialog.py,
+tkMessageBox.py, tkFileDialog.py, tkSimpleDialog.py These interface
+with the new Tk dialog scripts, and provide more "native platform"
+style file selection dialog boxes on some platforms.  Contributed by
+Fredrik Lundh.
+- Tkinter.py: when the first Tk object is destroyed, it sets the
+hiddel global _default_root to None, so that when another Tk object is
+created it becomes the new default root.  Other miscellaneous
+changes and fixes.
+- The Image class now has a configure method.
+- Added a bunch of new winfo options to Tkinter.py; we should now be
+up to date with Tk 4.2.  The new winfo options supported are:
+mananger, pointerx, pointerxy, pointery, server, viewable, visualid,
+visualsavailable.
+- The broken bind() method on Canvas objects defined in the Canvas.py
+module has been fixed.  The CanvasItem and Group classes now also have
+an unbind() method.
+- The problem with Tkinter.py falling back to trying to import
+"tkinter" when "_tkinter" is not found has been fixed -- it no longer
+tries "tkinter", ever.  This makes diagnosing the problem "_tkinter
+not configured" much easier and will hopefully reduce the newsgroup
+traffic on this topic.
+- The ScrolledText module once again supports the 'cnf' parameter, to
+be compatible with the examples in Mark Lutz' book (I know, I know,
+too late...)
+- The _tkinter.c extension module has been revamped.  It now support
+Tk versions 4.1 through 8.0; support for 4.0 has been dropped.  It
+works well under Windows and Mac (with the latest Tk ports to those
+platforms).  It also supports threading -- it is safe for one
+(Python-created) thread to be blocked in _tkinter.mainloop() while
+other threads modify widgets.  To make the changes visible, those
+threads must use update_idletasks()method.  (The patch for threading
+in 1.5a3 was broken; in 1.5a4, it is back in a different version,
+which requires access to the Tcl sources to get it to work -- hence it
+is disabled by default.)
+- A bug in _tkinter.c has been fixed, where Split() with a string
+containing an unmatched '"' could cause an exception or core dump.
+- Unfortunately, on Windows and Mac, Tk 8.0 no longer supports
+CreateFileHandler, so _tkinter.createfilehandler is not available on
+those platforms when using Tk 8.0 or later.  I will have to rethink
+how to interface with Tcl's lower-level event mechanism, or with its
+channels (which are like Python's file-like objects).  Jack Jansen has
+provided a fix for the Mac, so createfilehandler *is* actually
+supported there; maybe I can adapt his fix for Windows.
+Tools and Demos
+---------------
+- A new regression test suite is provided, which tests most of the
+standard and built-in modules.  The regression test is run by invoking
+the script Lib/test/regrtest.py.  Barry Warsaw wrote the test harnass;
+he and Roger Masse contributed most of the new tests.
+- New tool: faqwiz -- the CGI script that is used to maintain the
+Python FAQ (http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/cgi-bin/faqw.py).  In
+Tools/faqwiz.
+- New tool: webchecker -- a simple extensible web robot that, when
+aimed at a web server, checks that server for dead links.  Available
+are a command line utility as well as a Tkinter based GUI version.  In
+Tools/webchecker.  A simplified version of this program is dissected
+in my article in O'Reilly's WWW Journal, the issue on Scripting
+Languages (Vol 2, No 2); Scripting the Web with Python (pp 97-120).
+Includes a parser for robots.txt files by Skip Montanaro.
+- New small tools: cvsfiles.py (prints a list of all files under CVS
+n a particular directory tree), treesync.py (a rather Guido-specific
+script to synchronize two source trees, one on Windows NT, the other
+one on Unix under CVS but accessible from the NT box), and logmerge.py
+(sort a collection of RCS or CVS logs by date).  In Tools/scripts.
+- The freeze script now also works under Windows (NT).  Another
+feature allows the -p option to be pointed at the Python source tree
+instead of the installation prefix.  This was loosely based on part of
+xfreeze by Sam Rushing and Bill Tutt.
+- New examples (Demo/extend) that show how to use the generic
+extension makefile (Misc/Makefile.pre.in).
+- Tools/scripts/h2py.py now supports C++ comments.
+- Tools/scripts/pystone.py script is upgraded to version 1.1; there
+was a bug in version 1.0 (distributed with Python 1.4) that leaked
+memory.  Also, in 1.1, the LOOPS variable is incremented to 10000.
+- Demo/classes/Rat.py completely rewritten by Sjoerd Mullender.
+Windows (NT and 95)
+-------------------
+- New project files for Developer Studio (Visual C++) 5.0 for Windows
+NT (the old VC++ 4.2 Makefile is also still supported, but will
+eventually be withdrawn due to its bulkiness).
+- See the note on the new module search path in the "Miscellaneous" section
+above.
+- Support for Win32s (the 32-bit Windows API under Windows 3.1) is
+basically withdrawn.  If it still works for you, you're lucky.
+- There's a new extension module, msvcrt.c, which provides various
+low-level operations defined in the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library.
+These include locking(), setmode(), get_osfhandle(), set_osfhandle(), and
+console I/O functions like kbhit(), getch() and putch().
+- The -u option not only sets the standard I/O streams to unbuffered
+status, but also sets them in binary mode.  (This can also be done
+using msvcrt.setmode(), by the way.)
+- The, sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix variables point to the directory
+where Python is installed, or to the top of the source tree, if it was run
+from there.
+- The various os.path modules (posixpath, ntpath, macpath) now support
+passing more than two arguments to the join() function, so
+os.path.join(a, b, c) is the same as os.path.join(a, os.path.join(b,
+c)).
+- The ntpath module (normally used as os.path) supports ~ to $HOME
+expansion in expanduser().
+- The freeze tool now works on Windows.
+- See also the Tkinter category for a sad note on
+_tkinter.createfilehandler().
+- The truncate() method for file objects now works on Windows.
+- Py_Initialize() is no longer called when the DLL is loaded.  You
+must call it yourself.
+- The time module's clock() function now has good precision through
+the use of the Win32 API QueryPerformanceCounter().
+- Mark Hammond will release Python 1.5 versions of PythonWin and his
+other Windows specific code: the win32api extensions, COM/ActiveX
+support, and the MFC interface.
+Mac
+---
+- As always, the Macintosh port will be done by Jack Jansen.  He will
+make a separate announcement for the Mac specific source code and the
+binary distribution(s) when these are ready.
+======================================================================
+=====================================
+==> 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 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 modules.
+- 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.
+=====================================
+==> Release 1.3 (13 October 1995) <==
+=====================================
+Major change
+============
+Two words: Keyword Arguments.  See the first section of Chapter 12 of
+the Tutorial.
+(The rest of this file is textually the same as the remaining sections
+of that chapter.)
+Changes to the WWW and Internet tools
+=====================================
+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.
+A new module "formatter" has been added, for use with the new
+"htmllib" module.
+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 :-)
+===================================
+==> Release 1.2 (13 April 1995) <==
+===================================
+- Changes to Misc/python-mode.el:
+- Wrapping and indentation within triple quote strings should work
+properly now.
+- `Standard' bug reporting mechanism (use C-c C-b)
+- py-mark-block was moved to C-c C-m
+- C-c C-v shows you the python-mode version
+- a basic python-font-lock-keywords has been added for Emacs 19
+font-lock colorizations.
+- proper interaction with pending-del and del-sel modes.
+- New py-electric-colon (:) command for improved outdenting.  Also
+py-indent-line (TAB) should handle outdented lines better.
+- New commands py-outdent-left (C-c C-l) and py-indent-right (C-c C-r)
+- The Library Reference has been restructured, and many new and
+existing modules are now documented, in particular the debugger and
+the profiler, as well as the persistency and the WWW/Internet support
+modules.
+- All known bugs have been fixed.  For example the pow(2,2,3L) bug on
+Linux has been fixed.  Also the re-entrancy problems with __del__ have
+been fixed.
+- All known memory leaks have been fixed.
+- Phase 2 of the Great Renaming has been executed.  The header files
+now use the new names (PyObject instead of object, etc.).  The linker
+also sees the new names.  Most source files still use the old names,
+by virtue of the rename2.h header file.  If you include Python.h, you
+only see the new names.  Dynamically linked modules have to be
+recompiled.  (Phase 3, fixing the rest of the sources, will be
+executed gradually with the release later versions.)
+- The hooks for implementing "safe-python" (better called "restricted
+execution") are in place.  Specifically, the import statement is
+implemented by calling the built-in function __import__, and the
+built-in names used in a particular scope are taken from the
+dictionary __builtins__ in that scope's global dictionary.  See also
+the new (unsupported, undocumented) module rexec.py.
+- The import statement now supports the syntax "import a.b.c" and
+"from a.b.c import name".  No officially supported implementation
+exists, but one can be prototyped by replacing the built-in __import__
+function.  A proposal by Ken Manheimer is provided as newimp.py.
+- All machinery used by the import statement (or the built-in
+__import__ function) is now exposed through the new built-in module
+"imp" (see the library reference manual).  All dynamic loading
+machinery is moved to the new file importdl.c.
+- Persistent storage is supported through the use of the modules
+"pickle" and "shelve" (implemented in Python).  There's also a "copy"
+module implementing deepcopy and normal (shallow) copy operations.
+See the library reference manual.
+- Documentation strings for many objects types are accessible through
+the __doc__ attribute.  Modules, classes and functions support special
+syntax to initialize the __doc__ attribute: if the first statement
+consists of just a string literal, that string literal becomes the
+value of the __doc__ attribute.  The default __doc__ attribute is
+None.  Documentation strings are also supported for built-in
+functions, types and modules; however this feature hasn't been widely
+used yet.  See the 'new' module for an example.  (Basically, the type
+object's tp_doc field contains the doc string for the type, and the
+4th member of the methodlist structure contains the doc string for the
+method.)
+- The __coerce__ and __cmp__ methods for user-defined classes once
+again work as expected.  As an example, there's a new standard class
+Complex in the library.
+- The functions posix.popen() and posix.fdopen() now have an optional
+third argument to specify the buffer size, and default their second
+(mode) argument to 'r' -- in analogy to the builtin open() function.
+The same applies to posixfile.open() and the socket method makefile().
+- The thread.exit_thread() function now raises SystemExit so that
+'finally' clauses are honored and a memory leak is plugged.
+- Improved X11 and Motif support, by Sjoerd Mullender.  This extension
+is being maintained and distributed separately.
+- Improved support for the Apple Macintosh, in part by Jack Jansen,
+e.g. interfaces to (a few) resource mananger functions, get/set file
+type and creator, gestalt, sound manager, speech manager, MacTCP, comm
+toolbox, and the think C console library.  This is being maintained
+and distributed separately.
+- Improved version for Windows NT, by Mark Hammond.  This is being
+maintained and distributed separately.
+- Used autoconf 2.0 to generate the configure script.  Adapted
+configure.in to use the new features in autoconf 2.0.
+- It now builds on the NeXT without intervention, even on the 3.3
+Sparc pre-release.
+- Characters passed to isspace() and friends are masked to nonnegative
+values.
+- Correctly compute pow(-3.0, 3).
+- Fix portability problems with getopt (configure now checks for a
+non-GNU getopt).
+- Don't add frozenmain.o to libPython.a.
+- Exceptions can now be classes.  ALl built-in exceptions are still
+string objects, but this will change in the future.
+- The socket module exports a long list of socket related symbols.
+(More built-in modules will export their symbolic constants instead of
+relying on a separately generated Python module.)
+- When a module object is deleted, it clears out its own dictionary.
+This fixes a circularity in the references between functions and
+their global dictionary.
+- Changed the error handling by [new]getargs() e.g. for "O&".
+- Dynamic loading of modules using shared libraries is supported for
+several new platforms.
+- Support "O&", "[...]" and "{...}" in mkvalue().
+- Extension to findmethod(): findmethodinchain() (where a chain is a
+linked list of methodlist arrays).  The calling interface for
+findmethod() has changed: it now gets a pointer to the (static!)
+methodlist structure rather than just to the function name -- this
+saves copying flags etc. into the (short-lived) method object.
+- The callable() function is now public.
+- Object types can define a few new operations by setting function
+pointers in the type object structure: tp_call defines how an object
+is called, and tp_str defines how an object's str() is computed.
+===================================
+==> Release 1.1.1 (10 Nov 1994) <==
+===================================
+This is a pure bugfix release again.  See the ChangeLog file for details.
+One exception: a few new features were added to tkinter.
+=================================
+==> Release 1.1 (11 Oct 1994) <==
+=================================
+This release adds several new features, improved configuration and
+portability, and fixes more bugs than I can list here (including some
+memory leaks).
+The source compiles and runs out of the box on more platforms than
+ever -- including Windows NT.  Makefiles or projects for a variety of
+non-UNIX platforms are provided.
+APOLOGY: some new features are badly documented or not at all.  I had
+the choice -- postpone the new release indefinitely, or release it
+now, with working code but some undocumented areas.  The problem with
+postponing the release is that people continue to suffer from existing
+bugs, and send me patches based on the previous release -- which I
+can't apply directly because my own source has changed.  Also, some
+new modules (like signal) have been ready for release for quite some
+time, and people are anxiously waiting for them.  In the case of
+signal, the interface is simple enough to figure out without
+documentation (if you're anxious enough :-).  In this case it was not
+simple to release the module on its own, since it relies on many small
+patches elsewhere in the source.
+For most new Python modules, the source code contains comments that
+explain how to use them.  Documentation for the Tk interface, written
+by Matt Conway, is available as tkinter-doc.tar.gz from the Python
+home and mirror ftp sites (see Misc/FAQ for ftp addresses).  For the
+new operator overloading facilities, have a look at Demo/classes:
+Complex.py and Rat.py show how to implement a numeric type without and
+with __coerce__ method.  Also have a look at the end of the Tutorial
+document (Doc/tut.tex).  If you're still confused: use the newsgroup
+or mailing list.
+New language features:
+- More flexible operator overloading for user-defined classes
+(INCOMPATIBLE WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS!)  See end of tutorial.
+- Classes can define methods named __getattr__, __setattr__ and
+__delattr__ to trap attribute accesses.  See end of tutorial.
+- Classes can define method __call__ so instances can be called
+directly.  See end of tutorial.
+New support facilities:
+- The Makefiles (for the base interpreter as well as for extensions)
+now support creating dynamically loadable modules if the platform
+supports shared libraries.
+- Passing the interpreter a .pyc file as script argument will execute
+the code in that file.  (On the Mac such files can be double-clicked!)
+- New Freeze script, to create independently distributable "binaries"
+of Python programs -- look in Demo/freeze
+- Improved h2py script (in Demo/scripts) follows #includes and
+supports macros with one argument
+- New module compileall generates .pyc files for all modules in a
+directory (tree) without also executing them
+- Threads should work on more platforms
+New built-in modules:
+- tkinter (support for Tcl's Tk widget set) is now part of the base
+distribution
+- signal allows catching or ignoring UNIX signals (unfortunately still
+undocumented -- any taker?)
+- termios provides portable access to POSIX tty settings
+- curses provides an interface to the System V curses library
+- syslog provides an interface to the (BSD?) syslog daemon
+- 'new' provides interfaces to create new built-in object types
+(e.g. modules and functions)
+- sybase provides an interface to SYBASE database
+New/obsolete built-in methods:
+- callable(x) tests whether x can be called
+- sockets now have a setblocking() method
+- sockets no longer have an allowbroadcast() method
+- socket methods send() and sendto() return byte count
+New standard library modules:
+- types.py defines standard names for built-in types, e.g. StringType
+- urlparse.py parses URLs according to the latest Internet draft
+- uu.py does uuencode/uudecode (not the fastest in the world, but
+quicker than installing uuencode on a non-UNIX machine :-)
+- New, faster and more powerful profile module.py
+- mhlib.py provides interface to MH folders and messages
+New facilities for extension writers (unfortunately still
+undocumented):
+- newgetargs() supports optional arguments and improved error messages
+- O!, O& O? formats for getargs allow more versatile type checking of
+non-standard types
+- can register pending asynchronous callback, to be called the next
+time the Python VM begins a new instruction (Py_AddPendingCall)
+- can register cleanup routines to be called when Python exits
+(Py_AtExit)
+- makesetup script understands C++ files in Setup file (use file.C
+or file.cc)
+- Make variable OPT is passed on to sub-Makefiles
+- An init<module>() routine may signal an error by not entering
+the module in the module table and raising an exception instead
+- For long module names, instead of foobarbletchmodule.c you can
+use foobarbletch.c
+- getintvalue() and getfloatvalue() try to convert any object
+instead of requiring an "intobject" or "floatobject"
+- All the [new]getargs() formats that retrieve an integer value
+will now also work if a float is passed
+- C function listtuple() converts list to tuple, fast
+- You should now call sigcheck() instead of intrcheck();
+sigcheck() also sets an exception when it returns nonzero
+====================================
+==> Release 1.0.3 (14 July 1994) <==
+====================================
+This release consists entirely of bug fixes to the C sources; see the
+head of ../ChangeLog for a complete list.  Most important bugs fixed:
+- Sometimes the format operator (string%expr) would drop the last
+character of the format string
+- Tokenizer looped when last line did not end in \n
+- Bug when triple-quoted string ended in quote plus newline
+- Typo in socketmodule (listen) (== instead of =)
+- typing vars() at the >>> prompt would cause recursive output
+==================================
+==> Release 1.0.2 (4 May 1994) <==
+==================================
+Overview of the most visible changes.  Bug fixes are not listed.  See
+also ChangeLog.
+Tokens
+------
+* String literals follow Standard C rules: they may be continued on
+the next line using a backslash; adjacent literals are concatenated
+at compile time.
+* A new kind of string literals, surrounded by triple quotes (""" or
+'''), can be continued on the next line without a backslash.
+Syntax
+------
+* Function arguments may have a default value, e.g. def f(a, b=1);
+defaults are evaluated at function definition time.  This also applies
+to lambda.
+* The try-except statement has an optional else clause, which is
+executed when no exception occurs in the try clause.
+Interpreter
+-----------
+* The result of a statement-level expression is no longer printed,
+except_ for expressions entered interactively.  Consequently, the -k
+command line option is gone.
+* The result of the last printed interactive expression is assigned to
+the variable '_'.
+* Access to implicit global variables has been speeded up by removing
+an always-failing dictionary lookup in the dictionary of local
+variables (mod suggested by Steve Makewski and Tim Peters).
+* There is a new command line option, -u, to force stdout and stderr
+to be unbuffered.
+* Incorporated Steve Majewski's mods to import.c for dynamic loading
+under AIX.
+* Fewer chances of dumping core when trying to reload or re-import
+static built-in, dynamically loaded built-in, or frozen modules.
+* Loops over sequences now don't ask for the sequence's length when
+they start, but try to access items 0, 1, 2, and so on until they hit
+an IndexError.  This makes it possible to create classes that generate
+infinite or indefinite sequences a la Steve Majewski.  This affects
+for loops, the (not) in operator, and the built-in functions filter(),
+map(), max(), min(), reduce().
+Changed Built-in operations
+---------------------------
+* The '%' operator on strings (printf-style formatting) supports a new
+feature (adapted from a patch by Donald Beaudry) to allow
+'%(<key>)<format>' % {...} to take values from a dictionary by name
+instead of from a tuple by position (see also the new function
+vars()).
+* The '%s' formatting operator is changed to accept any type and
+convert it to a string using str().
+* Dictionaries with more than 20,000 entries can now be created
+(thanks to Steve Kirsch).
+New Built-in Functions
+----------------------
+* vars() returns a dictionary containing the local variables; vars(m)
+returns a dictionary containing the variables of module m.  Note:
+dir(x) is now equivalent to vars(x).keys().
+Changed Built-in Functions
+--------------------------
+* open() has an optional third argument to specify the buffer size: 0
+for unbuffered, 1 for line buffered, >1 for explicit buffer size, <0
+for default.
+* open()'s second argument is now optional; it defaults to "r".
+* apply() now checks that its second argument is indeed a tuple.
+New Built-in Modules
+--------------------
+Changed Built-in Modules
+------------------------
+The thread module no longer supports exit_prog().
+New Python Modules
+------------------
+* Module addpack contains a standard interface to modify sys.path to
+find optional packages (groups of related modules).
+* Module urllib contains a number of functions to access
+World-Wide-Web files specified by their URL.
+* Module httplib implements the client side of the HTTP protocol used
+by World-Wide-Web servers.
+* Module gopherlib implements the client side of the Gopher protocol.
+* Module mailbox (by Jack Jansen) contains a parser for UNIX and MMDF
+style mailbox files.
+* Module random contains various random distributions, e.g. gauss().
+* Module lockfile locks and unlocks open files using fcntl (inspired
+by a similar module by Andy Bensky).
+* Module ntpath (by Jaap Vermeulen) implements path operations for
+Windows/NT.
+* Module test_thread (in Lib/test) contains a small test set for the
+thread module.
+Changed Python Modules
+----------------------
+* The string module's expandvars() function is now documented and is
+implemented in Python (using regular expressions) instead of forking
+off a shell process.
+* Module rfc822 now supports accessing the header fields using the
+mapping/dictionary interface, e.g. h['subject'].
+* Module pdb now makes it possible to set a break on a function
+(syntax: break <expression>, where <expression> yields a function
+object).
+Changed Demos
+-------------
+* The Demo/scripts/freeze.py script is working again (thanks to Jaap
+Vermeulen).
+New Demos
+---------
+* Demo/threads/Generator.py is a proposed interface for restartable
+functions a la Tim Peters.
+* Demo/scripts/newslist.py, by Quentin Stafford-Fraser, generates a
+directory full of HTML pages which between them contain links to all
+the newsgroups available on your server.
+* Demo/dns contains a DNS (Domain Name Server) client.
+* Demo/lutz contains miscellaneous demos by Mark Lutz (e.g. psh.py, a
+nice enhanced Python shell!!!).
+* Demo/turing contains a Turing machine by Amrit Prem.
+Documentation
+-------------
+* Documented new language features mentioned above (but not all new
+modules).
+* Added a chapter to the Tutorial describing recent additions to
+Python.
+* Clarified some sentences in the reference manual,
+e.g. break/continue, local/global scope, slice assignment.
+Source Structure
+----------------
+* Moved Include/tokenizer.h to Parser/tokenizer.h.
+* Added Python/getopt.c for systems that don't have it.
+Emacs mode
+----------
+* Indentation of continuated lines is done more intelligently;
+consequently the variable py-continuation-offset is gone.
+========================================
+==> Release 1.0.1 (15 February 1994) <==
+========================================
+* Many portability fixes should make it painless to build Python on
+several new platforms, e.g. NeXT, SEQUENT, WATCOM, DOS, and Windows.
+* Fixed test for <stdarg.h> -- this broke on some platforms.
+* Fixed test for shared library dynalic loading -- this broke on SunOS
+4.x using the GNU loader.
+* Changed order and number of SVR4 networking libraries (it is now
+-lsocket -linet -lnsl, if these libraries exist).
+* Installing the build intermediate stages with "make libainstall" now
+also installs config.c.in, Setup and makesetup, which are used by the
+new Extensions mechanism.
+* Improved README file contains more hints and new troubleshooting
+section.
+* The built-in module strop now defines fast versions of three more
+functions of the standard string module: atoi(), atol() and atof().
+The strop versions of atoi() and atol() support an optional second
+argument to specify the base (default 10).  NOTE: you don't have to
+explicitly import strop to use the faster versions -- the string
+module contains code to let versions from stop override the default
+versions.
+* There is now a working Lib/dospath.py for those who use Python under
+DOS (or Windows).  Thanks, Jaap!
+* There is now a working Modules/dosmodule.c for DOS (or Windows)
+system calls.
+* Lib.os.py has been reorganized (making it ready for more operating
+systems).
+* Lib/ospath.py is now obsolete (use os.path instead).
+* Many fixes to the tutorial to make it match Python 1.0.  Thanks,
+Tim!
+* Fixed Doc/Makefile, Doc/README and various scripts there.
+* Added missing description of fdopen to Doc/libposix.tex.
+* Made cleanup() global, for the benefit of embedded applications.
+* Added parsing of addresses and dates to Lib/rfc822.py.
+* Small fixes to Lib/aifc.py, Lib/sunau.py, Lib/tzparse.py to make
+them usable at all.
+* New module Lib/wave.py reads RIFF (*.wav) audio files.
+* Module Lib/filewin.py moved to Lib/stdwin/filewin.py where it
+belongs.
+* New options and comments for Modules/makesetup (used by new
+Extension mechanism).
+* Misc/HYPE contains text of announcement of 1.0.0 in comp.lang.misc
+and elsewhere.
+* Fixed coredump in filter(None, 'abcdefg').
+=======================================
+==> Release 1.0.0 (26 January 1994) <==
+=======================================
+As is traditional, so many things have changed that I can't pretend to
+be complete in these release notes, but I'll try anyway :-)
+Note that the very last section is labeled "remaining bugs".
+Source organization and build process
+-------------------------------------
+* The sources have finally been split: instead of a single src
+subdirectory there are now separate directories Include, Parser,
+Grammar, Objects, Python and Modules.  Other directories also start
+with a capital letter: Misc, Doc, Lib, Demo.
+* A few extensions (notably Amoeba and X support) have been moved to a
+separate subtree Extensions, which is no longer in the core
+distribution, but separately ftp'able as extensions.tar.Z.  (The
+distribution contains a placeholder Ext-dummy with a description of
+the Extensions subtree as well as the most recent versions of the
+scripts used there.)
+* A few large specialized demos (SGI video and www) have been
+moved to a separate subdirectory Demo2, which is no longer in the core
+distribution, but separately ftp'able as demo2.tar.Z.
+* Parts of the standard library have been moved to subdirectories:
+there are now standard subdirectories stdwin, test, sgi and sun4.
+* The configuration process has radically changed: I now use GNU
+autoconf.  This makes it much easier to build on new Unix flavors, as
+well as fully supporting VPATH (if your Make has it).  The scripts
+Configure.py and Addmodule.sh are no longer needed.  Many source files
+have been adapted in order to work with the symbols that the configure
+script generated by autoconf defines (or not); the resulting source is
+much more portable to different C compilers and operating systems,
+even non Unix systems (a Mac port was done in an afternoon).  See the
+toplevel README file for a description of the new build process.
+* GNU readline (a slightly newer version) is now a subdirectory of the
+Python toplevel.  It is still not automatically configured (being
+totally autoconf-unaware :-).  One problem has been solved: typing
+Control-C to a readline prompt will now work.  The distribution no
+longer contains a "super-level" directory (above the python toplevel
+directory), and dl, dl-dld and GNU dld are no longer part of the
+Python distribution (you can still ftp them from
+ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/dynload).
+* The DOS functions have been taken out of posixmodule.c and moved
+into a separate file dosmodule.c.
+* There's now a separate file version.c which contains nothing but
+the version number.
+* The actual main program is now contained in config.c (unless NO_MAIN
+is defined); pythonmain.c now contains a function realmain() which is
+called from config.c's main().
+* All files needed to use the built-in module md5 are now contained in
+the distribution.  The module has been cleaned up considerably.
+Documentation
+-------------
+* The library manual has been split into many more small latex files,
+so it is easier to edit Doc/lib.tex file to create a custom library
+manual, describing only those modules supported on your system.  (This
+is not automated though.)
+* A fourth manual has been added, titled "Extending and Embedding the
+Python Interpreter" (Doc/ext.tex), which collects information about
+the interpreter which was previously spread over several files in the
+misc subdirectory.
+* The entire documentation is now also available on-line for those who
+have a WWW browser (e.g. NCSA Mosaic).  Point your browser to the URL
+"http://www.cwi.nl/~guido/Python.html".
+Syntax
+------
+* Strings may now be enclosed in double quotes as well as in single
+quotes.  There is no difference in interpretation.  The repr() of
+string objects will use double quotes if the string contains a single
+quote and no double quotes.  Thanks to Amrit Prem for these changes!
+* There is a new keyword 'exec'.  This replaces the exec() built-in
+function.  If a function contains an exec statement, local variable
+optimization is not performed for that particular function, thus
+making assignment to local variables in exec statements less
+confusing.  (As a consequence, os.exec and python.exec have been
+renamed to execv.)
+* There is a new keyword 'lambda'.  An expression of the form
+	lambda <parameters> : <expression>
+yields an anonymous function.  This is really only syntactic sugar;
+you can just as well define a local function using
+	def some_temporary_name(<parameters>): return <expression>
+Lambda expressions are particularly useful in combination with map(),
+filter() and reduce(), described below.  Thanks to Amrit Prem for
+submitting this code (as well as map(), filter(), reduce() and
+xrange())!
+Built-in functions
+------------------
+* The built-in module containing the built-in functions is called
+__builtin__ instead of builtin.
+* New built-in functions map(), filter() and reduce() perform standard
+functional programming operations (though not lazily):
+- map(f, seq) returns a new sequence whose items are the items from
+seq with f() applied to them.
+- filter(f, seq) returns a subsequence of seq consisting of those
+items for which f() is true.
+- reduce(f, seq, initial) returns a value computed as follows:
+	acc = initial
+	for item in seq: acc = f(acc, item)
+	return acc
+* New function xrange() creates a "range object".  Its arguments are
+the same as those of range(), and when used in a for loop a range
+objects also behaves identical.  The advantage of xrange() over
+range() is that its representation (if the range contains many
+elements) is much more compact than that of range().  The disadvantage
+is that the result cannot be used to initialize a list object or for
+the "Python idiom" [RED, GREEN, BLUE] = range(3).  On some modern
+architectures, benchmarks have shown that "for i in range(...): ..."
+actually executes *faster* than "for i in xrange(...): ...", but on
+memory starved machines like PCs running DOS range(100000) may be just
+too big to be represented at all...
+* Built-in function exec() has been replaced by the exec statement --
+see above.
+The interpreter
+---------------
+* Syntax errors are now not printed to stderr by the parser, but
+rather the offending line and other relevant information are packed up
+in the SyntaxError exception argument.  When the main loop catches a
+SyntaxError exception it will print the error in the same format as
+previously, but at the proper position in the stack traceback.
+* You can now set a maximum to the number of traceback entries
+printed by assigning to sys.tracebacklimit.  The default is 1000.
+* The version number in .pyc files has changed yet again.
+* It is now possible to have a .pyc file without a corresponding .py
+file.  (Warning: this may break existing installations if you have an
+old .pyc file lingering around somewhere on your module search path
+without a corresponding .py file, when there is a .py file for a
+module of the same name further down the path -- the new interpreter
+will find the first .pyc file and complain about it, while the old
+interpreter would ignore it and use the .py file further down.)
+* The list sys.builtin_module_names is now sorted and also contains
+the names of a few hardwired built-in modules (sys, __main__ and
+__builtin__).
+* A module can now find its own name by accessing the global variable
+__name__.  Assigning to this variable essentially renames the module
+(it should also be stored under a different key in sys.modules).
+A neat hack follows from this: a module that wants to execute a main
+program when called as a script no longer needs to compare
+sys.argv[0]; it can simply do "if __name__ == '__main__': main()".
+* When an object is printed by the print statement, its implementation
+of str() is used.  This means that classes can define __str__(self) to
+direct how their instances are printed.  This is different from
+__repr__(self), which should define an unambigous string
+representation of the instance.  (If __str__() is not defined, it
+defaults to __repr__().)
+* Functions and code objects can now be compared meaningfully.
+* On systems supporting SunOS or SVR4 style shared libraries, dynamic
+loading of modules using shared libraries is automatically configured.
+Thanks to Bill Jansen and Denis Severson for contributing this change!
+Built-in objects
+----------------
+* File objects have acquired a new method writelines() which is the
+reverse of readlines().  (It does not actually write lines, just a
+list of strings, but the symmetry makes the choice of name OK.)
+Built-in modules
+----------------
+* Socket objects no longer support the avail() method.  Use the select
+module instead, or use this function to replace it:
+	def avail(f):
+		import select
+		return f in select.select([f], [], [], 0)[0]
+* Initialization of stdwin is done differently.  It actually modifies
+sys.argv (taking out the options the X version of stdwin recognizes)
+the first time it is imported.
+* A new built-in module parser provides a rudimentary interface to the
+python parser.  Corresponding standard library modules token and symbol
+defines the numeric values of tokens and non-terminal symbols.
+* The posix module has aquired new functions setuid(), setgid(),
+execve(), and exec() has been renamed to execv().
+* The array module is extended with 8-byte object swaps, the 'i'
+format character, and a reverse() method.  The read() and write()
+methods are renamed to fromfile() and tofile().
+* The rotor module has freed of portability bugs.  This introduces a
+backward compatibility problem: strings encoded with the old rotor
+module can't be decoded by the new version.
+* For select.select(), a timeout (4th) argument of None means the same
+as leaving the timeout argument out.
+* Module strop (and hence standard library module string) has aquired
+a new function: rindex().  Thanks to Amrit Prem!
+* Module regex defines a new function symcomp() which uses an extended
+regular expression syntax: parenthesized subexpressions may be labeled
+using the form "\(<labelname>...\)", and the group() method can return
+sub-expressions by name.  Thanks to Tracy Tims for these changes!
+* Multiple threads are now supported on Solaris 2.  Thanks to Sjoerd
+Mullender!
+Standard library modules
+------------------------
+* The library is now split in several subdirectories: all stuff using
+stdwin is in Lib/stdwin, all SGI specific (or SGI Indigo or GL) stuff
+is in Lib/sgi, all Sun Sparc specific stuff is in Lib/sun4, and all
+test modules are in Lib/test.  The default module search path will
+include all relevant subdirectories by default.
+* Module os now knows about trying to import dos.  It defines
+functions execl(), execle(), execlp() and execvp().
+* New module dospath (should be attacked by a DOS hacker though).
+* All modules defining classes now define __init__() constructors
+instead of init() methods.  THIS IS AN INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE!
+* Some minor changes and bugfixes module ftplib (mostly Steve
+Majewski's suggestions); the debug() method is renamed to
+set_debuglevel().
+* Some new test modules (not run automatically by testall though):
+test_audioop, test_md5, test_rgbimg, test_select.
+* Module string now defines rindex() and rfind() in analogy of index()
+and find().  It also defines atof() and atol() (and corresponding
+exceptions) in analogy to atoi().
+* Added help() functions to modules profile and pdb.
+* The wdb debugger (now in Lib/stdwin) now shows class or instance
+variables on a double click.  Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender!
+* The (undocumented) module lambda has gone -- you couldn't import it
+any more, and it was basically more a demo than a library module...
+Multimedia extensions
+---------------------
+* The optional built-in modules audioop and imageop are now standard
+parts of the interpreter.  Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender and Jack Jansen
+for contributing this code!
+* There's a new operation in audioop: minmax().
+* There's a new built-in module called rgbimg which supports portable
+efficient reading of SGI RCG image files.  Thanks also to Paul
+Haeberli for the original code!  (Who will contribute a GIF reader?)
+* The module aifc is gone -- you should now always use aifc, which has
+received a facelift.
+* There's a new module sunau., for reading Sun (and NeXT) audio files.
+* There's a new module audiodev which provides a uniform interface to
+(SGI Indigo and Sun Sparc) audio hardware.
+* There's a new module sndhdr which recognizes various sound files by
+looking in their header and checking for various magic words.
+Optimizations
+-------------
+* Most optimizations below can be configured by compile-time flags.
+Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender for submitting these optimizations!
+* Small integers (default -1..99) are shared -- i.e. if two different
+functions compute the same value it is possible (but not
+guaranteed!!!) that they return the same *object*.  Python programs
+can detect this but should *never* rely on it.
+* Empty tuples (which all compare equal) are shared in the same
+manner.
+* Tuples of size up to 20 (default) are put in separate free lists
+when deallocated.
+* There is a compile-time option to cache a string's hash function,
+but this appeared to have a negligeable effect, and as it costs 4
+bytes per string it is disabled by default.
+Embedding Python
+----------------
+* The initialization interface has been simplified somewhat.  You now
+only call "initall()" to initialize the interpreter.
+* The previously announced renaming of externally visible identifiers
+has not been carried out.  It will happen in a later release.  Sorry.
+Miscellaneous bugs that have been fixed
+---------------------------------------
+* All known portability bugs.
+* Version 0.9.9 dumped core in <listobject>.sort() which has been
+fixed.  Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen for fixing this and posting the fix
+on the mailing list while I was away!
+* Core dump on a format string ending in '%', e.g. in the expression
+'%' % None.
+* The array module yielded a bogus result for concatenation (a+b would
+yield a+a).
+* Some serious memory leaks in strop.split() and strop.splitfields().
+* Several problems with the nis module.
+* Subtle problem when copying a class method from another class
+through assignment (the method could not be called).
+Remaining bugs
+--------------
+* One problem with 64-bit machines remains -- since .pyc files are
+portable and use only 4 bytes to represent an integer object, 64-bit
+integer literals are silently truncated when written into a .pyc file.
+Work-around: use eval('123456789101112').
+* The freeze script doesn't work any more.  A new and more portable
+one can probably be cooked up using tricks from Extensions/mkext.py.
+* The dos support hasn't been tested yet.  (Really Soon Now we should
+have a PC with a working C compiler!)
+===================================
+==> Release 0.9.9 (29 Jul 1993) <==
+===================================
+I *believe* these are the main user-visible changes in this release,
+but there may be others.  SGI users may scan the {src,lib}/ChangeLog
+files for improvements of some SGI specific modules, e.g. aifc and
+cl.  Developers of extension modules should also read src/ChangeLog.
+Naming of C symbols used by the Python interpreter
+--------------------------------------------------
+* This is the last release using the current naming conventions.  New
+naming conventions are explained in the file misc/NAMING.
+Summarizing, all externally visible symbols get (at least) a "Py"
+prefix, and most functions are renamed to the standard form
+PyModule_FunctionName.
+* Writers of extensions are urged to start using the new naming
+conventions.  The next release will use the new naming conventions
+throughout (it will also have a different source directory
+structure).
+* As a result of the preliminary work for the great renaming, many
+functions that were accidentally global have been made static.
+BETA X11 support
+----------------
+* There are now modules interfacing to the X11 Toolkit Intrinsics, the
+Athena widgets, and the Motif 1.1 widget set.  These are not yet
+documented except through the examples and README file in the demo/x11
+directory.  It is expected that this interface will be replaced by a
+more powerful and correct one in the future, which may or may not be
+backward compatible.  In other words, this part of the code is at most
+BETA level software!  (Note: the rest of Python is rock solid as ever!)
+* I understand that the above may be a bit of a disappointment,
+however my current schedule does not allow me to change this situation
+before putting the release out of the door.  By releasing it
+undocumented and buggy, at least some of the (working!) demo programs,
+like itr (my Internet Talk Radio browser) become available to a larger
+audience.
+* There are also modules interfacing to SGI's "Glx" widget (a GL
+window wrapped in a widget) and to NCSA's "HTML" widget (which can
+format HyperText Markup Language, the document format used by the
+World Wide Web).
+* I've experienced some problems when building the X11 support.  In
+particular, the Xm and Xaw widget sets don't go together, and it
+appears that using X11R5 is better than using X11R4.  Also the threads
+module and its link time options may spoil things.  My own strategy is
+to build two Python binaries: one for use with X11 and one without
+it, which can contain a richer set of built-in modules.  Don't even
+*think* of loading the X11 modules dynamically...
+Environmental changes
+---------------------
+* Compiled files (*.pyc files) created by this Python version are
+incompatible with those created by the previous version.  Both
+versions detect this and silently create a correct version, but it
+means that it is not a good idea to use the same library directory for
+an old and a new interpreter, since they will start to "fight" over
+the *.pyc files...
+* When a stack trace is printed, the exception is printed last instead
+of first.  This means that if the beginning of the stack trace
+scrolled out of your window you can still see what exception caused
+it.
+* Sometimes interrupting a Python operation does not work because it
+hangs in a blocking system call.  You can now kill the interpreter by
+interrupting it three times.  The second time you interrupt it, a
+message will be printed telling you that the third interrupt will kill
+the interpreter.  The "sys.exitfunc" feature still makes limited
+clean-up possible in this case.
+Changes to the command line interface
+-------------------------------------
+* The python usage message is now much more informative.
+* New option -i enters interactive mode after executing a script --
+useful for debugging.
+* New option -k raises an exception when an expression statement
+yields a value other than None.
+* For each option there is now also a corresponding environment
+variable.
+Using Python as an embedded language
+------------------------------------
+* The distribution now contains (some) documentation on the use of
+Python as an "embedded language" in other applications, as well as a
+simple example.  See the file misc/EMBEDDING and the directory embed/.
+Speed improvements
+------------------
+* Function local variables are now generally stored in an array and
+accessed using an integer indexing operation, instead of through a
+dictionary lookup.  (This compensates the somewhat slower dictionary
+lookup caused by the generalization of the dictionary module.)
+Changes to the syntax
+---------------------
+* Continuation lines can now *sometimes* be written without a
+backslash: if the continuation is contained within nesting (), [] or
+{} brackets the \ may be omitted.  There's a much improved
+python-mode.el in the misc directory which knows about this as well.
+* You can no longer use an empty set of parentheses to define a class
+without base classes.  That is, you no longer write this:
+	class Foo(): # syntax error
+		...
+You must write this instead:
+	class Foo:
+		...
+This was already the preferred syntax in release 0.9.8 but many
+people seemed not to have picked it up.  There's a Python script that
+fixes old code: demo/scripts/classfix.py.
+* There's a new reserved word: "access".  The syntax and semantics are
+still subject of of research and debate (as well as undocumented), but
+the parser knows about the keyword so you must not use it as a
+variable, function, or attribute name.
+Changes to the semantics of the language proper
+-----------------------------------------------
+* The following compatibility hack is removed: if a function was
+defined with two or more arguments, and called with a single argument
+that was a tuple with just as many arguments, the items of this tuple
+would be used as the arguments.  This is no longer supported.
+Changes to the semantics of classes and instances
+-------------------------------------------------
+* Class variables are now also accessible as instance variables for
+reading (assignment creates an instance variable which overrides the
+class variable of the same name though).
+* If a class attribute is a user-defined function, a new kind of
+object is returned: an "unbound method".  This contains a pointer to
+the class and can only be called with a first argument which is a
+member of that class (or a derived class).
+* If a class defines a method __init__(self, arg1, ...) then this
+method is called when a class instance is created by the classname()
+construct.  Arguments passed to classname() are passed to the
+__init__() method.  The __init__() methods of base classes are not
+automatically called; the derived __init__() method must call these if
+necessary (this was done so the derived __init__() method can choose
+the call order and arguments for the base __init__() methods).
+* If a class defines a method __del__(self) then this method is called
+when an instance of the class is about to be destroyed.  This makes it
+possible to implement clean-up of external resources attached to the
+instance.  As with __init__(), the __del__() methods of base classes
+are not automatically called.  If __del__ manages to store a reference
+to the object somewhere, its destruction is postponed; when the object
+is again about to be destroyed its __del__() method will be called
+again.
+* Classes may define a method __hash__(self) to allow their instances
+to be used as dictionary keys.  This must return a 32-bit integer.
+Minor improvements
+------------------
+* Function and class objects now know their name (the name given in
+the 'def' or 'class' statement that created them).
+* Class instances now know their class name.
+Additions to built-in operations
+--------------------------------
+* The % operator with a string left argument implements formatting
+similar to sprintf() in C.  The right argument is either a single
+value or a tuple of values.  All features of Standard C sprintf() are
+supported except %p.
+* Dictionaries now support almost any key type, instead of just
+strings.  (The key type must be an immutable type or must be a class
+instance where the class defines a method __hash__(), in order to
+avoid losing track of keys whose value may change.)
+* Built-in methods are now compared properly: when comparing x.meth1
+and y.meth2, if x is equal to y and the methods are defined by the
+same function, x.meth1 compares equal to y.meth2.
+Additions to built-in functions
+-------------------------------
+* str(x) returns a string version of its argument.  If the argument is
+a string it is returned unchanged, otherwise it returns `x`.
+* repr(x) returns the same as `x`.  (Some users found it easier to
+have this as a function.)
+* round(x) returns the floating point number x rounded to an whole
+number, represented as a floating point number.  round(x, n) returns x
+rounded to n digits.
+* hasattr(x, name) returns true when x has an attribute with the given
+name.
+* hash(x) returns a hash code (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary
+immutable object's value.
+* id(x) returns a unique identifier (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary
+object.
+* compile() compiles a string to a Python code object.
+* exec() and eval() now support execution of code objects.
+Changes to the documented part of the library (standard modules)
+----------------------------------------------------------------
+* os.path.normpath() (a.k.a. posixpath.normpath()) has been fixed so
+the border case '/foo/..' returns '/' instead of ''.
+* A new function string.find() is added with similar semantics to
+string.index(); however when it does not find the given substring it
+returns -1 instead of raising string.index_error.
+Changes to built-in modules
+---------------------------
+* New optional module 'array' implements operations on sequences of
+integers or floating point numbers of a particular size.  This is
+useful to manipulate large numerical arrays or to read and write
+binary files consisting of numerical data.
+* Regular expression objects created by module regex now support a new
+method named group(), which returns one or more \(...\) groups by number.
+The number of groups is increased from 10 to 100.
+* Function compile() in module regex now supports an optional mapping
+argument; a variable casefold is added to the module which can be used
+as a standard uppercase to lowercase mapping.
+* Module time now supports many routines that are defined in the
+Standard C time interface (<time.h>): gmtime(), localtime(),
+asctime(), ctime(), mktime(), as well as these variables (taken from
+System V): timezone, altzone, daylight and tzname.  (The corresponding
+functions in the undocumented module calendar have been removed; the
+undocumented and unfinished module tzparse is now obsolete and will
+disappear in a future release.)
+* Module strop (the fast built-in version of standard module string)
+now uses C's definition of whitespace instead of fixing it to space,
+tab and newline; in practice this usually means that vertical tab,
+form feed and return are now also considered whitespace.  It exports
+the string of characters that are considered whitespace as well as the
+characters that are considered lowercase or uppercase.
+* Module sys now defines the variable builtin_module_names, a list of
+names of modules built into the current interpreter (including not
+yet imported, but excluding two special modules that always have to be
+defined -- sys and builtin).
+* Objects created by module sunaudiodev now also support flush() and
+close() methods.
+* Socket objects created by module socket now support an optional
+flags argument for their methods sendto() and recvfrom().
+* Module marshal now supports dumping to and loading from strings,
+through the functions dumps() and loads().
+* Module stdwin now supports some new functionality.  You may have to
+ftp the latest version: ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/stdwin/stdwinforviews.tar.Z.)
+Bugs fixed
+----------
+* Fixed comparison of negative long integers.
+* The tokenizer no longer botches input lines longer than BUFSIZ.
+* Fixed several severe memory leaks in module select.
+* Fixed memory leaks in modules socket and sv.
+* Fixed memory leak in divmod() for long integers.
+* Problems with definition of floatsleep() on Suns fixed.
+* Many portability bugs fixed (and undoubtedly new ones added :-).
+Changes to the build procedure
+------------------------------
+* The Makefile supports some new targets: "make default" and "make
+all".  Both are by normally equivalent to "make python".
+* The Makefile no longer uses $> since it's not supported by all
+versions of Make.
+* The header files now all contain #ifdef constructs designed to make
+it safe to include the same header file twice, as well as support for
+inclusion from C++ programs (automatic extern "C" { ... } added).
+Freezing Python scripts
+-----------------------
+* There is now some support for "freezing" a Python script as a
+stand-alone executable binary file.  See the script
+demo/scripts/freeze.py.  It will require some site-specific tailoring
+of the script to get this working, but is quite worthwhile if you write
+Python code for other who may not have built and installed Python.
+MS-DOS
+------
+* A new MS-DOS port has been done, using MSC 6.0 (I believe).  Thanks,
+Marcel van der Peijl!  This requires fewer compatibility hacks in
+posixmodule.c.  The executable is not yet available but will be soon
+(check the mailing list).
+* The default PYTHONPATH has changed.
+Changes for developers of extension modules
+-------------------------------------------
+* Read src/ChangeLog for full details.
+SGI specific changes
+--------------------
+* Read src/ChangeLog for full details.
+==================================
+==> Release 0.9.8 (9 Jan 1993) <==
+==================================
+I claim no completeness here, but I've tried my best to scan the log
+files throughout my source tree for interesting bits of news.  A more
+complete account of the changes is to be found in the various
+ChangeLog files. See also "News for release 0.9.7beta" below if you're
+still using release 0.9.6, and the file HISTORY if you have an even
+older release.
+	--Guido
+Changes to the language proper
+------------------------------
+There's only one big change: the conformance checking for function
+argument lists (of user-defined functions only) is stricter.  Earlier,
+you could get away with the following:
+	(a) define a function of one argument and call it with any
+	    number of arguments; if the actual argument count wasn't
+	    one, the function would receive a tuple containing the
+	    arguments arguments (an empty tuple if there were none).
+	(b) define a function of two arguments, and call it with more
+	    than two arguments; if there were more than two arguments,
+	    the second argument would be passed as a tuple containing
+	    the second and further actual arguments.
+(Note that an argument (formal or actual) that is a tuple is counted as
+one; these rules don't apply inside such tuples, only at the top level
+of the argument list.)
+Case (a) was needed to accommodate variable-length argument lists;
+there is now an explicit "varargs" feature (precede the last argument
+with a '*').  Case (b) was needed for compatibility with old class
+definitions: up to release 0.9.4 a method with more than one argument
+had to be declared as "def meth(self, (arg1, arg2, ...)): ...".
+Version 0.9.6 provide better ways to handle both casees, bot provided
+backward compatibility; version 0.9.8 retracts the compatibility hacks
+since they also cause confusing behavior if a function is called with
+the wrong number of arguments.
+There's a script that helps converting classes that still rely on (b),
+provided their methods' first argument is called "self":
+demo/scripts/methfix.py.
+If this change breaks lots of code you have developed locally, try
+#defining COMPAT_HACKS in ceval.c.
+(There's a third compatibility hack, which is the reverse of (a): if a
+function is defined with two or more arguments, and called with a
+single argument that is a tuple with just as many arguments, the items
+of this tuple will be used as the arguments.  Although this can (and
+should!) be done using the built-in function apply() instead, it isn't
+withdrawn yet.)
+One minor change: comparing instance methods works like expected, so
+that if x is an instance of a user-defined class and has a method m,
+then (x.m==x.m) yields 1.
+The following was already present in 0.9.7beta, but not explicitly
+mentioned in the NEWS file: user-defined classes can now define types
+that behave in almost allrespects like numbers.  See
+demo/classes/Rat.py for a simple example.
+Changes to the build process
+----------------------------
+The Configure.py script and the Makefile has been made somewhat more
+bullet-proof, after reports of (minor) trouble on certain platforms.
+There is now a script to patch Makefile and config.c to add a new
+optional built-in module: Addmodule.sh.  Read the script before using!
+Useing Addmodule.sh, all optional modules can now be configured at
+compile time using Configure.py, so there are no modules left that
+require dynamic loading.
+The Makefile has been fixed to make it easier to use with the VPATH
+feature of some Make versions (e.g. SunOS).
+Changes affecting portability
+-----------------------------
+Several minor portability problems have been solved, e.g. "malloc.h"
+has been renamed to "mymalloc.h", "strdup.c" is no longer used, and
+the system now tolerates malloc(0) returning 0.
+For dynamic loading on the SGI, Jack Jansen's dl 1.6 is now
+distributed with Python.  This solves several minor problems, in
+particular scripts invoked using #! can now use dynamic loading.
+Changes to the interpreter interface
+------------------------------------
+On popular demand, there's finally a "profile" feature for interactive
+use of the interpreter.  If the environment variable $PYTHONSTARTUP is
+set to the name of an existing file, Python statements in this file
+are executed when the interpreter is started in interactive mode.
+There is a new clean-up mechanism, complementing try...finally: if you
+assign a function object to sys.exitfunc, it will be called when
+Python exits or receives a SIGTERM or SIGHUP signal.
+The interpreter is now generally assumed to live in
+/usr/local/bin/python (as opposed to /usr/local/python).  The script
+demo/scripts/fixps.py will update old scripts in place (you can easily
+modify it to do other similar changes).
+Most I/O that uses sys.stdin/stdout/stderr will now use any object
+assigned to those names as long as the object supports readline() or
+write() methods.
+The parser stack has been increased to 500 to accommodate more
+complicated expressions (7 levels used to be the practical maximum,
+it's now about 38).
+The limit on the size of the *run-time* stack has completely been
+removed -- this means that tuple or list displays can contain any
+number of elements (formerly more than 50 would crash the
+interpreter).
+Changes to existing built-in functions and methods
+--------------------------------------------------
+The built-in functions int(), long(), float(), oct() and hex() now
+also apply to class instalces that define corresponding methods
+(__int__ etc.).
+New built-in functions
+----------------------
+The new functions str() and repr() convert any object to a string.
+The function repr(x) is in all respects equivalent to `x` -- some
+people prefer a function for this.  The function str(x) does the same
+except if x is already a string -- then it returns x unchanged
+(repr(x) adds quotes and escapes "funny" characters as octal escapes).
+The new function cmp(x, y) returns -1 if x<y, 0 if x==y, 1 if x>y.
+Changes to general built-in modules
+-----------------------------------
+The time module's functions are more general: time() returns a
+floating point number and sleep() accepts one.  Their accuracies
+depends on the precision of the system clock.  Millisleep is no longer
+needed (although it still exists for now), but millitimer is still
+needed since on some systems wall clock time is only available with
+seconds precision, while a source of more precise time exists that
+isn't synchronized with the wall clock.  (On UNIX systems that support
+the BSD gettimeofday() function, time.time() is as time.millitimer().)
+The string representation of a file object now includes an address:
+'<file 'filename', mode 'r' at #######>' where ###### is a hex number
+(the object's address) to make it unique.
+New functions added to posix: nice(), setpgrp(), and if your system
+supports them: setsid(), setpgid(), tcgetpgrp(), tcsetpgrp().
+Improvements to the socket module: socket objects have new methods
+getpeername() and getsockname(), and the {get,set}sockopt methods can
+now get/set any kind of option using strings built with the new struct
+module.  And there's a new function fromfd() which creates a socket
+object given a file descriptor (useful for servers started by inetd,
+which have a socket connected to stdin and stdout).
+Changes to SGI-specific built-in modules
+----------------------------------------
+The FORMS library interface (fl) now requires FORMS 2.1a.  Some new
+functions have been added and some bugs have been fixed.
+Additions to al (audio library interface): added getname(),
+getdefault() and getminmax().
+The gl modules doesn't call "foreground()" when initialized (this
+caused some problems) like it dit in 0.9.7beta (but not before).
+There's a new gl function 'gversion() which returns a version string.
+The interface to sv (Indigo video interface) has totally changed.
+(Sorry, still no documentation, but see the examples in
+demo/sgi/{sv,video}.)
+Changes to standard library modules
+-----------------------------------
+Most functions in module string are now much faster: they're actually
+implemented in C.  The module containing the C versions is called
+"strop" but you should still import "string" since strop doesn't
+provide all the interfaces defined in string (and strop may be renamed
+to string when it is complete in a future release).
+string.index() now accepts an optional third argument giving an index
+where to start searching in the first argument, so you can find second
+and further occurrences (this is similar to the regular expression
+functions in regex).
+The definition of what string.splitfields(anything, '') should return
+is changed for the last time: it returns a singleton list containing
+its whole first argument unchanged.  This is compatible with
+regsub.split() which also ignores empty delimiter matches.
+posixpath, macpath: added dirname() and normpath() (and basename() to
+macpath).
+The mainloop module (for use with stdwin) can now demultiplex input
+from other sources, as long as they can be polled with select().
+New built-in modules
+--------------------
+Module struct defines functions to pack/unpack values to/from strings
+representing binary values in native byte order.
+Module strop implements C versions of many functions from string (see
+above).
+Optional module fcntl defines interfaces to fcntl() and ioctl() --
+UNIX only.  (Not yet properly documented -- see however src/fcntl.doc.)
+Optional module mpz defines an interface to an altaernative long
+integer implementation, the GNU MPZ library.
+Optional module md5 uses the GNU MPZ library to calculate MD5
+signatures of strings.
+There are also optional new modules specific to SGI machines: imageop
+defines some simple operations to images represented as strings; sv
+interfaces to the Indigo video board; cl interfaces to the (yet
+unreleased) compression library.
+New standard library modules
+----------------------------
+(Unfortunately the following modules are not all documented; read the
+sources to find out more about them!)
+autotest: run testall without showing any output unless it differs
+from the expected output
+bisect: use bisection to insert or find an item in a sorted list
+colorsys: defines conversions between various color systems (e.g. RGB
+<-> YUV)
+nntplib: a client interface to NNTP servers
+pipes: utility to construct pipeline from templates, e.g. for
+conversion from one file format to another using several utilities.
+regsub: contains three functions that are more or less compatible with
+awk functions of the same name: sub() and gsub() do string
+substitution, split() splits a string using a regular expression to
+define how separators are define.
+test_types: test operations on the built-in types of Python
+toaiff: convert various audio file formats to AIFF format
+tzparse: parse the TZ environment parameter (this may be less general
+than it could be, let me know if you fix it).
+(Note that the obsolete module "path" no longer exists.)
+New SGI-specific library modules
+--------------------------------
+CL: constants for use with the built-in compression library interface (cl)
+Queue: a multi-producer, multi-consumer queue class implemented for
+use with the built-in thread module
+SOCKET: constants for use with built-in module socket, e.g. to set/get
+socket options.  This is SGI-specific because the constants to be
+passed are system-dependent.  You can generate a version for your own
+system by running the script demo/scripts/h2py.py with
+/usr/include/sys/socket.h as input.
+cddb: interface to the database used by the CD player
+torgb: convert various image file types to rgb format (requires pbmplus)
+New demos
+---------
+There's an experimental interface to define Sun RPC clients and
+servers in demo/rpc.
+There's a collection of interfaces to WWW, WAIS and Gopher (both
+Python classes and program providing a user interface) in demo/www.
+This includes a program texi2html.py which converts texinfo files to
+HTML files (the format used hy WWW).
+The ibrowse demo has moved from demo/stdwin/ibrowse to demo/ibrowse.
+For SGI systems, there's a whole collection of programs and classes
+that make use of the Indigo video board in demo/sgi/{sv,video}.  This
+represents a significant amount of work that we're giving away!
+There are demos "rsa" and "md5test" that exercise the mpz and md5
+modules, respectively.  The rsa demo is a complete implementation of
+the RSA public-key cryptosystem!
+A bunch of games and examples submitted by Stoffel Erasmus have been
+included in demo/stoffel.
+There are miscellaneous new files in some existing demo
+subdirectories: classes/bitvec.py, scripts/{fixps,methfix}.py,
+sgi/al/cmpaf.py, sockets/{mcast,gopher}.py.
+There are also many minor changes to existing files, but I'm too lazy
+to run a diff and note the differences -- you can do this yourself if
+you save the old distribution's demos.  One highlight: the
+stdwin/python.py demo is much improved!
+Changes to the documentation
+----------------------------
+The LaTeX source for the library uses different macros to enable it to
+be converted to texinfo, and from there to INFO or HTML format so it
+can be browsed as a hypertext.  The net result is that you can now
+read the Python library documentation in Emacs info mode!
+Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers
+----------------------------------------------------------
+The function strdup() no longer exists (it was used only in one places
+and is somewhat of a a portability problem sice some systems have the
+same function in their C library.
+The functions NEW() and RENEW() allocate one spare byte to guard
+against a NULL return from malloc(0) being taken for an error, but
+this should not be relied upon.
+=========================
+==> Release 0.9.7beta <==
+=========================
+Changes to the language proper
+------------------------------
+User-defined classes can now implement operations invoked through
+special syntax, such as x[i] or `x` by defining methods named
+__getitem__(self, i) or __repr__(self), etc.
+Changes to the build process
+----------------------------
+Instead of extensive manual editing of the Makefile to select
+compile-time options, you can now run a Configure.py script.
+The Makefile as distributed builds a minimal interpreter sufficient to
+run Configure.py.  See also misc/BUILD
+The Makefile now includes more "utility" targets, e.g. install and
+tags/TAGS
+Using the provided strtod.c and strtol.c are now separate options, as
+on the Sun the provided strtod.c dumps core :-(
+The regex module is now an option chosen by the Makefile, since some
+(old) C compilers choke on regexpr.c
+Changes affecting portability
+-----------------------------
+You need STDWIN version 0.9.7 (released 30 June 1992) for the stdwin
+interface
+Dynamic loading is now supported for Sun (and other non-COFF systems)
+throug dld-3.2.3, as well as for SGI (a new version of Jack Jansen's
+DL is out, 1.4)
+The system-dependent code for the use of the select() system call is
+moved to one file: myselect.h
+Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen, the code should now port cleanly to the
+SEQUENT
+Changes to the interpreter interface
+------------------------------------
+The interpretation of $PYTHONPATH in the environment is different: it
+is inserted in front of the default path instead of overriding it
+Changes to existing built-in functions and methods
+--------------------------------------------------
+List objects now support an optional argument to their sort() method,
+which is a comparison function similar to qsort(3) in C
+File objects now have a method fileno(), used by the new select module
+(see below)
+New built-in function
+---------------------
+coerce(x, y): take two numbers and return a tuple containing them
+both converted to a common type
+Changes to built-in modules
+---------------------------
+sys: fixed core dumps in settrace() and setprofile()
+socket: added socket methods setsockopt() and getsockopt(); and
+fileno(), used by the new select module (see below)
+stdwin: added fileno() == connectionnumber(), in support of new module
+select (see below)
+posix: added get{eg,eu,g,u}id(); waitpid() is now a separate function.
+gl: added qgetfd()
+fl: added several new functions, fixed several obscure bugs, adapted
+to FORMS 2.1
+Changes to standard modules
+---------------------------
+posixpath: changed implementation of ismount()
+string: atoi() no longer mistakes leading zero for octal number
+...
+New built-in modules
+--------------------
+Modules marked "dynamic only" are not configured at compile time but
+can be loaded dynamically.  You need to turn on the DL or DLD option in
+the Makefile for support dynamic loading of modules (this requires
+external code).
+select: interfaces to the BSD select() system call
+dbm: interfaces to the (new) dbm library (dynamic only)
+nis: interfaces to some NIS functions (aka yellow pages)
+thread: limited form of multiple threads (sgi only)
+audioop: operations useful for audio programs, e.g. u-LAW and ADPCM
+coding (dynamic only)
+cd: interface to Indigo SCSI CDROM player audio library (sgi only)
+jpeg: read files in JPEG format (dynamic only, sgi only; needs
+external code)
+imgfile: read SGI image files (dynamic only, sgi only)
+sunaudiodev: interface to sun's /dev/audio (dynamic only, sun only)
+sv: interface to Indigo video library (sgi only)
+pc: a minimal set of MS-DOS interfaces (MS-DOS only)
+rotor: encryption, by Lance Ellinghouse (dynamic only)
+New standard modules
+--------------------
+Not all these modules are documented.  Read the source:
+lib/<modulename>.py.  Sometimes a file lib/<modulename>.doc contains
+additional documentation.
+imghdr: recognizes image file headers
+sndhdr: recognizes sound file headers
+profile: print run-time statistics of Python code
+readcd, cdplayer: companion modules for built-in module cd (sgi only)
+emacs: interface to Emacs using py-connect.el (see below).
+SOCKET: symbolic constant definitions for socket options
+SUNAUDIODEV: symbolic constant definitions for sunaudiodef (sun only)
+SV: symbolic constat definitions for sv (sgi only)
+CD: symbolic constat definitions for cd (sgi only)
+New demos
+---------
+scripts/pp.py: execute Python as a filter with a Perl-like command
+line interface
+classes/: examples using the new class features
+threads/: examples using the new thread module
+sgi/cd/: examples using the new cd module
+Changes to the documentation
+----------------------------
+The last-minute syntax changes of release 0.9.6 are now reflected
+everywhere in the manuals
+The reference manual has a new section (3.2) on implementing new kinds
+of numbers, sequences or mappings with user classes
+Classes are now treated extensively in the tutorial (chapter 9)
+Slightly restructured the system-dependent chapters of the library
+manual
+The file misc/EXTENDING incorporates documentation for mkvalue() and
+a new section on error handling
+The files misc/CLASSES and misc/ERRORS are no longer necessary
+The doc/Makefile now creates PostScript files automatically
+Miscellaneous changes
+---------------------
+Incorporated Tim Peters' changes to python-mode.el, it's now version
+1.06
+A python/Emacs bridge (provided by Terrence M. Brannon) lets a Python
+program running in an Emacs buffer execute Emacs lisp code.  The
+necessary Python code is in lib/emacs.py.  The Emacs code is
+misc/py-connect.el (it needs some external Emacs lisp code)
+Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers
+----------------------------------------------------------
+New service function mkvalue() to construct a Python object from C
+values according to a "format" string a la getargs()
+Most functions from pythonmain.c moved to new pythonrun.c which is
+in libpython.a.  This should make embedded versions of Python easier
+ceval.h is split in eval.h (which needs compile.h and only declares
+eval_code) and ceval.h (which doesn't need compile.hand declares the
+rest)
+ceval.h defines macros BGN_SAVE / END_SAVE for use with threads (to
+improve the parallellism of multi-threaded programs by letting other
+Python code run when a blocking system call or something similar is
+made)
+In structmember.[ch], new member types BYTE, CHAR and unsigned
+variants have been added
+New file xxmodule.c is a template for new extension modules.
+==================================
+==> Release 0.9.6 (6 Apr 1992) <==
+==================================
+Misc news in 0.9.6:
+- Restructured the misc subdirectory
+- Reference manual completed, library manual much extended (with indexes!)
+- the GNU Readline library is now distributed standard with Python
+- the script "../demo/scripts/classfix.py" fixes Python modules using old
+class syntax
+- Emacs python-mode.el (was python.el) vastly improved (thanks, Tim!)
+- Because of the GNU copyleft business I am not using the GNU regular
+expression implementation but a free re-implementation by Tatu Ylonen
+that recently appeared in comp.sources.misc (Bravo, Tatu!)
+New features in 0.9.6:
+- stricter try stmt syntax: cannot mix except and finally clauses on 1 try
+- New module 'os' supplants modules 'mac' and 'posix' for most cases;
+module 'path' is replaced by 'os.path'
+- os.path.split() return value differs from that of old path.split()
+- sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback are set to the exception
+currently being handled
+- sys.last_type, sys.last_value, sys.last_traceback remember last unhandled
+exception
+- New function string.expandtabs() expands tabs in a string
+- Added times() interface to posix (user & sys time of process & children)
+- Added uname() interface to posix (returns OS type, hostname, etc.)
+- New built-in function execfile() is like exec() but from a file
+- Functions exec() and eval() are less picky about whitespace/newlines
+- New built-in functions getattr() and setattr() access arbitrary attributes
+- More generic argument handling in built-in functions (see "./EXTENDING")
+- Dynamic loading of modules written in C or C++ (see "./DYNLOAD")
+- Division and modulo for long and plain integers with negative operands
+have changed; a/b is now floor(float(a)/float(b)) and a%b is defined
+as a-(a/b)*b.  So now the outcome of divmod(a,b) is the same as
+(a/b, a%b) for integers.  For floats, % is also changed, but of course
+/ is unchanged, and divmod(x,y) does not yield (x/y, x%y)...
+- A function with explicit variable-length argument list can be declared
+like this: def f(*args): ...; or even like this: def f(a, b, *rest): ...
+- Code tracing and profiling features have been added, and two source
+code debuggers are provided in the library (pdb.py, tty-oriented,
+and wdb, window-oriented); you can now step through Python programs!
+See sys.settrace() and sys.setprofile(), and "../lib/pdb.doc"
+- '==' is now the only equality operator; "../demo/scripts/eqfix.py" is
+a script that fixes old Python modules
+- Plain integer right shift now uses sign extension
+- Long integer shift/mask operations now simulate 2's complement
+to give more useful results for negative operands
+- Changed/added range checks for long/plain integer shifts
+- Options found after "-c command" are now passed to the command in sys.argv
+(note subtle incompatiblity with "python -c command -- -options"!)
+- Module stdwin is better protected against touching objects after they've
+been closed; menus can now also be closed explicitly
+- Stdwin now uses its own exception (stdwin.error)
+New features in 0.9.5 (released as Macintosh application only, 2 Jan 1992):
+- dictionary objects can now be compared properly; e.g., {}=={} is true
+- new exception SystemExit causes termination if not caught;
+it is raised by sys.exit() so that 'finally' clauses can clean up,
+and it may even be caught.  It does work interactively!
+- new module "regex" implements GNU Emacs style regular expressions;
+module "regexp" is rewritten in Python for backward compatibility
+- formal parameter lists may contain trailing commas
+Bugs fixed in 0.9.6:
+- assigning to or deleting a list item with a negative index dumped core
+- divmod(-10L,5L) returned (-3L, 5L) instead of (-2L, 0L)
+Bugs fixed in 0.9.5:
+- masking operations involving negative long integers gave wrong results
+===================================
+==> Release 0.9.4 (24 Dec 1991) <==
+===================================
+- new function argument handling (see below)
+- built-in apply(func, args) means func(args[0], args[1], ...)
+- new, more refined exceptions
+- new exception string values (NameError = 'NameError' etc.)
+- better checking for math exceptions
+- for sequences (string/tuple/list), x[-i] is now equivalent to x[len(x)-i]
+- fixed list assignment bug: "a[1:1] = a" now works correctly
+- new class syntax, without extraneous parentheses
+- new 'global' statement to assign global variables from within a function
+New class syntax
+----------------
+You can now declare a base class as follows:
+	class B:			# Was: class B():
+		def some_method(self): ...
+		...
+and a derived class thusly:
+	class D(B):			# Was: class D() = B():
+		def another_method(self, arg): ...
+Multiple inheritance looks like this:
+	class M(B, D):			# Was: class M() = B(), D():
+		def this_or_that_method(self, arg): ...
+The old syntax is still accepted by Python 0.9.4, but will disappear
+in Python 1.0 (to be posted to comp.sources).
+New 'global' statement
+----------------------
+Every now and then you have a global variable in a module that you
+want to change from within a function in that module -- say, a count
+of calls to a function, or an option flag, etc.  Until now this was
+not directly possible.  While several kludges are known that
+circumvent the problem, and often the need for a global variable can
+be avoided by rewriting the module as a class, this does not always
+lead to clearer code.
+The 'global' statement solves this dilemma.  Its occurrence in a
+function body means that, for the duration of that function, the
+names listed there refer to global variables.  For instance:
+	total = 0.0
+	count = 0
+	def add_to_total(amount):
+		global total, count
+		total = total + amount
+		count = count + 1
+'global' must be repeated in each function where it is needed.  The
+names listed in a 'global' statement must not be used in the function
+before the statement is reached.
+Remember that you don't need to use 'global' if you only want to *use*
+a global variable in a function; nor do you need ot for assignments to
+parts of global variables (e.g., list or dictionary items or
+attributes of class instances).  This has not changed; in fact
+assignment to part of a global variable was the standard workaround.
+New exceptions
+--------------
+Several new exceptions have been defined, to distinguish more clearly
+between different types of errors.
+name			meaning					was
+AttributeError		reference to non-existing attribute	NameError
+IOError			unexpected I/O error			RuntimeError
+ImportError		import of non-existing module or name	NameError
+IndexError		invalid string, tuple or list index	RuntimeError
+KeyError		key not in dictionary			RuntimeError
+OverflowError		numeric overflow			RuntimeError
+SyntaxError		invalid syntax				RuntimeError
+ValueError		invalid argument value			RuntimeError
+ZeroDivisionError	division by zero			RuntimeError
+The string value of each exception is now its name -- this makes it
+easier to experimentally find out which operations raise which
+exceptions; e.g.:
+	>>> KeyboardInterrupt
+	'KeyboardInterrupt'
+	>>>
+New argument passing semantics
+------------------------------
+Off-line discussions with Steve Majewski and Daniel LaLiberte have
+convinced me that Python's parameter mechanism could be changed in a
+way that made both of them happy (I hope), kept me happy, fixed a
+number of outstanding problems, and, given some backward compatibility
+provisions, would only break a very small amount of existing code --
+probably all mine anyway.  In fact I suspect that most Python users
+will hardly notice the difference.  And yet it has cost me at least
+one sleepless night to decide to make the change...
+Philosophically, the change is quite radical (to me, anyway): a
+function is no longer called with either zero or one argument, which
+is a tuple if there appear to be more arguments.  Every function now
+has an argument list containing 0, 1 or more arguments.  This list is
+always implemented as a tuple, and it is a (run-time) error if a
+function is called with a different number of arguments than expected.
+What's the difference? you may ask.  The answer is, very little unless
+you want to write variadic functions -- functions that may be called
+with a variable number of arguments.  Formerly, you could write a
+function that accepted one or more arguments with little trouble, but
+writing a function that could be called with either 0 or 1 argument
+(or more) was next to impossible.  This is now a piece of cake: you
+can simply declare an argument that receives the entire argument
+tuple, and check its length -- it will be of size 0 if there are no
+arguments.
+Another anomaly of the old system was the way multi-argument methods
+(in classes) had to be declared, e.g.:
+	class Point():
+		def init(self, (x, y, color)): ...
+		def setcolor(self, color): ...
+		dev moveto(self, (x, y)): ...
+		def draw(self): ...
+Using the new scheme there is no need to enclose the method arguments
+in an extra set of parentheses, so the above class could become:
+	class Point:
+		def init(self, x, y, color): ...
+		def setcolor(self, color): ...
+		dev moveto(self, x, y): ...
+		def draw(self): ...
+That is, the equivalence rule between methods and functions has
+changed so that now p.moveto(x,y) is equivalent to Point.moveto(p,x,y)
+while formerly it was equivalent to Point.moveto(p,(x,y)).
+A special backward compatibility rule makes that the old version also
+still works: whenever a function with exactly two arguments (at the top
+level) is called with more than two arguments, the second and further
+arguments are packed into a tuple and passed as the second argument.
+This rule is invoked independently of whether the function is actually a
+method, so there is a slight chance that some erroneous calls of
+functions expecting two arguments with more than that number of
+arguments go undetected at first -- when the function tries to use the
+second argument it may find it is a tuple instead of what was expected.
+Note that this rule will be removed from future versions of the
+language; it is a backward compatibility provision *only*.
+Two other rules and a new built-in function handle conversion between
+tuples and argument lists:
+Rule (a): when a function with more than one argument is called with a
+single argument that is a tuple of the right size, the tuple's items
+are used as arguments.
+Rule (b): when a function with exactly one argument receives no
+arguments or more than one, that one argument will receive a tuple
+containing the arguments (the tuple will be empty if there were no
+arguments).
+A new built-in function, apply(), was added to support functions that
+need to call other functions with a constructed argument list.  The call
+	apply(function, tuple)
+is equivalent to
+	function(tuple[0], tuple[1], ..., tuple[len(tuple)-1])
+While no new argument syntax was added in this phase, it would now be
+quite sensible to add explicit syntax to Python for default argument
+values (as in C++ or Modula-3), or a "rest" argument to receive the
+remaining arguments of a variable-length argument list.
+========================================================
+==> Release 0.9.3 (never made available outside CWI) <==
+========================================================
+- string sys.version shows current version (also printed on interactive entry)
+- more detailed exceptions, e.g., IOError, ZeroDivisionError, etc.
+- 'global' statement to declare module-global variables assigned in functions.
+- new class declaration syntax: class C(Base1, Base2, ...): suite
+(the old syntax is still accepted -- be sure to convert your classes now!)
+- C shifting and masking operators: << >> ~ & ^ | (for ints and longs).
+- C comparison operators: == != (the old = and <> remain valid).
+- floating point numbers may now start with a period (e.g., .14).
+- definition of integer division tightened (always truncates towards zero).
+- new builtins hex(x), oct(x) return hex/octal string from (long) integer.
+- new list method l.count(x) returns the number of occurrences of x in l.
+- new SGI module: al (Indigo and 4D/35 audio library).
+- the FORMS interface (modules fl and FL) now uses FORMS 2.0
+- module gl: added lrect{read,write}, rectzoom and pixmode;
+added (non-GL) functions (un)packrect.
+- new socket method: s.allowbroadcast(flag).
+- many objects support __dict__, __methods__ or __members__.
+- dir() lists anything that has __dict__.
+- class attributes are no longer read-only.
+- classes support __bases__, instances support __class__ (and __dict__).
+- divmod() now also works for floats.
+- fixed obscure bug in eval('1            ').
+===================================
+==> Release 0.9.2 (Autumn 1991) <==
+===================================
+Highlights
+----------
+- tutorial now (almost) complete; library reference reorganized
+- new syntax: continue statement; semicolons; dictionary constructors;
+restrictions on blank lines in source files removed
+- dramatically improved module load time through precompiled modules
+- arbitrary precision integers: compute 2 to the power 1000 and more...
+- arithmetic operators now accept mixed type operands, e.g., 3.14/4
+- more operations on list: remove, index, reverse; repetition
+- improved/new file operations: readlines, seek, tell, flush, ...
+- process management added to the posix module: fork/exec/wait/kill etc.
+- BSD socket operations (with example servers and clients!)
+- many new STDWIN features (color, fonts, polygons, ...)
+- new SGI modules: font manager and FORMS library interface
+Extended list of changes in 0.9.2
+---------------------------------
+Here is a summary of the most important user-visible changes in 0.9.2,
+in somewhat arbitrary order.  Changes in later versions are listed in
+the "highlights" section above.
+1. Changes to the interpreter proper
+- Simple statements can now be separated by semicolons.
+If you write "if t: s1; s2", both s1 and s2 are executed
+conditionally.
+- The 'continue' statement was added, with semantics as in C.
+- Dictionary displays are now allowed on input: {key: value, ...}.
+- Blank lines and lines bearing only a comment no longer need to
+be indented properly.  (A completely empty line still ends a multi-
+line statement interactively.)
+- Mixed arithmetic is supported, 1 compares equal to 1.0, etc.
+- Option "-c command" to execute statements from the command line
+- Compiled versions of modules are cached in ".pyc" files, giving a
+dramatic improvement of start-up time
+- Other, smaller speed improvements, e.g., extracting characters from
+strings, looking up single-character keys, and looking up global
+variables
+- Interrupting a print operation raises KeyboardInterrupt instead of
+only cancelling the print operation
+- Fixed various portability problems (it now passes gcc with only
+warnings -- more Standard C compatibility will be provided in later
+versions)
+- Source is prepared for porting to MS-DOS
+- Numeric constants are now checked for overflow (this requires
+standard-conforming strtol() and strtod() functions; a correct
+strtol() implementation is provided, but the strtod() provided
+relies on atof() for everything, including error checking
+2. Changes to the built-in types, functions and modules
+- New module socket: interface to BSD socket primitives
+- New modules pwd and grp: access the UNIX password and group databases
+- (SGI only:) New module "fm" interfaces to the SGI IRIX Font Manager
+- (SGI only:) New module "fl" interfaces to Mark Overmars' FORMS library
+- New numeric type: long integer, for unlimited precision
+	- integer constants suffixed with 'L' or 'l' are long integers
+	- new built-in function long(x) converts int or float to long
+	- int() and float() now also convert from long integers
+- New built-in function:
+	- pow(x, y) returns x to the power y
+- New operation and methods for lists:
+	- l*n returns a new list consisting of n concatenated copies of l
+	- l.remove(x) removes the first occurrence of the value x from l
+	- l.index(x) returns the index of the first occurrence of x in l
+	- l.reverse() reverses l in place
+- New operation for tuples:
+	- t*n returns a tuple consisting of n concatenated copies of t
+- Improved file handling:
+	- f.readline() no longer restricts the line length, is faster,
+	  and isn't confused by null bytes; same for raw_input()
+	- f.read() without arguments reads the entire (rest of the) file
+	- mixing of print and sys.stdout.write() has different effect
+- New methods for files:
+	- f.readlines() returns a list containing the lines of the file,
+	  as read with f.readline()
+	- f.flush(), f.tell(), f.seek() call their stdio counterparts
+	- f.isatty() tests for "tty-ness"
+- New posix functions:
+	- _exit(), exec(), fork(), getpid(), getppid(), kill(), wait()
+	- popen() returns a file object connected to a pipe
+	- utime() replaces utimes() (the latter is not a POSIX name)
+- New stdwin features, including:
+	- font handling
+	- color drawing
+	- scroll bars made optional
+	- polygons
+	- filled and xor shapes
+	- text editing objects now have a 'settext' method
+3. Changes to the standard library
+- Name change: the functions path.cat and macpath.cat are now called
+path.join and macpath.join
+- Added new modules: formatter, mutex, persist, sched, mainloop
+- Added some modules and functionality to the "widget set" (which is
+still under development, so please bear with me):
+	DirList, FormSplit, TextEdit, WindowSched
+- Fixed module testall to work non-interactively
+- Module string:
+	- added functions join() and joinfields()
+	- fixed center() to work correct and make it "transitive"
+- Obsolete modules were removed: util, minmax
+- Some modules were moved to the demo directory
+4. Changes to the demonstration programs
+- Added new useful scipts: byteyears, eptags, fact, from, lfact,
+objgraph, pdeps, pi, primes, ptags, which
+- Added a bunch of socket demos
+- Doubled the speed of ptags
+- Added new stdwin demos: microedit, miniedit
+- Added a windowing interface to the Python interpreter: python (most
+useful on the Mac)
+- Added a browser for Emacs info files: demo/stdwin/ibrowse
+(yes, I plan to put all STDWIN and Python documentation in texinfo
+form in the future)
+5. Other changes to the distribution
+- An Emacs Lisp file "python.el" is provided to facilitate editing
+Python programs in GNU Emacs (slightly improved since posted to
+gnu.emacs.sources)
+- Some info on writing an extension in C is provided
+- Some info on building Python on non-UNIX platforms is provided
+=====================================
+==> Release 0.9.1 (February 1991) <==
+=====================================
+- Micro changes only
+- Added file "patchlevel.h"
+=====================================
+==> Release 0.9.0 (February 1991) <==
+=====================================
+Original posting to alt.sources.