Moved the 1.4 NEWS file here (it had to happen someday...).

Misc/HISTORY

@@ -6,6 +6,774 @@ This file contains the release messages for previous Python releases
 read on you go back to the dark ages of Python's history.
 
 
+=====================================
+==> Release 1.4 (October 25 1996) <==
+=====================================
+
+(Starting in reverse chronological order:)
+
+- Changed disclaimer notice.
+
+- Added SHELL=/bin/sh to Misc/Makefile.pre.in -- some Make versions
+default to the user's login shell.
+
+- In Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, removed bogus binding of <Delete> in Text
+widget, and bogus bspace() function.
+
+- In Lib/cgi.py, bumped __version__ to 2.0 and restored a truncated
+paragraph.
+
+- Fixed the NT Makefile (PC/vc40.mak) for VC 4.0 to set /MD for all
+subprojects, and to remove the (broken) experimental NumPy
+subprojects.
+
+- In Lib/py_compile.py, cast mtime to long() so it will work on Mac
+(where os.stat() returns mtimes as floats.)
+- Set self.rfile unbuffered (like self.wfile) in SocketServer.py, to
+fix POST in CGIHTTPServer.py.
+
+- Version 2.83 of Misc/python-mode.el for Emacs is included.
+
+- In Modules/regexmodule.c, fixed symcomp() to correctly handle a new
+group starting immediately after a group tag.
+
+- In Lib/SocketServer.py, changed the mode for rfile to unbuffered.
+
+- In Objects/stringobject.c, fixed the compare function to do the
+first char comparison in unsigned mode, for consistency with the way
+other characters are compared by memcmp().
+
+- In Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, fixed Scale.get() to support floats.
+
+- In Lib/urllib.py, fix another case where openedurl wasn't set.
+
+(XXX Sorry, the rest is in totally random order.  No time to fix it.)
+
+- SyntaxError exceptions detected during code generation
+(e.g. assignment to an expression) now include a line number.
+
+- Don't leave trailing / or \ in script directory inserted in front of
+sys.path.
+
+- Added a note to Tools/scripts/classfix.py abouts its historical
+importance.
+
+- Added Misc/Makefile.pre.in, a universal Makefile for extensions
+built outside the distribution.
+
+- Rewritten Misc/faq2html.py, by Ka-Ping Yee.
+
+- Install shared modules with mode 555 (needed for performance on some
+platforms).
+
+- Some changes to standard library modules to avoid calling append()
+with more than one argument -- while supported, this should be
+outlawed, and I don't want to set a bad example.
+
+- bdb.py (and hence pdb.py) supports calling run() with a code object
+instead of a code string.
+
+- Fixed an embarrassing bug cgi.py which prevented correct uploading
+of binary files from Netscape (which doesn't distinguish between
+binary and text files).  Also added dormant logging support, which
+makes it easier to debug the cgi module itself.
+
+- Added default writer to constructor of NullFormatter class.
+
+- Use binary mode for socket.makefile() calls in ftplib.py.
+
+- The ihooks module no longer "installs" itself upon import -- this
+was an experimental feature that helped ironing out some bugs but that
+slowed down code that imported it without the need to install it
+(e.g. the rexec module).  Also close the file in some cases and add
+the __file__ attribute to loaded modules.
+
+- The test program for mailbox.py is now more useful.
+
+- Added getparamnames() to Message class in mimetools.py -- it returns
+the names of parameters to the content-type header.
+
+- Fixed a typo in ni that broke the loop stripping "__." from names.
+
+- Fix sys.path[0] for scripts run via pdb.py's new main program.
+
+- profile.py can now also run a script, like pdb.
+
+- Fix a small bug in pyclbr -- don't add names starting with _ when
+emulating from ... import *.
+
+- Fixed a series of embarrassing typos in rexec's handling of standard
+I/O redirection.  Added some more "safe" built-in modules: cmath,
+errno, operator.
+
+- Fixed embarrassing typo in shelve.py.
+
+- Added SliceType and EllipsisType to types.py.
+
+- In urllib.py, added handling for error 301 (same as 302); added
+geturl() method to get the URL after redirection.
+
+- Fixed embarrassing typo in xdrlib.py.  Also fixed typo in Setup.in
+for _xdrmodule.c and removed redundant #include from _xdrmodule.c.
+
+- Fixed bsddbmodule.c to add binary mode indicator on platforms that
+have it.  This should make it working on Windows NT.
+
+- Changed last uses of #ifdef NT to #ifdef MS_WINDOWS or MS_WIN32,
+whatever applies.  Also rationalized some other tests for various MS
+platforms.
+
+- Added the sources for the NT installer script used for Python
+1.4beta3.  Not tested with this release, but better than nothing.
+
+- A compromise in pickle's defenses against Trojan horses: a
+user-defined function is now okay where a class is expected.  A
+built-in function is not okay, to prevent pickling something that
+will execute os.system("rm -f *") when unpickling.
+
+- dis.py will print the name of local variables referenced by local
+load/store/delete instructions.
+
+- Improved portability of SimpleHTTPServer module to non-Unix
+platform.
+
+- The thread.h interface adds an extra argument to down_sema().  This
+only affects other C code that uses thread.c; the Python thread module
+doesn't use semaphores (which aren't provided on all platforms where
+Python threads are supported).  Note: on NT, this change is not
+implemented.
+
+- Fixed some typos in abstract.h; corrected signature of
+PyNumber_Coerce, added PyMapping_DelItem.  Also fixed a bug in
+abstract.c's PyObject_CallMethod().
+
+- apply(classname, (), {}) now works even if the class has no
+__init__() method.
+
+- Implemented complex remainder and divmod() (these would dump core!).
+Conversion of complex numbers to int, long int or float now raises an
+exception, since there is no meaningful way to do it without losing
+information.
+
+- Fixed bug in built-in complex() function which gave the wrong result
+for two real arguments.
+
+- Change the hash algorithm for strings -- the multiplier is now
+1000003 instead of 3, which gives better spread for short strings.
+
+- New default path for Windows NT, the registry structure now supports
+default paths for different install packages.  (Mark Hammond -- the
+next PythonWin release will use this.)
+
+- Added more symbols to the python_nt.def file.
+
+- When using GNU readline, set rl_readline_name to "python".
+
+- The Ellipses built-in name has been renamed to Ellipsis -- this is
+the correct singular form.  Thanks to Ka-Ping Yee, who saved us from
+eternal embarrassment.
+
+- Bumped the PYTHON_API_VERSION to 1006, due to the Ellipses ->
+Ellipsis name change.
+
+- Updated the library reference manual.  Added documentation of
+restricted mode (rexec, Bastion) and the formatter module (for use
+with the htmllib module).  Fixed the documentation of htmllib
+(finally).
+
+- The reference manual is now maintained in FrameMaker.
+
+- Upgraded scripts Doc/partparse.py and Doc/texi2html.py.
+
+- Slight improvements to Doc/Makefile.
+
+- Added fcntl.lockf(). This should be used for Unix file locking
+instead of the posixfile module; lockf() is more portable.
+
+- The getopt module now supports long option names, thanks to Lars
+Wizenius.
+
+- Plenty of changes to Tkinter and Canvas, mostly due to Fred Drake
+and Nils Fischbeck.
+
+- Use more bits of time.time() in whrandom's default seed().
+
+- Performance hack for regex module's regs attribute.
+
+- Don't close already closed socket in socket module.
+
+- Correctly handle separators containing embedded nulls in
+strop.split, strop.find and strop.rfind.  Also added more detail to
+error message for strop.atoi and friends.
+
+- Moved fallback definition for hypot() to Python/hypot.c.
+
+- Added fallback definition for strdup, in Python/strdup.c.
+
+- Fixed some bugs where a function would return 0 to indicate an error
+where it should return -1.
+
+- Test for error returned by time.localtime(), and rationalized its MS
+tests.
+
+- Added Modules/Setup.local file, which is processed after Setup.
+
+- Corrected bug in toplevel Makefile.in -- execution of regen script
+would not use the right PATH and PYTHONPATH.
+
+- Various and sundry NeXT configuration changes (sigh).
+
+- Support systems where libreadline needs neither termcap nor curses.
+
+- Improved ld_so_aix script and python.exp file (for AIX).
+
+- More stringent test for working <stdarg.h> in configure script.
+
+- Removed Demo/www subdirectory -- it was totally out of date.
+
+- Improved demos and docs for Fred Drake's parser module; fixed one
+typo in the module itself.
+
+
+=========================================
+==> Release 1.4beta3 (August 26 1996) <==
+=========================================
+
+
+(XXX This is less readable that it should.  I promise to restructure
+it for the final 1.4 release.)
+
+
+What's new in 1.4beta3 (since beta2)?
+-------------------------------------
+
+- Name mangling to implement a simple form of class-private variables.
+A name of the form "__spam" can't easily be used outside the class.
+(This was added in 1.4beta3, but left out of the 1.4beta3 release
+message.)
+
+- In urllib.urlopen(): HTTP URLs containing user:passwd@host are now
+handled correctly when using a proxy server.
+
+- In ntpath.normpath(): don't truncate to 8+3 format.
+
+- In mimetools.choose_boundary(): don't die when getuid() or getpid()
+aren't defined.
+
+- Module urllib: some optimizations to (un)quoting.
+
+- New module MimeWriter for writing MIME documents.
+
+- More changes to formatter module.
+
+- The freeze script works once again and is much more robust (using
+sys.prefix etc.).  It also supports a -o option to specify an
+output directory.
+
+- New module whichdb recognizes dbm, gdbm and bsddb/dbhash files.
+
+- The Doc/Makefile targets have been reorganized somewhat to remove the 
+insistence on always generating PostScript.
+
+- The texinfo to html filter (Doc/texi2html.py) has been improved somewhat.
+
+- "errors.h" has been renamed to "pyerrors.h" to resolve a long-standing 
+name conflict on the Mac.
+
+- Linking a module compiled with a different setting for Py_TRACE_REFS now 
+generates a linker error rather than a core dump.
+
+- The cgi module has a new convenience function print_exception(), which 
+formats a python exception using HTML.  It also fixes a bug in the 
+compatibility code and adds a dubious feature which makes it possible to 
+have two query strings, one in the URL and one in the POST data.
+
+- A subtle change in the unpickling of class instances makes it possible 
+to unpickle in restricted execution mode, where the __dict__ attribute is 
+not available (but setattr() is).
+
+- Documentation for os.path.splitext() (== posixpath.splitext()) has been 
+cleared up.  It splits at the *last* dot.
+
+- posixfile locking is now also correctly supported on AIX.
+
+- The tempfile module once again honors an initial setting of tmpdir.  It 
+now works on Windows, too.
+
+- The traceback module has some new functions to extract, format and print 
+the active stack.
+
+- Some translation functions in the urllib module have been made a little 
+less sluggish.
+
+- The addtag_* methods for Canvas widgets in Tkinter as well as in the 
+separate Canvas class have been fixed so they actually do something 
+meaningful.
+
+- A tiny _test() function has been added to Tkinter.py.
+
+- A generic Makefile for dynamically loaded modules is provided in the Misc 
+subdirectory (Misc/gMakefile).
+
+- A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs is provided.  See
+http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for details.  The
+separate file pyimenu.el is no longer needed, imenu support is folded
+into python-mode.el.
+
+- The configure script can finally correctly find the readline library in a 
+non-standard location.  The LDFLAGS variable is passed on the the Makefiles 
+from the configure script.
+
+- Shared libraries are now installed as programs (i.e. with executable 
+permission).  This is required on HP-UX and won't hurt on other systems.
+
+- The objc.c module is no longer part of the distribution.  Objective-C 
+support may become available as contributed software on the ftp site.
+
+- The sybase module is no longer part of the distribution.  A much
+improved sybase module is available as contributed software from the
+ftp site.
+
+- _tkinter is now compatible with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 patch1 on Windows and 
+Mac (don't use unpatched Tcl/Tk!).  The default line in the Setup.in file 
+now links with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 rather than 7.4/4.0.
+
+- In Setup, you can now write "*shared*" instead of "*noconfig*", and you 
+can use *.so and *.sl as shared libraries.
+
+- Some more fidgeting for AIX shared libraries.
+
+- The mpz module is now compatible with GMP 2.x.  (Not tested by me.)
+(Note -- a complete replacement by Niels Mo"ller, called gpmodule, is
+available from the contrib directory on the ftp site.)
+
+- A warning is written to sys.stderr when a __del__ method raises an 
+exception (formerly, such exceptions were completely ignored).
+
+- The configure script now defines HAVE_OLD_CPP if the C preprocessor is 
+incapable of ANSI style token concatenation and stringification.
+
+- All source files (except a few platform specific modules) are once again 
+compatible with K&R C compilers as well as ANSI compilers.  In particular,
+ANSI-isms have been removed or made conditional in complexobject.c, 
+getargs.c and operator.c.
+
+- The abstract object API has three new functions, PyObject_DelItem, 
+PySequence_DelItem, and PySequence_DelSlice.
+
+- The operator module has new functions delitem and delslice, and the 
+functions "or" and "and" are renamed to "or_" and "and_" (since "or" and 
+"and" are reserved words).  ("__or__" and "__and__" are unchanged.)
+
+- The environment module is no longer supported; putenv() is now a function 
+in posixmodule (also under NT).
+
+- Error in filter(<function>, "") has been fixed.
+
+- Unrecognized keyword arguments raise TypeError, not KeyError.
+
+- Better portability, fewer bugs and memory leaks, fewer compiler warnings, 
+some more documentation.
+
+- Bug in float power boundary case (0.0 to the negative integer power) 
+fixed.
+
+- The test of negative number to the float power has been moved from the 
+built-in pow() functin to floatobject.c (so complex numbers can yield the 
+correct result).
+
+- The bug introduced in beta2 where shared libraries loaded (using 
+dlopen()) from the current directory would fail, has been fixed.
+
+- Modules imported as shared libraries now also have a __file__ attribute, 
+giving the filename from which they were loaded.  The only modules without 
+a __file__ attribute now are built-in modules.
+
+- On the Mac, dynamically loaded modules can end in either ".slb" or 
+".<platform>.slb" where <platform> is either "CFM68K" or "ppc".  The ".slb" 
+extension should only be used for "fat" binaries.
+
+- C API addition: marshal.c now supports 
+PyMarshal_WriteObjectToString(object).
+
+- C API addition: getargs.c now supports
+PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(args, kwdict, format, kwnames, ...)
+to parse keyword arguments.
+
+- The PC versioning scheme (sys.winver) has changed once again.  the 
+version number is now "<digit>.<digit>.<digit>.<apiversion>", where the 
+first three <digit>s are the Python version (e.g. "1.4.0" for Python 1.4, 
+"1.4.1" for Python 1.4.1 -- the beta level is not included) and 
+<apiversion> is the four-digit PYTHON_API_VERSION (currently 1005).
+
+- h2py.py accepts whitespace before the # in CPP directives
+
+- On Solaris 2.5, it should now be possible to use either Posix threads or 
+Solaris threads (XXX: how do you select which is used???).  (Note: the 
+Python pthreads interface doesn't fully support semaphores yet -- anyone 
+care to fix this?)
+
+- Thread support should now work on AIX, using either DCE threads or 
+pthreads.
+
+- New file Demo/sockets/unicast.py
+
+- Working Mac port, with CFM68K support, with Tk 4.1 support (though not 
+both) (XXX)
+
+- New project setup for PC port, now compatible with PythonWin, with 
+_tkinter and NumPy support (XXX)
+
+- New module site.py (XXX)
+
+- New module xdrlib.py and optional support module _xdrmodule.c (XXX)
+
+- parser module adapted to new grammar, complete w/ Doc & Demo (XXX)
+
+- regen script fixed (XXX)
+
+- new machdep subdirectories Lib/{aix3,aix4,next3_3,freebsd2,linux2} (XXX)
+
+- testall now also tests math module (XXX)
+
+- string.atoi c.s. now raise an exception for an empty input string.
+
+- At last, it is no longer necessary to define HAVE_CONFIG_H in order to 
+have config.h included at various places.
+
+- Unrecognized keyword arguments now raise TypeError rather than KeyError.
+
+- The makesetup script recognizes files with extension .so or .sl as
+(shared) libraries.
+
+- 'access' is no longer a reserved word, and all code related to its 
+implementation is gone (or at least #ifdef'ed out).  This should make 
+Python a little speedier too!
+
+- Performance enhancements suggested by Sjoerd Mullender.  This includes 
+the introduction of two new optional function pointers in type object, 
+getattro and setattro, which are like getattr and setattr but take a 
+string object instead of a C string pointer.
+
+- New operations in string module: lstrip(s) and rstrip(s) strip whitespace 
+only on the left or only on the right, A new optional third argument to 
+split() specifies the maximum number of separators honored (so 
+splitfields(s, sep, n) returns a list of at most n+1 elements).  (Since 
+1.3, splitfields(s, None) is totally equivalent to split(s).)
+string.capwords() has an optional second argument specifying the 
+separator (which is passed to split()).
+
+- regsub.split() has the same addition as string.split().  regsub.splitx(s, 
+sep, maxsep) implements the functionality that was regsub.split(s, 1) in 
+1.4beta2 (return a list containing the delimiters as well as the words).
+
+- Final touch for AIX loading, rewritten Misc/AIX-NOTES.
+
+- In Modules/_tkinter.c, when using Tk 4.1 or higher, use className
+argument to _tkinter.create() to set Tcl's argv0 variable, so X
+resources use the right resource class again.
+
+- Add #undef fabs to Modules/mathmodule.c for macintosh.
+
+- Added some macro renames for AIX in Modules/operator.c.
+
+- Removed spurious 'E' from Doc/liberrno.tex.
+
+- Got rid of some cruft in Misc/ (dlMakefile, pyimenu.el); added new
+Misc/gMakefile and new version of Misc/python-mode.el.
+
+- Fixed typo in Lib/ntpath.py (islink has "return false" which gives a
+NameError).
+
+- Added missing "from types import *" to Lib/tkinter/Canvas.py.
+
+- Added hint about using default args for __init__ to pickle docs.
+
+- Corrected typo in Inclide/abstract.h: PySequence_Lenth ->
+PySequence_Length.
+
+- Some improvements to Doc/texi2html.py.
+
+- In Python/import.c, Cast unsigned char * in struct _frozen to char *
+in calls to rds_object().
+
+- In doc/ref4.tex, added note about scope of lambda bodies.
+
+What's new in 1.4beta2 (since beta1)?
+-------------------------------------
+
+- Portability bug in the md5.h header solved.
+
+- The PC build procedure now really works, and sets sys.platform to a
+meaningful value (a few things were botched in beta 1).  Lib/dos_8x3
+is now a standard part of the distribution (alas).
+
+- More improvements to the installation procedure.  Typing "make install" 
+now inserts the version number in the pathnames of almost everything 
+installed, and creates the machine dependent modules (FCNTL.py etc.) if not 
+supplied by the distribution.  (XXX There's still a problem with the latter 
+because the "regen" script requires that Python is installed.  Some manual 
+intervention may still be required.) (This has been fixed in 1.4beta3.)
+
+- New modules: errno, operator (XXX).
+
+- Changes for use with Numerical Python: builtin function slice() and
+Ellipses object, and corresponding syntax:
+
+	x[lo:hi:stride]		==	x[slice(lo, hi, stride)]
+	x[a, ..., z]		==	x[(a, Ellipses, z)]
+
+- New documentation for errno and cgi mdoules.
+
+- The directory containing the script passed to the interpreter is
+inserted in from of sys.path; "." is no longer a default path
+component.
+
+- Optional third string argument to string.translate() specifies
+characters to delete.  New function string.maketrans() creates a
+translation table for translate() or for regex.compile().
+
+- Module posix (and hence module os under Unix) now supports putenv().
+Moreover, module os is enhanced so that if putenv() is supported,
+assignments to os.environ entries make the appropriate putenv() call.
+(XXX the putenv() implementation can leak a small amount of memory per
+call.)
+
+- pdb.py can now be invoked from the command line to debug a script:
+python pdb.py <script> <arg> ...
+
+- Much improved parseaddr() in rfc822.
+
+- In cgi.py, you can now pass an alternative value for environ to
+nearly all functions.
+
+- You can now assign to instance variables whose name begins and ends
+with '__'.
+
+- New version of Fred Drake's parser module and associates (token,
+symbol, AST).
+
+- New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number (again!).
+
+- The "complex" internal structure type is now called "Py_complex" to
+avoid name conflicts.
+
+- Numerous small bugs fixed.
+
+- Slight pickle speedups.
+
+- Some slight speedups suggested by Sjoerd (more coming in 1.4 final).
+
+- NeXT portability mods by Bill Bumgarner integrated.
+
+- Modules regexmodule.c, bsddbmodule.c and xxmodule.c have been
+converted to new naming style.
+
+
+What's new in 1.4beta1 (since 1.3)?
+-----------------------------------
+
+- Added sys.platform and sys.exec_platform for Bill Janssen.
+
+- Installation has been completely overhauled.  "make install" now installs 
+everything, not just the python binary.  Installation uses the install-sh 
+script (borrowed from X11) to install each file.
+
+- New functions in the posix module: mkfifo, plock, remove (== unlink),
+and ftruncate.  More functions are also available under NT.
+
+- New function in the fcntl module: flock.
+
+- Shared library support for FreeBSD.
+
+- The --with-readline option can now be used without a DIRECTORY argument, 
+for systems where libreadline.* is in one of the standard places.  It is 
+also possible for it to be a shared library.
+
+- The extension tkinter has been renamed to _tkinter, to avoid confusion 
+with Tkinter.py oncase insensitive file systems.  It now supports Tk 4.1 as 
+well as 4.0.
+
+- Author's change of address from CWI in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to 
+CNRI in Reston, VA, USA.
+
+- The math.hypot() function is now always available (if it isn't found in 
+the C math library, Python provides its own implementation).
+
+- The latex documentation is now compatible with latex2e, thanks to David 
+Ascher.
+
+- The expression x**y is now equivalent to pow(x, y).
+
+- The indexing expression x[a, b, c] is now equivalent to x[(a, b, c)].
+
+- Complex numbers are now supported.  Imaginary constants are written with 
+a 'j' or 'J' prefix, general complex numbers can be formed by adding a real 
+part to an imaginary part, like 3+4j.  Complex numbers are always stored in 
+floating point form, so this is equivalent to 3.0+4.0j.  It is also 
+possible to create complex numbers with the new built-in function 
+complex(re, [im]).  For the footprint-conscious, complex number support can 
+be disabled by defining the symbol WITHOUT_COMPLEX.
+
+- New built-in function list() is the long-awaited counterpart of tuple().
+
+- There's a new "cmath" module which provides the same functions as the 
+"math" library but with complex arguments and results.  (There are very 
+good reasons why math.sqrt(-1) still raises an exception -- you have to use 
+cmath.sqrt(-1) to get 1j for an answer.)
+
+- The Python.h header file (which is really the same as allobjects.h except 
+it disables support for old style names) now includes several more files, 
+so you have to have fewer #include statements in the average extension.
+
+- The NDEBUG symbol is no longer used.  Code that used to be dependent on 
+the presence of NDEBUG is now present on the absence of DEBUG.  TRACE_REFS 
+and REF_DEBUG have been renamed to Py_TRACE_REFS and Py_REF_DEBUG, 
+respectively.  At long last, the source actually compiles and links without 
+errors when this symbol is defined.
+
+- Several symbols that didn't follow the new naming scheme have been 
+renamed (usually by adding to rename2.h) to use a Py or _Py prefix.  There 
+are no external symbols left without a Py or _Py prefix, not even those 
+defined by sources that were incorporated from elsewhere (regexpr.c, 
+md5c.c).  (Macros are a different story...)
+
+- There are now typedefs for the structures defined in config.c and 
+frozen.c.
+
+- New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number.
+
+- New module Bastion.  (XXX)
+
+- Improved performance of StringIO module.
+
+- UserList module now supports + and * operators.
+
+- The binhex and binascii modules now actually work.
+
+- The cgi module has been almost totally rewritten and documented.
+It now supports file upload and a new data type to handle forms more 
+flexibly.
+
+- The formatter module (for use with htmllib) has been overhauled (again).
+
+- The ftplib module now supports passive mode and has doc strings.
+
+- In (ideally) all places where binary files are read or written, the file 
+is now correctly opened in binary mode ('rb' or 'wb') so the code will work 
+on Mac or PC.
+
+- Dummy versions of os.path.expandvars() and expanduser() are now provided 
+on non-Unix platforms.
+
+- Module urllib now has two new functions url2pathname and pathname2url 
+which turn local filenames into "file:..." URLs using the same rules as 
+Netscape (why be different).  it also supports urlretrieve() with a 
+pathname parameter, and honors the proxy environment variables (http_proxy 
+etc.).  The URL parsing has been improved somewhat, too.
+
+- Micro improvements to urlparse.  Added urlparse.urldefrag() which 
+removes a trailing ``#fragment'' if any.
+
+- The mailbox module now supports MH style message delimiters as well.
+
+- The mhlib module contains some new functionality: setcontext() to set the 
+current folder and parsesequence() to parse a sequence as commonly passed 
+to MH commands (e.g. 1-10 or last:5).
+
+- New module mimify for conversion to and from MIME format of email 
+messages.
+
+- Module ni now automatically installs itself when first imported -- this 
+is against the normal rule that modules should define classes and functions 
+but not invoke them, but appears more useful in the case that two 
+different, independent modules want to use ni's features.
+
+- Some small performance enhancements in module pickle.
+
+- Small interface change to the profile.run*() family of functions -- more 
+sensible handling of return values.
+
+- The officially registered Mac creator for Python files is 'Pyth'.  This 
+replaces 'PYTH' which was used before but never registered.
+
+- Added regsub.capwords().  (XXX)
+
+- Added string.capwords(), string.capitalize() and string.translate().  
+(XXX)
+
+- Fixed an interface bug in the rexec module: it was impossible to pass a 
+hooks instance to the RExec class.  rexec now also supports the dynamic 
+loading of modules from shared libraries.  Some other interfaces have been 
+added too.
+
+- Module rfc822 now caches the headers in a dictionary for more efficient 
+lookup.
+
+- The sgmllib module now understands a limited number of SGML "shorthands" 
+like <A/.../ for <A>...</A>.  (It's not clear that this was a good idea...)
+
+- The tempfile module actually tries a number of different places to find a 
+usable temporary directory.  (This was prompted by certain Linux 
+installations that appear to be missing a /usr/tmp directory.) [A bug in 
+the implementation that would ignore a pre-existing tmpdir global has been 
+fixed in beta3.]
+
+- Much improved and enhanved FileDialog module for Tkinter.
+
+- Many small changes to Tkinter, to bring it more in line with Tk 4.0 (as 
+well as Tk 4.1).
+
+- New socket interfaces include ntohs(), ntohl(), htons(), htonl(), and 
+s.dup().  Sockets now work correctly on Windows.  On Windows, the built-in 
+extension is called _socket and a wrapper module win/socket.py provides 
+"makefile()" and "dup()" functionality.  On Windows, the select module 
+works only with socket objects.
+
+- Bugs in bsddb module fixed (e.g. missing default argument values).
+
+- The curses extension now includes <ncurses.h> when available.
+
+- The gdbm module now supports opening databases in "fast" mode by 
+specifying 'f' as the second character or the mode string.
+
+- new variables sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix pass corresponding 
+configuration options / Makefile variables to the Python programmer.
+
+- The ``new'' module now supports creating new user-defined classes as well 
+as instances thereof.
+
+- The soundex module now sports get_soundex() to get the soundex value for an 
+arbitrary string (formerly it would only do soundex-based string 
+comparison) as well as doc strings.
+
+- New object type "cobject" to safely wrap void pointers for passing them 
+between various extension modules.
+
+- More efficient computation of float**smallint.
+
+- The mysterious bug whereby "x.x" (two occurrences of the same 
+one-character name) typed from the commandline would sometimes fail 
+mysteriously.
+
+- The initialization of the readline function can now be invoked by a C 
+extension through PyOS_ReadlineInit().
+
+- There's now an externally visible pointer PyImport_FrozenModules which 
+can be changed by an embedding application.
+
+- The argument parsing functions now support a new format character 'D' to 
+specify complex numbers.
+
+- Various memory leaks plugged and bugs fixed.
+
+- Improved support for posix threads (now that real implementations are 
+beginning to apepar).  Still no fully functioning semaphores.
+
+- Some various and sundry improvements and new entries in the Tools 
+directory.
+
+
 =====================================
 ==> Release 1.3 (13 October 1995) <==
 =====================================