From b1992d0ec6fd8795fd4d6951c3840d8ba334f886 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Andrew M. Kuchling" Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:05:12 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Add introductory paragraphs summarizing the release; minor edits --- Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew25.tex | 43 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------- 1 file changed, 33 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-) diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew25.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew25.tex index 2ce0a266102..b78bd9435d1 100644 --- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew25.tex +++ b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew25.tex @@ -15,18 +15,41 @@ \maketitle \tableofcontents -This article explains the new features in Python 2.5. No release date -for Python 2.5 has been set; it will probably be released in the -autumn of 2006. \pep{356} describes the planned release schedule. +This article explains the new features in Python 2.5. The final +release of Python 2.5 is scheduled for August 2006; +\pep{356} describes the planned release schedule. Comments, suggestions, and error reports are welcome; please e-mail them to the author or open a bug in the Python bug tracker. % XXX Compare with previous release in 2 - 3 sentences here. +The changes in Python 2.5 are an interesting mix of language and library +changes. The library changes +will be more important to Python's user community, I think, +because several widely-useful packages were added to the standard library; +the additions include +ElementTree for XML processing (section~\ref{module-etree}), +the SQLite database module (section~\ref{module-sqlite}), +and the \module{ctypes} module for calling C functions (\section~\ref{module-ctypes}). -This article doesn't attempt to provide a complete specification of -the new features, but instead provides a convenient overview. For -full details, you should refer to the documentation for Python 2.5. +The language changes are of middling significance. Some pleasant new +features were added, but most of them aren't features that you'll use +every day. Conditional expressions were finally added to the language +using a novel syntax; see section~\ref{pep-308}. The new +'\keyword{with}' statement will make writing cleanup code easier +(section~\ref{pep-343}). Values can now be passed into generators +(section~\ref{pep-342}). Imports are now visible as either absolute +or relative (section~\ref{pep-328}). Some corner cases of exception +handling are handled better (section~\ref{pep-341}). All these +improvements are worthwhile, but they're improvements to one specific +language feature or another; none of them are broad modifications to +Python's semantics. + + +This article doesn't attempt to be a complete specification of the new +features, but instead is a brief introduction to each new feature. +For full details, you should refer to the documentation for Python +2.5. % XXX add hyperlink when the documentation becomes available online. If you want to understand the complete implementation and design rationale, refer to the PEP for a particular new feature. @@ -36,10 +59,10 @@ rationale, refer to the PEP for a particular new feature. \section{PEP 308: Conditional Expressions\label{pep-308}} For a long time, people have been requesting a way to write -conditional expressions, expressions that return value A or value B -depending on whether a Boolean value is true or false. A conditional -expression lets you write a single assignment statement that has the -same effect as the following: +conditional expressions, which are expressions that return value A or +value B depending on whether a Boolean value is true or false. A +conditional expression lets you write a single assignment statement +that has the same effect as the following: \begin{verbatim} if condition: