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Write some entries in the "Other changes" section 

Write description of .encode()/.decode for the Unicode section
Bump version number
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Andrew M. Kuchling 2001-07-16 13:39:08 +00:00
parent d65ca7231a
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Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew22.tex
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@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
% $Id$
\title{What's New in Python 2.2}
\release{0.01}
\release{0.02}
\author{A.M. Kuchling}
\authoraddress{\email{akuchlin@mems-exchange.org}}
\begin{document}
@ -317,8 +317,42 @@ Schemenauer, with fixes from the Python Labs crew.}
%======================================================================
\section{Unicode Changes}
XXX I have to figure out what the changes mean to users.
(--enable-unicode configure switch)
Python's Unicode support has been enhanced a bit in 2.2. Unicode
strings are usually stored as UCS-2, as 16-bit unsigned integers.
Python 2.2 can also be compiled to use UCS-4, 32-bit unsigned integers
by supplying \code{--enable-unicode=ucs4} to the configure script.
XXX explain surrogates? I have to figure out what the changes mean to users.
Since their introduction, Unicode strings (XXX and regular strings in
2.1?) have supported an \method{encode()} method to convert the
string to a selected encoding such as UTF-8 or Latin-1. A symmetric
\method{decode(\optional{\var{encoding}})} method has been added to
both 8-bit and Unicode strings in 2.2, which assumes that the string
is in the specified encoding and decodes it. This means that
\method{encode()} and \method{decode()} can be called on both types of
strings, and can be used for tasks not directly related to Unicode.
For example, codecs have been added for UUencoding, MIME's base-64
encoding, and compression with the \module{zlib} module.
\begin{verbatim}
>>> s = """Here is a lengthy piece of redundant, overly verbose,
... and repetitive text.
... """
>>> data = s.encode('zlib')
>>> data
'x\x9c\r\xc9\xc1\r\x80 \x10\x04\xc0?Ul...'
>>> data.decode('zlib')
'Here is a lengthy piece of redundant, overly verbose,\nand repetitive text.\n'
>>> print s.encode('uu')
begin 666 <data>
M2&5R92!I<R!A(&QE;F=T:'D@<&EE8V4@;V8@<F5D=6YD86YT+"!O=F5R;'D@
>=F5R8F]S92P*86YD(')E<&5T:71I=F4@=&5X="X*
end
>>> "sheesh".encode('rot-13')
'furrfu'
\end{verbatim}
References: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/i18n-sig/2001-June/001107.html
and following thread.
@ -510,59 +544,54 @@ changes are:
\begin{itemize}
\item Keyword arguments passed to builtin functions that don't take them
now cause a \exception{TypeError} exception to be raised, with the
message "\var{function} takes no keyword arguments".
\item The code for the MacOS port for Python, maintained by Jack
Jansen, is now kept in the main Python CVS tree.
\item The new license introduced with Python 1.6 wasn't
GPL-compatible. This is fixed by some minor textual changes to the
2.2 license, so Python can now be embedded inside a GPLed program
again. The license changes were also applied to the Python 2.0.1
and 2.1.1 releases.
\item Profiling and tracing functions can now be implemented in C,
which can operate at much higher speeds than Python-based functions
and should reduce the overhead of enabling profiling and tracing, so
it will be of interest to authors of development environments for
Python. Two new C functions were added to Python's API,
\cfunction{PyEval_SetProfile()} and \cfunction{PyEval_SetTrace()}.
The existing \function{sys.setprofile()} and \function{sys.settrace()}
functions still exist, and have simply been changed to use the new
C-level interface.
\item The \file{Tools/scripts/ftpmirror.py} script
now parses a \file{.netrc} file, if you have one.
(Contributed by XXX.) Patch \#430754: Makes ftpmirror.py .netrc aware
\item Some features of the object returned by the \function{xrange()}
function are now deprecated, and trigger warnings when they're
accessed; they'll disappear in Python 2.3. \class{xrange} objects
tried to pretend they were full sequence types by supporting slicing,
sequence multiplication, and the \keyword{in} operator, but these
features were rarely used and therefore buggy. (The implementation of
the \keyword{in} operator had an off-by-one error introduced in Python
XXX that no one noticed until XXX, XXX years later. The
\method{tolist()} method and the \member{start}, \member{stop}, and
\member{step} attributes are also being deprecated. At the C level,
the fourth argument to the \cfunction{PyRange_New()} function,
\samp{repeat}, has also been deprecated.
\item XXX C API: Reorganization of object calling
\item XXX .encode(), .decode() string methods. Interesting new codecs such
as zlib.
The call_object()
function, originally in ceval.c, begins a new life as the official
API PyObject_Call(). It is also much simplified: all it does is call
the tp_call slot, or raise an exception if that's NULL.
\item MacOS code now in main CVS tree.
\item SF patch \#418147 Fixes to allow compiling w/ Borland, from Stephen Hansen.
\item Add support for Windows using "mbcs" as the default Unicode encoding when dealing with the file system. As discussed on python-dev and in patch 410465.
\item Lots of patches to dictionaries; measure performance improvement, if any.
\item Patch \#430754: Makes ftpmirror.py .netrc aware
\item Fix bug reported by Tim Peters on python-dev:
Keyword arguments passed to builtin functions that don't take them are
ignored.
>>> {}.clear(x=2)
>>>
instead of
>>> {}.clear(x=2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: clear() takes no keyword arguments
\item Make the license GPL-compatible.
\item This change adds two new C-level APIs: PyEval_SetProfile() and
PyEval_SetTrace(). These can be used to install profile and trace
functions implemented in C, which can operate at much higher speeds
than Python-based functions. The overhead for calling a C-based
profile function is a very small fraction of a percent of the overhead
involved in calling a Python-based function.
The machinery required to call a Python-based profile or trace
function been moved to sysmodule.c, where sys.setprofile() and
sys.setprofile() simply become users of the new interface.
\item 'Advanced' xrange() features now deprecated: repeat, slice,
contains, tolist(), and the start/stop/step attributes. This includes
removing the 4th ('repeat') argument to PyRange_New().
\item The call_object() function, originally in ceval.c, begins a new life
%as the official API PyObject_Call(). It is also much simplified: all
%it does is call the tp_call slot, or raise an exception if that's
%NULL.
%The subsidiary functions (call_eval_code2(), call_cfunction(),
%call_instance(), and call_method()) have all been moved to the file
%implementing their particular object type, renamed according to the
@ -576,6 +605,12 @@ removing the 4th ('repeat') argument to PyRange_New().
%PyEval_GetFuncDesc(), PyEval_EvalCodeEx() (formerly get_func_name(),
%get_func_desc(), and eval_code2().
\item XXX SF patch \#418147 Fixes to allow compiling w/ Borland, from Stephen Hansen.
\item XXX Add support for Windows using "mbcs" as the default Unicode encoding when dealing with the file system. As discussed on python-dev and in patch 410465.
\item XXX Lots of patches to dictionaries; measure performance improvement, if any.
\end{itemize}