Changes in 2.0b1 since 1.5.2 ---------------------------- These release notes refer to Mac-specific changes only. See NEWS (in the Misc folder) for machine-independent changes. Unfortunately I have messed my administration up, so I can't give complete Mac-specific release notes for the changes in this release. So, I will have to leave it at the highlights: - 68K support has been dropped, this release is PPC only. - Threads support (through standard Python threads module). - Tkinter works again! At least: it doesn't immedeately crash in obvious ways. - Appearance support through App module and added calls in many other modules. Most dialogs and applets have also been converted to Appearance. There's also a ControlAccessor module that handles [GS]etControlData with their plethora of argument types. - Navigation Services support, with macfs StandardFile calls transparently replaced by their NavServices counterparts. - Offscreen QuickDraw and GWorld support through Qdoffs module. - Drag manager support (Drag module). - Much better CGI support and examples, see :Mac:Tools:CGI. - Better OSA/AppleEvent support. - Up/downcasting of handle-based types is now unified and implemented in the inherting module, e.g. handleobj = ctlobj.as_Resource() ctlobj = Ctl.as_Control(handle) - Added macos.FreeMem(), MaxBlock() and CompactMem(), mainly so apps in Python can give low-memory warnings. - MediaDescr module parses some QuickTime media descriptions (but definitely not all). What is not in this distribution -------------------------------- - The garbage collection mods to 2.0 have not been enabled, mainly due to lack of test-time. - Stackless Python/microthreads hasn't been ported to 2.0 yet. If/when it becomes available Just will undoubtedly announce it on pythonmac-sig. - Carbon support is not in here, but should be happening as soon as GUSI is ready. - Distutils is not in here, again due to lack of time. Known problems -------------- This list is far from complete, more problems may be listed on the MacPython homepage, http://www.cwi.nl/~jack/macpython.html. - The IDE and Tkinter do not work together. Run tkinter programs under PythonInterpreter. - Aliases do not work in sys.path entries. - Once you have used multiple threads you cannot raise KeyboardInterrupt anymore: typing command-. will immedeately exit the interpreter. - The gdbm module does not work.