Done with adding changes from 1.4 till 1.5a3.

Misc/NEWS

@@ -1,15 +1,30 @@
 What's new in this release?
 ===========================
 
-Below is a partial list of changes.  This list is much more detailed than 
-previous; however it is still not complete.  I did go through my CVS logs 
-but ran out of time.  Some changes made beteen Oct 1996 and April 1997
-have not yet been noted.
+Below is a list of all relevant changes since the release 1.4, up till
+the release of 1.5a3.  At the end is a list of changes made since
+1.5a3 that will be in 1.5a4; this list is not yet complete and will be
+merged with the main list later.
 
+A note on attributions: while I have sprinkled some names throughout
+here, I'm grateful to many more people who remain anonymous.  You may
+find your name in the ACKS file.  If you believe you deserve more
+credit, let me know and I'll add you to the list!
+
+
+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
@@ -18,6 +33,10 @@ 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
@@ -48,12 +67,6 @@ 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 sort() methods for lists no longer uses the C library qsort(); I
-wrote my own quicksort implementation, with help 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 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
@@ -65,6 +78,25 @@ 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
 -----------
@@ -138,21 +170,18 @@ 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 generate code for this.
-However, the text is displayed as part of the traceback!  There's also
-a -O option to the interpreter that removes SET_LINENO instructions,
-assert statements; it uses and produces .pyo files instead of .pyc
-files (the line numbers are still available in the .pyo file, as a
-separate table; but the removal of the SET_LINENO instructions means
-that the debugger can't set breakpoints on lines in -O mode).  In the
-future it should be possible to write external bytecode optimizers
-that create better optimized .pyo files.  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.
+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
@@ -161,7 +190,8 @@ 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 has been deleted.
+- 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.
@@ -169,6 +199,20 @@ patches to catch floating point exceptions, at the moment).
 - 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
@@ -197,9 +241,9 @@ 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.  BTW, the
-dictionary implementation file is now called dictobject.c rather than
-the confusing mappingobject.c.
+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__.
@@ -220,13 +264,20 @@ phase is still random.
 global variable __builtins__ -- an empty directory will be provided
 by default.
 
-- Guido's corollary to the "Don Beaudry hack": it is now possible to do
-metaprogramming by using an instance as a base class.  Not for the
+- 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.
+__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
@@ -234,6 +285,27 @@ 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
 ---------------------
@@ -243,13 +315,7 @@ 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.  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 can read both
-formats).  A new helper module, copy_reg.py, is provided to register
-extensions to the pickling code.  (These are now identical to the
-release 0.3 from Digital Creations.)
+still significant.
 
 - New extension module zlibmodule.c, interfacing to the free zlib
 library (gzip compatible compression).  There's also a module gzip.py
@@ -273,7 +339,16 @@ 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.
+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).  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
@@ -282,6 +357,15 @@ 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.
 
@@ -294,16 +378,19 @@ promiscuous mode.)  Theres' also a new function getprotobyname().
 - 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 -- Fredril Lundh promised me a fix that I never received.)
+- 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 method
+- 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.
+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.
@@ -315,7 +402,27 @@ 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!
+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
@@ -341,7 +448,10 @@ 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.
+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
@@ -353,6 +463,15 @@ 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.
@@ -380,8 +499,8 @@ 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.*
-versions are now treated the same; and it is now thread-safe (by not
-using the regex module).
+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.
 
@@ -390,8 +509,9 @@ 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 added
-recognition of some non-standard date formats, by Lars Wirzenius.
+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
@@ -404,6 +524,7 @@ Wirzenius.)  (Of course, you should be using cStringIO for performance.)
 
 - 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
@@ -412,13 +533,20 @@ 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() method which is like qupte() but also replaces spaces
-with '+', for encoding CGI form arguments.  Catch all errors from the
-ftp module.  HTTP requests now add the Host: header line.  The proxy
+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.
+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
@@ -437,9 +565,6 @@ command line utilities.
 - Various small fixes to the nntplib.py module that I can't bother to
 document in detail.
 
-- There is a cache for results in urlparse.urlparse(); its size limit
-is set to 20 (not 2000 as it was in earlier alphas).
-
 - 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.
@@ -456,16 +581,20 @@ smarter.
 - The Writer classes in the formatter.py module now have a flush()
 method.
 
-- 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 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 module has a new function replace(str, old, new,
+- 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
@@ -473,6 +602,24 @@ 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
 ----------------------------
@@ -498,6 +645,11 @@ 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
@@ -512,6 +664,10 @@ 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
@@ -521,10 +677,24 @@ loop in ceval.c (which has more than 1000 basic blocks).
 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.
@@ -533,6 +703,14 @@ 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.
@@ -573,6 +751,10 @@ 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
@@ -588,7 +770,8 @@ 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.)
+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
@@ -602,6 +785,10 @@ PyErr_Occurred() to check (there is *no* special return value).
 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
@@ -609,6 +796,10 @@ 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
 -------
@@ -623,25 +814,57 @@ lifetime.
 
 - New standard dialog modules: tkColorChooser.py, tkCommonDialog.py,
 tkMessageBox.py, tkFileDialog.py, tkSimpleDialog.py These interface
-with the new Tk dialog scripts.  Contributed by Fredrik Lundh.
+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.)  Unfortunately, on Windows
-and Mac, Tk 8.0 no longer supports CreateFileHandler, so
-_tkinter.createfilehandler is not available on those platforms.  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).
+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
@@ -665,7 +888,7 @@ 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
-in a particular directory tree), treesync.py (a rather Guido-specific
+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.
@@ -705,13 +928,19 @@ 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.
+- 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().
 
@@ -726,6 +955,13 @@ _tkinter.createfilehandler().
 must call it yourself.  (And you can't call it twice -- it's a fatal
 error to call it when Python is already initialized.)
 
+- 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
 ---
@@ -908,3 +1144,12 @@ added to shup up various compilers.
 - 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:....
+