[Python-Dev] Will Python die?

[Thomas Wouters]

On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 09:30:16PM +0800, Sin Hang Kin wrote:

> I am really worry, before putting more effort to it, can any body explain
> the current status of python 2?
> Unicode is a must for my work, without it, python is useless. So I need
> python 2, if 2.0 will die, I better switch beforehand.

> Sorry!!! but it is very important.

You betcha it's important ! What do those five people at PythonLabs do when
Python dies ? They'd be out of a job ! Can't have that, now can we ;)

Seriously, though: Python is not dead. Python 2 is not dead. CNRI and BeOpen
are trying to resolve some 'issues', and the last news is that CNRI is going
to release Python 1.6. I assume it'll be based off the 1.6 alphas, and those
included unicode.

BeOpen / PythonLabs will probably start by releasing Python 2.0. This'll
likely have to wait until 1.6 is released, but the python dev team is
working hard to make 2.0 a complete release on its own. It will include
unicode, probably with less bugs and problems than 1.6 ;-) It will also
include a ton of other things, which are being worked on right now.

(Some of the things that might be included in 2.0 are list comprehensions (a
way to replace map, filter and reduce), augmented assignment (x += y and
such), online help() facility for the interpreter, possibly some new library
modules, and many enhancements to the current standard library.)

However, because of the issues between CNRI and BeOpen, it's completely
unclear when Python 2.0 will be released. (Or, indeed, when CNRI's Python
1.6 will be released.) If you need the unicode support now, I'd suggest
grabbing the CVS tree and see how it suits your needs. If it doesn't, give
people here some feedback, so they can fix the problems or suggest ways to
work around it. There are likely to be some changes to unicode (the
functionality of '\x' and '\u' for instance) but the code is pretty solid as
it is.

Hope that helps ;)
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net>

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