Python 2.1b1 released

[Guido van Rossum]

With great pleasure I announce the release of Python 2.1b1.  This is a
big step towards the release of Python 2.1; the final release is
expected to take place in mid April.

Find out all about 2.1b1, including docs and downloads (Windows
installer and source tarball), at the 2.1 release page:

    http://www.python.org/2.1/


WHAT'S NEW?
-----------

For the big picture, see Andrew Kuchling's What New in Python 2.1:

    http://www.amk.ca/python/2.1/

For more detailed release notes, see SourceForge:

    http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=25924

The big news since 2.1a2 was released a month ago:

- Nested Scopes (PEP 227)[*] are now optional.  They must be enabled
  by including the statement "from __future__ import nested_scopes" at
  the beginning of a module (PEP 236).  Nested scopes will be a
  standard feature in Python 2.2.

- Compile-time warnings are now generated for a number of conditions
  that will break or change in meaning when nested scopes are enabled.

- The new tool *pydoc* displays module documentation, extracted from
  doc strings.  It works in a text environment as well as in a GUI
  environment (where it cooperates with a web browser).  On Windows,
  this is in the Start menu as "Module Docs".

- Case-sensitive import.  On systems with case-insensitive but
  case-preserving file systems, such as Windows (including Cygwin) and
  MacOS, import now continues to search the next directory on sys.path
  when a case mismatch is detected.  See PEP 235 for the full scoop.

- New platforms.  Python 2.1 now fully supports MacOS X, Cygwin, and
  RISCOS.

[*] For PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals), see the PEP index:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/

I hope to see you all next week at the Python9 conference in Long
Beach, CA:

    http://www.python9.org

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)