Begginers questions on different distributions of py

[Ravi Teja Bhupatiraju]

"Player" <asif at go-away-spammer.com> wrote in message news:<cgga5m$v1n$1 at newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>...
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> Hello all
> 
>  Decided to try and teach myself Python again for my 1st language, after
> having a look at perl again and a few others and finally deciding that if I
> was ever going to fully teach myself a language it would be Python that
> would be the one I could adapt to the quickest and easiest.  = Basically
> meaning the syntax seems to really settle well in my brain, more so than any
> of the other languages :)
> 
> Anyway first things first, I bought The Python Cookbook for a RW reference
> and something python related to read in the rw and bounce ideas from.
> 
> Then I cam to wanting a download of the language, and I had the choice of
> two distros, Activestates ActivePython and the Python websites original
> Python distribution.
> 
> My question is this really, what is the python websites original Python
> distribution missing that ActiveStates has.
> And also vice versa - seen as how the Activestates distribution is lagging
> behind the python websites distribution by a release or two.
> ActivePython = ActivePython-2.3.2-232-win32-ix86.msi size = 16,687KB
> Python webiste distribution = Python-2.3.4.exe size = 9,658 KB
> 
> So what's missing out of the Python distro that is in Activestates distro?
> And vice versa the other way?
> :)
> 
> Thanks in advance
> M.B

You should be OK with either. Personally I prefer the ActiveState's
distribution. Active Python = Python + win32all + slightly more
documentation.

My previous reason for using ActivePython was that it had docs in HTML
help which was easier to search on. If I recall correctly, the
standard distribution now has the docs in HTML help too. I also prefer
Pythonwin (included in win32all) to IDLE and like it set as my default
Python editor (though I end up using SciTE for most part). As you can
see, these are all minor preferences and you should be fine with
either. There is nothing in ActivePython that you cannot install or
get for free later.