[pydotorg-www] Fwd: Misleading or incomplete 64-bit download information

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Am 25.08.2010 22:45, schrieb Michael Foord:
>  Suggestion on adding some information about Windows 64bit builds to the
> download pages.

Since this note is yours: feel free to change it. It is true that you
can't load a 32-bit extension into a 64-bit interpreter, or vice versa.
It also fails to mention that you not only need the processor, but also
a 64-bit version of Windows to run them.

I'm not sure how much of a 64-bit tutorial the release note need to be.
It fails to mention a lot of other things, also, e.g. that the maximum
value of the int type is different on a 64-bit python, that you may get
negative hashes on a 64-bit Python when you only get positive numbers
on a 32-bit Python, that all pointers require two times as much memory,
so that the memory consumption goes up, and that you can just as well
run the 32-bit Python version on a 64-bit Windows, etc.

In short: everybody confronted with 64-bit computing for the first
time will get confused about something, and then demand that this
specific something is prominently displayed in the documentation.

Regards,
Martin