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/)