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> Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!