scripting language newbie - compatibility

[Cameron Laird]

In article <8mmg500rtm at news1.newsguy.com>,
Alex Martelli <alex at magenta.com> wrote:
>"Paul Duffin" <pduffin at hursley.ibm.com> wrote in message
>news:398EA451.CBFB72 at hursley.ibm.com...
>    [snip]
>> I had a feeling that the Windows version of Python while being part of the
>> core was supported seperately in some way.
>
>No such thing, that I know of.  I've just downloaded the latest beta of
>Python's new version (1.6b1), and the source tarball only comes in one
>flavour; I've built it under Windows, but it uses just the same sources as
>all the rest, and I've posted the bug reports about the few minor glitches
>I've found (in a couple of the tests, actually, not in the Python modules
>they were testing; I've never seen such a _solid_ "beta 1" in 25 years of
>involvement with software!-) to just the same sourceforge group where
>I would have posted bug-reports about any other platform.
You're both right.

Alex, the historical fact is that Mark Hammond
and others did prodigious work to make WinPy as
convenient as it currently is.  Certainly Python's
source was designed from the beginning to be 
portable, but there's a considerable distance be-
tween that rather abstract desideratum and the
current level of comfort Python gives to native
Win* citizens.

So, yes, the sources now support Win* just as
well as any other OS.  That's only because of
deliberate effort, though.
			.
		[other important
		points about win32,
		events, Stubs, I/O
		abstraction, ...]
			.
			.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html