ANN: Jython-2.1 released.

[Finn Bock]

I am happy to announce the release of Jython 2.1.

Jython is a Java implementation of the Python programming
language.  It allows users to compile Python source code to
Java byte codes, and run the resulting bytecodes on any Java
Virtual Machine.  It is a very seamless and smooth
integration with Java:  from Python you have complete access
to all Java libraries, can build applets, can integrate with
Java beans, and can subclass Java classes in Python and vice
versa.  Like Python, and unlike Java, Jython can also be
used interactively:  just type some Jython code at the
prompt and see the results immediately.

A java installer is available for download at the Jython website:

    http://www.jython.org/

Installation is started by running the installer class. Further 
information and tips on installation is available at:

    http://www.jython.org/install.html

Jython 2.1 is feature compatible with Python 2.1.1 and among
the new feature are:

   - Improve speed when indexing a string and iterating over a string
     in a for loop.
   - Reworked coercing model (pep-0208)
   - Added {}.popitem().
   - Improved speed for python files by buffering the RandomAccessFile.
   - Added function attributes (pep-0232)
   - Rich comparison (pep-0207)
   - Updated cPickle to handle CPython compatible unicode strings.
   - Updated sre to CPython-2.1a1
   - Added the "new" module
   - Added a PyServlet class to the util package.
   - Warning framework (pep-0230).
   - Added sys.add_classdir and sys.add_extdir.
   - Added nested scope to the interpreter (pep-0227).

   - Added ReadlineConsole class. This class will make it a lot easier
     to integrate Bablok's readline support.
   - Display Hook for Interactive Use (pep-0217)
   - Added zlib, gzip and zipfile modules.
   - Added nested scope to jythonc (pep-0227).

   - A settable console encoding will allow windows users to enter
     national characters at the command prompt.
   - Non-public classes are available when respectJavaAccessibility is
     false
   - The names of zip- and jarfiles can be added to sys.path.

   - The weakref module is now available.
   - The sys.exitfunc hook is called on exit and the sys.excepthook
     is called when an exception occur.
   - A CPython compatible xreadlines module.
   - Support for os.environ and os.system() on common platforms.
   - Includes zxJDBC for Python DB API 2.0 compatibility.

   - support for callproc() in zxJDBC is now available for most simple
     stored procedure calls.

The list of bugs fixed since the previous beta2 release includes:

   - [ #493359 ] Installer should include <EXIT> button
   - [ #495602 ] os.path.dirname() can result in an NPE
   - [ #495604 ] imp.find_module fails when None is 2 arg

A complete list of changes and differences are available here:

  http://www.jython.org/NEWS.html

Bugs can be reported to the bug manager on SourceForge:

  http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=12867

Happy New Year,
the jython-developers