Add some news for 2.1b2. I'd still like someone else to add news
about these packages:
- distutils
- xml
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index b57d5a1..8421848 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -1,13 +1,65 @@
What's New in Python 2.1 beta 2?
================================
+(Unlisted are many fixed bugs, more documentation, etc.)
+
Core language, builtins, and interpreter
+- The nested scopes work (enabled by "from __future__ import
+ nested_scopes") is completed; in particular, the future now extends
+ into code executed through exec, eval() and execfile(), and into the
+ interactive interpreter.
+
+- When calling a base class method (e.g. BaseClass.__init__(self)),
+ this is now allowed even if self is not strictly spoken a class
+ instance (e.g. when using metaclasses or the Don Beaudry hook).
+
+- Slice objects are now comparable but not hashable; this prevents
+ dict[:] from being accepted but meaningless.
+
+- Complex division is now calculated using less braindead algorithms.
+ This doesn't change semantics except it's more likely to give useful
+ results in extreme cases. Complex repr() now uses full precision
+ like float repr().
+
+- sgmllib.py now calls handle_decl() for simple <!...> declarations.
+
Standard library
-- A new module Tix was added, which wraps the Tix extension library for Tk.
- With that module, it is not necessary to statically link Tix with _tkinter,
- since Tix will be loaded with Tcl's "package require" command.
+- unittest.py, a unit testing framework by Steve Purcell (PyUNIT,
+ inspired by JUnit), is now part of the standard library. You now
+ have a choice of two testing frameworks: unittest requires you to
+ write testcases as separate code, doctest gathers them from
+ docstrings. Both approaches have their advantages and
+ disadvantages.
+
+- A new module Tix was added, which wraps the Tix extension library
+ for Tk. With that module, it is not necessary to statically link
+ Tix with _tkinter, since Tix will be loaded with Tcl's "package
+ require" command. See Demo/tix/.
+
+- tzparse.py is now obsolete.
+
+- In gzip.py, the seek() and tell() methods are removed -- they were
+ non-functional anyway, and it's better if callers can test for their
+ existence with hasattr().
+
+Python/C API
+
+- PyDict_Next(): it is now safe to call PyDict_SetItem() with a key
+ that's already in the dictionary during a PyDict_Next() iteration.
+ This used to fail occasionally when a dictionary resize operation
+ could be triggered that would rehash all the keys. All other
+ modifications to the dictionary are still off-limits during a
+ PyDict_Next() iteration!
+
+- New extended APIs related to passing compiler variables around.
+
+- New abstract APIs PyObject_IsInstance(), PyObject_IsSubclass()
+ implement isinstance() and issubclass().
+
+- Py_BuildValue() now has a "D" conversion to create a Python complex
+ number from a Py_complex C value.
What's New in Python 2.1 beta 1?
================================