| Changes in 2.2 since 2.1.1 |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| These release notes refer to Mac-specific changes only. See NEWS (in the Misc folder) |
| for machine-independent changes. |
| |
| |
| - The main change is that all toolbox modules have moved to a package called Carbon. |
| So things like "import Res" should be changed to "from Carbon import Res", and |
| "from Res import *" to "from Carbon.Res import *". Please see the readme file for |
| some open questions and join the discussions on pythonmac-sig if you have anything |
| to contribute. Aside from reducing clutter this change will also benefit the |
| port to Mach-O/OSX Python later. |
| - All toolbox modules have been updated to Universal Headers 3.4. |
| - Toolbox modules are weaklinked against InterfaceLib (for PPC builds) and raise |
| an exception when you call an unimplemented one on an old MacOS. |
| - On input MacPython now accepts either \n (unix style) or \r (mac style) newlines |
| for text files. This behaviour can be turned off with a preference. |
| This is an experimental feature; again: feedback is requested. |
| - The IDE looks better on OS X, but still not as good as on OS9. |
| - Command-dot handling has been improved a lot: scripts are now much easier to interrupt, |
| and they only scan for cmd-. while in the foreground. |
| - "Copy" from the MacPython console window was always disabled. Fixed. |
| - This release should run on MacOS 8.1 again. |
| - A new, rather different GUSI I/O library is used. |
| - time.time() returns positive values again. |
| - There is a new module macresource which makes it easier to open a resource file |
| accompanying your script when the script is not (yet) converted to an applet. |
| This module will later also do the right thing in Mach-O/OSX Python. |
| - (Carbon only) experimental modules Carbon.CG (CoreGraphics) and CarbonEvt have |
| been added. |
| - A new, experimental module hfsplus is included, which gives access to some of the |
| functionality of the HFS+ API. |
| - A new, experimental module gives access to Carbon Events. |
| - Threads had a stack that was too small for many serious Python applications (20K). |
| They now get 64K. There is still no overflow check, though. |
| - Garbage collection and the gc module have (finally) been enabled. |
| - EasyDialogs.ProgressBar now has indeterminate progressbars if you specify maxval=0. |
| This is also the new default. Patch supplied by Dean Draayer. |
| - There are new preferences for enabling old-style division warnings and for |
| accepting unix-style newlines in text input files. These can also be set during |
| startup, and in addition you can select very verbose import tracing. |
| - The NavServices override for StandardFile has moved from early startup to the |
| time you import macfs. This speeds up MacPython startup. |
| - Various outdated scripts have been moved to :Mac:Unsupported. |
| - Various outdated items from :Mac:Lib:test have been removed. |
| - C Developers: you know have control over the Python console if you are embedding |
| MacPython in another application, thanks to Alexandre Parenteau. :Mac:Demo:embed.html |
| has very minimal documentation. |
| - BuildCGIApplet works again. |
| - The CodeWarrior OSA suite missed quit(). It is back. |
| - Contrib:morefindertools is gone, the functionality has been integrated into |
| the standard module findertools.py. |
| |
| Known problems |
| -------------- |
| |
| This list is probably incomplete, more problems may be listed on the MacPython homepage, |
| http://www.cwi.nl/~jack/macpython.html. |
| |
| - MacPython 2.2 (and MacPython 2.1) will not run correctly on a multiprocessor MacOS X |
| machine, it will quickly deadlock during I/O operations. The GUSI I/O library is suspected, |
| hints/clues/workarounds are solicited. This problem also occurs intermittently on fast |
| OS X single-processor machines. |
| - Tkinter does not work under Carbon. |
| - The IDE and Tkinter do not work together. Run tkinter programs under PythonInterpreter. |
| - Tkinter file events do not work, unless you have opened the file through Tcl (but then |
| you cannot access it from Python). |
| - The IDE object and class browser look funny on OSX, but they work fine. |
| - Aliases may not work in sys.path entries. |
| - PythonInterpreter used interactively will eat a lot of processor cycles. You should use |
| PythonIDE for interactive work and PythonInterpreter for scripts only. This is especially |
| true under OSX. |
| - AliasMenu 2.2 conflicts with the Carbon version of Python. This is most likely a problem |
| with AliasMenu (which is from 1999, and thus predates Carbon altogether). |