This two week period saw the release of the first alpha of Python 2.1,
and the second alpha was released a few days into February.  There's a
lot of bugfixing going on, much of which isn't of interest here, but
there were a few general discussions worth noting.


2.1alpha1
=========

The first alpha of Python 2.1 was released on January 22, and is the
debut of Python 2.1.  It didn't compile cleanly on Cygwin, and the new
autodetecting build system needs some more work to support more
platforms correctly, but no major problems or brown paper bag bugs
showed up.  

2.1alpha2 was subsequently released on February 2, slightly out of the
bounds of this summary.  2.1a2 incorporated the nested scopes from PEP
227 and the weak reference type from PEP 205.

A draft of "What's New in Python 2.1" is available, and will be continuously
updated until 2.1final is shipped:
	http://www.amk.ca/python/2.1/


unistr()
========

M.-A. Lemburg checked in a unistr() built-in, but later backed out the
change after subsequent discussion.  str() takes any Python object and
converts it to a string, and unistr() would take any object and return
a Unicode string.  ?!ng wondered why the existing unicode() built-in
shouldn't do this -- currently it only accepts a string and an optional
encoding -- or should this functionality be added to str()?

This also raised the question of how a type could return a Unicode
representation of itself.  Should the tp_str slot in the Py_TypeObject
struct be permitted to return either an 8-bit or a Unicode string, or
should a tp_unicode slot be added?  Some discussion followed, but no
clear answer was apparent, so unistr() was removed.  This issue will
probably have to wait for a PEP to be written, which means that it'll
have to wait until 2.2.


Sets
====

Eric S. Raymond posted the docs for a set module he's written with an
eye toward getting it into the standard library.  "The \module{set}
module defines functions for treating lists and other sequences as
mathematical sets, and defines a set class that uses these operations
natively and overloads Python's standard operator set."
	http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-January/012005.html

But there's already a PEP for a set type, #218 by Greg Wilson:
	http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0218.html

Reconciling the two proposals doesn't seem difficult, but opinion was
divided: are sets so commonly used that they should be in the standard
library, particularly if dictionaries can be used to implement many
common set operations?  

?!ng pointed out that simply allowing "if key in dict" would make
using dictionaries as sets a bit more natural.  /F agreed, and GvR
added "You know, I've long resisted this, but I agree now -- this is
the right thing."  Thomas Wouters submitted a patch, but it hasn't yet
been checked in.  

A subthread wondered about the related question of 'for X in
dictionary:' Should this do anything, and if so, what?  X could be
"key" or "key, value", but the best choice isn't obvious.  Another
subthread drifted into the question of the Batteries Included
distribution proposed by Moshe Zadka in PEP 206, and yet another one
proposed dictionaries that can be marked as unmodified ("frozen" or
"locked").  No clear conclusions were made, and the problems seem
messy enough that a PEP will be required, so this is another thing
likely to be postponed until 2.2.


Envoi
=====

This will be the last python-dev summary I write, accounting for its
rushed and sketchy quality.

The goal of these summaries has been to make the discussions on
python-dev more visible to the community, letting people offer timely
comments while a thread is still reasonably current and fresh in
memory.  Unfortunately that doesn't seem to happen, and no messages to
python-dev are spurred by them.  Ideally people would come forward to
say "The last summary mentioned you were talking about X. I use X a
lot, and here's what I think: ...", but that isn't happening.

The release of 2.1 offers a second calibration on their effectiveness.
2.1 is the first Python release to have been carried out using PEPs as
the mechanism, so there are no sizable changes in 2.1 that don't have
a corresponding PEP.  Yet many people were *surprised* by some of the
changes in Python 2.1 such as function attributes and nested scopes,
even though PEPs were written and discussed, often in lengthy threads
months ago.  

To me, this makes it crystal clear that the summaries aren't achieving
their goal of making the development process more transparent to the
community.  Perhaps giving the PEPs higher visibility -- posting
announcements of status changes and new PEPs to
comp.lang.python.announce, for example -- would do a better job, and
it would definitely require less effort.  In any case, I feel there's
no point in continuing to write them.

(Should anyone want to volunteer to continue writing them, please do
so; contact me if you want copies of the previous summaries for a
complete archive.)

My thanks to the various people who've offered comments and
encouragement along the way; you've all kept me going over the last 7
months...