Welcome to (Relaunch) Issue 4 of Py!

This Issue is designed to give existing Py subscribers something to read until we launch the new Py late January 2004. We will not be accepting new subscriptions until we launch Issue 5.

Articles:   What's new in Python 2.3? by: Andrew M. Kuchling Every Python release has had a different complexion, ranging from radical to conservative. For example, Python 2.0 was a radical release: it added Unicode, string methods, cyclic garbage collection, and new syntax (print » f(*args, **keyworddict)). Python 2.1 was middle-of-the-road: it had one radical change, the introduction of nested scopes, and a number of less noticeable changes and new modules. Python 2.2 was another radical release, adding new-style classes alongside the existing object model and new language features, most notably generators and iterators   Chaco Properties by: David C. Morrill Python is a weakly typed language, which as any experienced Python programmer knows has both good and bad points. The main purpose of the properties package is to help address cases where weak typing leads to problems. In particular, the motivation for properties came as a direct result of work done on Chaco, an Open Source scientific plotting package. Chaco provides a set of high-level plotting objects, each of which has a number of user settable attributes, such as line color, text font, relative location, and so on.   OPINION: Software Holy Wars by: Paul Ford Sometimes, instead of asking what a piece of software does, I ask what it means. What mix of social forces and individual desires led to this code being created? What cultural effects are produced by people using it?   Creating Crossword Puzzles with Python by: Ed March Ever try laying out crossword puzzles by hand? Ever try writing a computer program to generate them? Well you won't have to do either since this article describes a Python program that does this work for you.

Note about Py: This is going to be a much shorter than usual Issue. Its intended to tide our subscribers over while we work on Issue 5 which we will publish at the beginning of January 2004. The articles in this edition were submitted to Py before beehive assumed responsibility for publication. Py now releases articles "throughout the Quarter" This means that instead of all articles being released at once they are published roughly two weeks apart. This allows us to take the necessary time to work with authors and deliver great Python articles. We will accepting new subscribers in February 2004 when we will publish Issue 5 of Py. Please visit our Migration FAQ for the latest updates.