Partial progress on NEWS.

Misc/NEWS

@@ -4,8 +4,8 @@ Python News
 
 (editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
 
-What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate?
-===========================================
+What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
+=============================================
 
 Core and builtins
 -----------------
@@ -24,6 +24,25 @@ Core and builtins
 
   is raised now.
 
+- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
+  fixed.  Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
+  reporting an error.  SF patch #763201.
+
+- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
+  module.  In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
+  earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
+  not be found on the file system.  Fixes SF bug #771097.
+
+- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
+  builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
+  
+- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
+  and tuple that define an itemsize.  Earlier releases of Python 2.3
+  allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
+
+- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build.  SF bug
+  #770247.
+
 Extension modules
 -----------------
 
@@ -37,9 +56,20 @@ Extension modules
 - time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
   contained within the _strptime module.
 
+- bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a
+  cursor.  SF bug #763298.
+
+- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
+  not consistent with the object's repr slot.
+
+- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
+  character or block devices.  SF patch #708374.
+
 Library
 -------
 
+- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
+
 - doctest now examines all docstrings by default.  Previously, it would
   skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
   naming convention).  The old default created too much of a risk that
@@ -49,16 +79,17 @@ Library
   is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
   or Tester().
 
-- Closing a dumbdbm database more than once is now harmless (it used to
-  raise a nuisance exception on the second close).
+- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed.  It's vital
+  that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
+  and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
+  dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
+  database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
+  prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
+  get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised.  The race
+  has been repaired.  A sync() method was also added so that shelve
+  can guarantee data is written to disk.
 
-- It's vital that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the
-  on-disk data and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent
-  states.  dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close
-  the database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit()
-  could prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__()
-  to get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised.  The race
-  has been repaired.
+  The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
 
 - The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes.  That they
   weren't before was an oversight.
@@ -69,14 +100,27 @@ Library
 - SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
   which could occur with Tk 8.4
 
+- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
+  to child processes.
+
+- SF bug 765238: Add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
+
 Tools/Demos
 -----------
 
 - SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
 
+- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
+
 Build
 -----
 
+- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
+
+- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system.  SF
+  patch #764560.
+
+
 C API
 -----