Updating the Release.py. Also fixed a typo in the docs.

IPython/Release.py

@@ -1,97 +1,121 b''
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 """Release data for the IPython project."""
 
 #*****************************************************************************
 #       Copyright (C) 2001-2006 Fernando Perez <[e-mail]>
 #
 #       Copyright (c) 2001 Janko Hauser <[e-mail]> and Nathaniel Gray
 #       <[e-mail]>
 #
 #  Distributed under the terms of the BSD License.  The full license is in
 #  the file COPYING, distributed as part of this software.
 #*****************************************************************************
 
 # Name of the package for release purposes.  This is the name which labels
 # the tarballs and RPMs made by distutils, so it's best to lowercase it.
 name = 'ipython'
 
 # For versions with substrings (like 0.6.16.svn), use an extra . to separate
 # the new substring.  We have to avoid using either dashes or underscores,
 # because bdist_rpm does not accept dashes (an RPM) convention, and
 # bdist_deb does not accept underscores (a Debian convention).
 
 development = False    # change this to False to do a release
 version_base = '0.9.1'
 branch = 'ipython'
 revision = '1143'
 
 if development:
     if branch == 'ipython':
         version = '%s.bzr.r%s' % (version_base, revision)
     else:
         version = '%s.bzr.r%s.%s' % (version_base, revision, branch)
 else:
     version = version_base
 
 
-description = "Tools for interactive development in Python."
+description = "An interactive computing environment for Python"
 
 long_description = \
 """
-IPython provides a replacement for the interactive Python interpreter with
-extra functionality.
+The goal of IPython is to create a comprehensive environment for
+interactive and exploratory computing.  To support this goal, IPython
+has two main components:
 
-Main features:
+* An enhanced interactive Python shell.
+
+* An architecture for interactive parallel computing.
+
+The enhanced interactive Python shell has the following main features:
 
  * Comprehensive object introspection.
 
  * Input history, persistent across sessions.
 
  * Caching of output results during a session with automatically generated
    references.
 
  * Readline based name completion.
 
  * Extensible system of 'magic' commands for controlling the environment and
    performing many tasks related either to IPython or the operating system.
 
  * Configuration system with easy switching between different setups (simpler
    than changing $PYTHONSTARTUP environment variables every time).
 
  * Session logging and reloading.
 
  * Extensible syntax processing for special purpose situations.
 
  * Access to the system shell with user-extensible alias system.
 
- * Easily embeddable in other Python programs.
+* Easily embeddable in other Python programs and wxPython GUIs.
 
  * Integrated access to the pdb debugger and the Python profiler. 
 
- The latest development version is always available at the IPython subversion
- repository_.
+The parallel computing architecture has the following main features:
+
+* Quickly parallelize Python code from an interactive Python/IPython session.
+
+* A flexible and dynamic process model that be deployed on anything from 
+  multicore workstations to supercomputers.
+
+* An architecture that supports many different styles of parallelism, from
+  message passing to task farming.
+
+* Both blocking and fully asynchronous interfaces.
+
+* High level APIs that enable many things to be parallelized in a few lines
+  of code.
+
+* Share live parallel jobs with other users securely.  
+
+* Dynamically load balanced task farming system.
+
+* Robust error handling in parallel code.
 
-.. _repository: http://ipython.scipy.org/svn/ipython/ipython/trunk#egg=ipython-dev
+The latest development version is always available from IPython's `Launchpad 
+site <http://launchpad.net/ipython>`_.
  """
 
 license = 'BSD'
 
 authors = {'Fernando' : ('Fernando Perez','[e-mail]'),
            'Janko'    : ('Janko Hauser','[e-mail]'),
            'Nathan'   : ('Nathaniel Gray','[e-mail]'),
            'Ville'    : ('Ville Vainio','[e-mail]'),
            'Brian'    : ('Brian E Granger', '[e-mail]'),
            'Min'      : ('Min Ragan-Kelley', '[e-mail]')
            }
 
 author = 'The IPython Development Team'
 
 author_email = '[e-mail]'
 
 url = 'http://ipython.scipy.org'
 
 download_url = 'http://ipython.scipy.org/dist'
 
 platforms = ['Linux','Mac OSX','Windows XP/2000/NT','Windows 95/98/ME']
 
 keywords = ['Interactive','Interpreter','Shell','Parallel','Distributed']

docs/source/overview.txt

@@ -1,233 +1,233 b''
 .. _overview:
 
 ============
 Introduction
 ============
 
 Overview
 ========
 
 One of Python's most useful features is its interactive interpreter.
 This system allows very fast testing of ideas without the overhead of
 creating test files as is typical in most programming languages.
 However, the interpreter supplied with the standard Python distribution
 is somewhat limited for extended interactive use.
 
 The goal of IPython is to create a comprehensive environment for
-interactive and exploratory computing.  To support, this goal, IPython
+interactive and exploratory computing.  To support this goal, IPython
 has two main components:
 
 * An enhanced interactive Python shell.
 * An architecture for interactive parallel computing.
 
 All of IPython is open source (released under the revised BSD license).
 
 Enhanced interactive Python shell
 =================================
 
 IPython's interactive shell (:command:`ipython`), has the following goals,
 amongst others:
 
 1. Provide an interactive shell superior to Python's default. IPython
    has many features for object introspection, system shell access,
    and its own special command system for adding functionality when
    working interactively. It tries to be a very efficient environment
    both for Python code development and for exploration of problems
    using Python objects (in situations like data analysis).
   
 2. Serve as an embeddable, ready to use interpreter for your own
    programs. IPython can be started with a single call from inside
    another program, providing access to the current namespace. This
    can be very useful both for debugging purposes and for situations
    where a blend of batch-processing and interactive exploration are
    needed.  New in the 0.9 version of IPython is a reusable wxPython
    based IPython widget.
   
 3. Offer a flexible framework which can be used as the base
    environment for other systems with Python as the underlying
    language. Specifically scientific environments like Mathematica,
    IDL and Matlab inspired its design, but similar ideas can be
    useful in many fields.
   
 4. Allow interactive testing of threaded graphical toolkits. IPython
    has support for interactive, non-blocking control of GTK, Qt and
    WX applications via special threading flags. The normal Python
    shell can only do this for Tkinter applications.
 
 Main features of the interactive shell
 --------------------------------------
 
 * Dynamic object introspection. One can access docstrings, function
   definition prototypes, source code, source files and other details
   of any object accessible to the interpreter with a single
   keystroke (:samp:`?`, and using :samp:`??` provides additional detail).
   
 * Searching through modules and namespaces with :samp:`*` wildcards, both
   when using the :samp:`?` system and via the :samp:`%psearch` command.
 
 * Completion in the local namespace, by typing :kbd:`TAB` at the prompt.
   This works for keywords, modules, methods, variables and files in the
   current directory. This is supported via the readline library, and
   full access to configuring readline's behavior is provided. 
   Custom completers can be implemented easily for different purposes
   (system commands, magic arguments etc.)
 
 * Numbered input/output prompts with command history (persistent
   across sessions and tied to each profile), full searching in this
   history and caching of all input and output.
 
 * User-extensible 'magic' commands. A set of commands prefixed with
   :samp:`%` is available for controlling IPython itself and provides
   directory control, namespace information and many aliases to
   common system shell commands.
 
 * Alias facility for defining your own system aliases.
 
 * Complete system shell access. Lines starting with :samp:`!` are passed
   directly to the system shell, and using :samp:`!!` or :samp:`var = !cmd` 
   captures shell output into python variables for further use.
 
 * Background execution of Python commands in a separate thread.
   IPython has an internal job manager called jobs, and a
   convenience backgrounding magic function called :samp:`%bg`.
 
 * The ability to expand python variables when calling the system
   shell. In a shell command, any python variable prefixed with :samp:`$` is
   expanded. A double :samp:`$$` allows passing a literal :samp:`$` to the shell (for
   access to shell and environment variables like :envvar:`PATH`).
 
 * Filesystem navigation, via a magic :samp:`%cd` command, along with a
   persistent bookmark system (using :samp:`%bookmark`) for fast access to
   frequently visited directories.
 
 * A lightweight persistence framework via the :samp:`%store` command, which
   allows you to save arbitrary Python variables. These get restored
   automatically when your session restarts.
 
 * Automatic indentation (optional) of code as you type (through the
   readline library).
 
 * Macro system for quickly re-executing multiple lines of previous
   input with a single name. Macros can be stored persistently via
   :samp:`%store` and edited via :samp:`%edit`.
 
 * Session logging (you can then later use these logs as code in your
   programs). Logs can optionally timestamp all input, and also store
   session output (marked as comments, so the log remains valid
   Python source code).
 
 * Session restoring: logs can be replayed to restore a previous
   session to the state where you left it.
 
 * Verbose and colored exception traceback printouts. Easier to parse
   visually, and in verbose mode they produce a lot of useful
   debugging information (basically a terminal version of the cgitb
   module).
 
 * Auto-parentheses: callable objects can be executed without
   parentheses: :samp:`sin 3` is automatically converted to :samp:`sin(3)`.
 
 * Auto-quoting: using :samp:`,`, or :samp:`;` as the first character forces
   auto-quoting of the rest of the line: :samp:`,my_function a b` becomes
   automatically :samp:`my_function("a","b")`, while :samp:`;my_function a b`
   becomes :samp:`my_function("a b")`.
 
 * Extensible input syntax. You can define filters that pre-process
   user input to simplify input in special situations. This allows
   for example pasting multi-line code fragments which start with
   :samp:`>>>` or :samp:`...` such as those from other python sessions or the
   standard Python documentation.
 
 * Flexible configuration system. It uses a configuration file which
   allows permanent setting of all command-line options, module
   loading, code and file execution. The system allows recursive file
   inclusion, so you can have a base file with defaults and layers
   which load other customizations for particular projects.
 
 * Embeddable. You can call IPython as a python shell inside your own
   python programs. This can be used both for debugging code or for
   providing interactive abilities to your programs with knowledge
   about the local namespaces (very useful in debugging and data
   analysis situations).
 
 * Easy debugger access. You can set IPython to call up an enhanced
   version of the Python debugger (pdb) every time there is an
   uncaught exception. This drops you inside the code which triggered
   the exception with all the data live and it is possible to
   navigate the stack to rapidly isolate the source of a bug. The
   :samp:`%run` magic command (with the :samp:`-d` option) can run any script under
   pdb's control, automatically setting initial breakpoints for you.
   This version of pdb has IPython-specific improvements, including
   tab-completion and traceback coloring support. For even easier
   debugger access, try :samp:`%debug` after seeing an exception. winpdb is 
   also supported, see ipy_winpdb extension.
 
 * Profiler support. You can run single statements (similar to
   :samp:`profile.run()`) or complete programs under the profiler's control.
   While this is possible with standard cProfile or profile modules,
   IPython wraps this functionality with magic commands (see :samp:`%prun`
   and :samp:`%run -p`) convenient for rapid interactive work.
 
 * Doctest support. The special :samp:`%doctest_mode` command toggles a mode
   that allows you to paste existing doctests (with leading :samp:`>>>`
   prompts and whitespace) and uses doctest-compatible prompts and
   output, so you can use IPython sessions as doctest code.
 
 Interactive parallel computing
 ==============================
 
 Increasingly, parallel computer hardware, such as multicore CPUs, clusters and supercomputers, is becoming ubiquitous. Over the last 3 years, we have developed an
 architecture within IPython that allows such hardware to be used quickly and easily
 from Python. Moreover, this architecture is designed to support interactive and
 collaborative parallel computing.
 
 The main features of this system are:
 
 * Quickly parallelize Python code from an interactive Python/IPython session.
 
 * A flexible and dynamic process model that be deployed on anything from 
   multicore workstations to supercomputers.
 
 * An architecture that supports many different styles of parallelism, from
   message passing to task farming.  And all of these styles can be handled
   interactively.
 
 * Both blocking and fully asynchronous interfaces.
 
 * High level APIs that enable many things to be parallelized in a few lines
   of code.
 
 * Write parallel code that will run unchanged on everything from multicore
   workstations to supercomputers.
 
 * Full integration with Message Passing libraries (MPI).
 
 * Capabilities based security model with full encryption of network connections.
 
 * Share live parallel jobs with other users securely.  We call this collaborative
   parallel computing.
 
 * Dynamically load balanced task farming system.
 
 * Robust error handling.  Python exceptions raised in parallel execution are
   gathered and presented to the top-level code.
 
 For more information, see our :ref:`overview <parallel_index>` of using IPython for
 parallel computing.
 
 Portability and Python requirements
 -----------------------------------
 
 As of the 0.9 release, IPython requires Python 2.4 or greater.  We have
 not begun to test IPython on Python 2.6 or 3.0, but we expect it will
 work with some minor changes.
 
 IPython is known to work on the following operating systems:
 
 	* Linux
 	* AIX
 	* Most other Unix-like OSs (Solaris, BSD, etc.)
 	* Mac OS X
 	* Windows (CygWin, XP, Vista, etc.)
 
 See :ref:`here <install_index>` for instructions on how to install IPython.
  No newline at end of file