=============================================== Python for S60 2.0.0 RELEASE NOTES, 11.02.2010 =============================================== Product Description =================== Python for S60 (hereafter PyS60) is intended for developers looking to create programs that use the native features and resources of the S60 phones, using the Python programming language. About this release ================== This is the new 2.0.0 final release of PyS60. This release is intended only for S60 3rd edition, S60 3rd edition FP1, S60 3rd edition FP2 and S60 5th edition devices. Note on versioning: The versioning scheme in PyS60 releases is such that the releases with an even minor version (1.0.x, 1.2.x ...) are "stable" and releases with an odd minor version (1.1.x, 1.3.x ...) are "development" releases. What is new when compared with PyS60 1.9.7? ------------------------------------------- - Repeat support in 4-way directional pad - Lot of memory leaks in the interpreter code is fixed. - appuifw.app.track_allocations can be set if the interpreter should track all memory allocations and then free the memory which was not explicitly released before application exit. To debug memory leaks in 3rd party extension modules set the value to false. - All the Pyds that have zero UID will be assigned with the applications UID at the time of packaging. As a result, Python applications can now be symbian signed. This opens the door for submitting Python applications to OVI Store. - Pdf documentation is available in the installer/archive. - API cleanup in the SensorFW module. - On the below mentioned devices Python runtime and its dependencies will be installed automatically when the Python applications is started. 6220 classic, N86 8 MP, N85, 6720 classic, 6730 classic, N96, 5730 XpressMusic, N78, 5630 XpressMusic, E52, E55, 6710 Navigator, E75, N79, 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic, 5230, X6 and N97 mini Feature requests: ----------------- 3792 - Python Runtime and application sis can be on different drives. The limitation of both should be installed on the same drive is eliminated. Corrected defects: ------------------ 4345 - Missing (platform) functionality on ensymble/Application packager: The 2nd point in the bug description is fixed 3935 - appuifw.Icon sample code refers to non-existing file [doc error] What is new when compared with PyS60 1.9.6? ------------------------------------------- - Touch support added for GLCanvas UI Control. Directional pad is displayed by default on touch enabled devices. A sample application - gles_touch_demo.py is added to ScriptShell which demonstrates the functionality. - Two new APIs are added to canvas - begin_redraw and end_redraw. These can be used to instruct the window server to enable redraw drawing on the canvas UI control. Please refer the documentation (Section 3.1.10) for more details. - The multi-selection listbox has been modified such that the dialog for the option 'checkmark' now has 'Options' and 'Back' as its left and right softkeys respectively. The 'Options' has Mark/Unmark entry that can be used to select and de-select respectively. The 'Back' softkey returns the current state of the listbox based on the selected items. - 4-way directional pad support in landscape mode - Different flavors of Scriptshell application can coexist on the device. - Scribble application improvements: - Performance improvements by using API's begin_redraw and end_redraw. - The drawing area is retained between landscape and portrait modes as the toolbar shifts to accommodate for this change. - Pen width can be selected from a list of predefined values. - PyS60 document is available online on maemo.garage http://pys60.garage.maemo.org/doc/ Corrected defects: ------------------ 4251 - The compression type for the dll and exe files for Python is shown as Deflate instead of Byte-pair. 4313 - Scrollbar visible afterwards, should not be there 4338 - Multiple lisbox objects decrease scroll performance 4349 - time.mktime() taking too much time to execute What is new when compared with PyS60 1.9.5? ------------------------------------------- - Support for a virtual 4-way directional pad is added for Canvas and text widgets. This D-Pad is displayed at the bottom of the screen and this feauture is enabled by default on touch enabled devices. Currently, this is supported only in the portrait mode and landscape support will be available in a future release. The 'full_max' mode is invalidated by this change and is removed in this release. - The modules in the base runtime is more refined and hence the size of application SIS, created using PyS60 Application Packager is reduced. - A new chapter is added in the PyS60 documentation (Extending and Embedding PyS60), that is an end-to-end tutorial for creating 3rd party extention modules and distributing them. Corrected defects: ------------------ 3223 - Floating point formatting/parsing routines on this platform are imprecise 4078 - socket.access_points() returns iapid 0 for lots of entries 4106 - Problems exiting standalone apps 4185 - Calendar module returns end time with time zone offset added to Unix time 4186 - Using rollback in calendar module returns error 4198 - Screen orientation remains landscape after exit, while device was portrait all the time 4215 - default.py cannot load .pyc files 4216 - sys.exit() doesn't exit Python What is new when compared with PyS60 1.9.4? ------------------------------------------- - e32.s60_version_info is now modified to do a dynamic fetch and return of S60 version information, instead of returning the version information configured at the compile time. - Default heapsize for PyS60 applications is increased to 100k,4M from 4k,1M - An option "Continue with missing dependencies" is added to packaging tool. Enabling this option will display the missing dependencies as warnings and continue with SIS generation. Otherwise the packaging is strict. Missing dependencies are displayed as errors and SIS generation is aborted. Feature requests: ----------------- 3261 - Add option to convert to bytecode before py2sis 3298 - appuifw listbox now sports a scrollbar Corrected defects: ------------------ 3228 - time.clock() does not work as expected. 3784 - Python shell file listing in reverse alphabetical order 3788 - uninstall_Python script for SDK has a leading \ in path 3934 - appuifw.Icon creates only grey boxes 3938 - Listbox scrolling off-by-one with touch 4006 - Fake selection problem when sliding quickly your fingers over a list with two lines per raw (XM 5800) 4007 - Lists with one raw per item are generating a type_error when sliding my finger from top to down 4013 - relates to 1.9.4. !! returns wrong S60 OS version number 4016 - ZeroDivisionError running ball.py in 1.9.4 What is new when compared with PyS60 1.9.3? ------------------------------------------- - A single Nokia signed runtime package which can be installed on all S60 3rd ED and above devices is available. The actual size of the runtime is ~1MB, but due to the embedded OpenC sis and Platform Service sis, the size is increased to 2.8MB. The runtime includes only the most essential modules. The Rest of the modules are available with the application packager tool. - Improved version of application packager tool. The PyS60 application packager now scans the Python application being packaged and picks up the missing Python modules on which the application is dependent and packages them along with the application files. Refer Chapter 7. "Module Repository" in the PyS60 Documentation for more details. - Easier runtime deployment: Python runtime and its dependent components can be installed by just running any Python application packaged using 1.9.4 application packager. This feature is available only from S60 3rd edition FP2 devices onwards and also these devices should have been updated with the latest firmware. - Two new APIs are added to the socket module - access_points() & set_default_access_point() which have similar functionality to the APIs present in btsocket module. - Two new APIs are added to e32 module - get_capabilities() and has_capabilities(). The former can be used to get the capabilities, the application has been signed with, and the latter to check if a given list of capabilities is granted to the application or not. Note: The capabilities of scriptshell are displayed on startup using the get_capabilities() API. - Added a new mode to appuifw.app.screen - 'full_max' which can be used to achieve fullscreen on devices that don't have Left Soft Key and Right Soft Key(e.g.: Nokia 5800). Setting the screen to 'full' will translate to 'large' mode on these devices. - The prefix to the binaries of 1.9.x to support co-existence with 1.4.x runtime, has been changed from '251_' to 'kf_'. Corrected defects: ------------------ 3368: Importing modules under application's private directory fails. 3841: socket vs. btsocket interoperability What is new when compared with PyS60 1.9.2? ------------------------------------------- - Touch event support is added to appuifw Canvas. An API is added to appuifw module, touch_enabled() for checking if the device supports touch input. - scribble application developed using PyS60 touch feature is available in the installer. - This release includes a new extension module, scriptext. This is an enabler for using S60 Platform Service APIs that were introduced in the S60 5th Edition and back ported on S60 3rd edition FP2, from Python. It supports services like Application Manager, Calendar, Contacts, Landmarks, Location, Logging, Messaging, Media Management, Sensors and Sys Info. Refer scriptext module documentation for the usage and the convention for accessing the platform Service API interfaces is subjected to change. - Easier runtime deployment: Python runtime and its dependent components can be installed by just running the scriptshell application that comes with 1.9.3 release. This feature is available only from S60 3rd edition FP2 devices onwards and also these devices should have been updated with the latest firmware. The easier runtime deployment support will be available with all ensymble packaged applications in future releases. - SSL support for socket is enabled - Python core is upgraded to 2.5.4 Corrected defects: ------------------ 3220: Time and strptime modules fails when the 'Z' format specifier is used 3221: Issue with non-blocking TCP socket 3229: Problem with decimal separator when the phone's locale uses a non dot decimal separator 3388: SSL Client not supported by this Python installation 3631: The packager does not remember the source directory of previous invocation What is new when compared with PyS60 1.9.1? ------------------------------------------- - sensor module support for accessing the sensors on the devices that have S60 Sensor Framework libraries. This module's API compatibility between 1.9.x versions isn't guaranteed until 2.0. It won't be broken without good reason, but it can happen. Refer to the sensor-module-specifications.doc available from the installer for more details. - Reduction in the installer size! The application packager GUI is now based on Tkinter, hence PyQt setup is removed from the windows installer. - The UID of PythonRuntime has changed from '0xF0201514' to '0xE0201514' - PyS60 Application Packager is now based on ensymble 0.28 What is new when compared with PyS60 1.9.0? ------------------------------------------- - Better interpreter startup and sis installation time! - All the Python files in the runtime sis are compiled into .pyc files and included in a zip file. sys.path is updated with the path of this zip file. This reduced the interpreter startup time considerably. - A more generic error message is displayed when trying to load an application without the PyS60 Dependencies installed. - Support for building just a is provided. Refer build, build_emu, build_device help of setup.py - Unlike 1.4.x, a single SDK zip contains both gcce and armv5 link libraries. Separate SDK zips are provided for 3rdEd, 3rdEdFP1 and 3rdEdFP2. - The default mode of ensymble py2sis command is changed to 'pycore'. All scripts which refer to pys60 modules socket and calendar should use the new names - btsocket and e32calendar to use the S60 functionality in pycore mode. Also renamed "Prioritize PyS60 module library" to "1.4.x compatibility mode" on the UI of application packager. Corrected defects: ------------------ 3230: Problems with applications packaged with console profile and PyS60 mode. 3317: N70 is included in the supported device list in the Getting Started Guide, even though it's a 2ndEdFP2 device What is new when compared with PyS60 1.4.5? =========================================== - Python 2.5.1 core, with much better compliance to the standard Python than before. Most of the modules in the standard library are included - basically almost all that make sense on this platform and even some that don't (for regression testing purposes). This includes such goodies as the Expat XML parser, ftplib, smtplib, urllib2, xmlrpclib, SimpleHTTPServer, cPickle, asyncore and especially the much more compliant socket module. Garbage collection is enabled, so there is no need to dismantle reference cycles anymore. - The 1.9.1 release improves things with the new all-in-one installer that gives you the packaging tool with GUI and a README file, the documentation and the SIS files needed for development on Windows platform, in a single package. Similarly for Linux/Mac platforms, an all-in-one archive is provided that includes all the contents provided by the installer except the GUI for the packaging tool. - Packaging Python applications to SIS files is much easier. The user-friendly Ensymble tool is now the official packaging tool, and we've made a GUI for it so packaging your application is now just a button press away. - The environment for SIS packaged applications is closer to the script shell environment, since the script shell is no longer a special case but just a regular application packaged using the Ensymble tool. This should make testing your application easier. - PyS60 extension modules socket and calender are renamed to btsocket and e32calender due to the conflicting names with Python core modules. Two packaging modes pys60 and pycore have been provided with ensymble tool to maintain the compatibility with PyS601.4.x binaries. The existing scripts dependent on these extension modules need not be modified if it is packaged with pys60 mode. - SIS packaged applications are now more robust: - If the runtime is missing and you try to launch the application, a human readable error message is displayed instead of the application just failing to start, like before. - If the application raises an exception on startup, the traceback is printed on the screen instead of the application quitting silently. - The applications have a default text console just like in the script shell environment, so printing text using the print statement works the same way in SIS packaged apps and the script shell. - On 3.2 devices, access GPS out of the box without signing hassle! Since S60 3.2 devices now permit the Location capability for self-signed applications, that capability is now enabled by default in the 3.2 builds. - The UID of Python runtime and PythonScriptShell has changed. - The script directory of PythonScriptShell is changed from C:\python to C:\data\python\ - To support co-existence of 1.4.x and 1.9.1 Python runtimes, the binaries of the latter version are prefixed with '251_' and the import hook in site.py is modified to look for the renamed binary. Known issues ============ 1. Problem with decimal separator when the phone's locale uses a decimal separator other than dot ('.') 2. time.clock() does not work as expected. 3. Exit key does not work as expected when raw_input is pending for applications packaged using s60ui profile 4. Importing modules under application's private directory fails. A work around for this problem is packaging the modules to a directory under \data\python and include this directory path into sys.path before importing the modules. Ensymlbe's --extrasdir option can be used to place the modules under the required directory. For example : a)Place default.py in the directory "root\default.py" b)Place dependent modules in "root\extras\data\python\ c)In default.py update the sys path import sys sys.path.append("c:\\data\\python") d)ensymble py2sis root --extrasdir=extras where "root" is the directory which contains default.py and "extras" directory. "extras" directory contains the required modules under the required directory tree. Refer the "Known Issues" section of the Python documentation for more details. Feedback ======== Bugs: Bug reports should be submitted via the project Python for S60 Bug Tracker on garage.maemo.org https://garage.maemo.org/tracker/?atid=3201&group_id=854&func=browse Feature Requests: Feature requests should be submitted via the project Python for S60 Feature Requests Tracker on garage.maemo.org https://garage.maemo.org/tracker/?atid=3204&group_id=854&func=browse Refer the "Reporting Bugs" section of the Python documentation for more details. Changes to standard library modules: ==================================== A brief summary of changes made to Python 2.5.4 source to get it working on Symbian: - Changed the definition of the PyAPI_DATA and all the python header files which used the earlier PyAPI_DATA to use its new form as DLL data export is not supported on Symbian. A workaround is to have functions that return pointers to the data and macros that hide the calls made to these functions. This is enabled when the macro EXPORT_DATA_AS_FUNCTIONS is defined. - To handle recursions causing stack overflows gracefully stack checks are done more frequently. - Disabled creation of byte compiled files when python modules are loaded - On the Symbian platform a value greater than 1e49 limits the precision to 28 above which it crashes the interpreter with panic User24. Added a check so that OverflowError is raised for values greater than 1e49 with precision greater than 28. - Modified python's core memory APIs so that it defines macros which can be used to set custom malloc/realloc/free functions. - Python regression suite tests for modules that were not supported on Symbian, were disabled by adding a platform check in the test itself. Limits were reduced in tests which assumed a huge stack was available and were failing with stack overflow error. - Implementation of the Python TLS API on top of the POSIX threads TLS API. Also added PyThread_AtExit which provides extension modules to register their functions which cleanup resources at thread exit. - A new exception SymbianError is added which is used to set Symbian errors. - dynload_shlib is modified to load the function at ordinal 1 which corresponds to the init function (Symbian uses ordinal numbers to identify functions). - The default file system encoding is set to 'utf-8' - socketmodule is patched to workaround the OpenC bug related to getaddrinfo. - A separate copy of site.py and pyconfig.h is maintained in Symbian directory as the changes done to these files is applicable only to Symbian platform - The classification of core python modules into builtin and PYDs is specified in the modules.cfg file in Symbian\src. This file is parsed by module_config_parser.py which generates and modifies the individual extension and python dll build files. Minor changes were done to some modules' init function and headers to facilitate building them as PYDs. - To support co-existence of 1.4.x and 1.9.0 Python runtimes, the binaries of the latter version are prefixed with '251_' and the import hook in site.py is modified to look for the renamed binary. - Python core files modsupport.c and getargs.c are patched to support va_list's structure definition which is defined in gcce.h Copyright (c) 2004-2010 Nokia Corporation. Nokia and Nokia Connecting People are registered trademarks of Nokia Corporation.