Changed "each" to "ease" and made several edits from Adrian.

    Django's internals have been refactored to use Unicode throughout;

    this drastically simplifies the task of dealing with

    non-Western-European content and data in Django. Additionally,

    utility functions have been provided to each interoperability with

    utility functions have been provided to ease interoperability with

    third-party libraries and systems which may or may not handle

    Unicode gracefully. Details are available in Django's

    Unicode-handling documentation:

Automatic escaping of template variables

    To provide improved security against cross-site scripting (XSS)

    vulnerabilities, Django's template system now automatically

    escapes the output of variables; this behavior is configurable,

    escapes the output of variables. This behavior is configurable,

    and allows both variables and larger template constructs to be

    marked as safe (requiring no escaping) or unsafe (requiring

    escaping). A full guide to this feature is in the documentation

        http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/templates/#automatic-html-escaping

There are many more new features, many bugfixes and many enhancements

to existing features from previous releases; the ``newforms`` library,

to existing features from previous releases. The ``newforms`` library,

for example, has undergone massive improvements including several

useful add-ons in ``django.contrib`` which complement and build on

Django's form-handling capabilities, and Django's file-uploading

handlers have been refactored to allow finer-grained control over the

uploading process as well as streaming uploads of large files.

Along with these improvements and additions, there have been a number

of backwards-incompatible changes as features in Django have been

Along with these improvements and additions, we've made a number of

of backwards-incompatible changes to the framework, as features have been

fleshed out and APIs have been finalized for the 1.0 release. A

complete guide to these changes will be available as part of the final

Django 1.0 release, and a comprehensive list of backwards-incompatible

One of the primary goals of this alpha release is to focus attention

on the remaining features to be implemented for Django 1.0, and on the

bugs which need to be resolved before the final release. Following

bugs that need to be resolved before the final release. Following

this release, we'll be conducting a series of sprints building up to a

series of beta releases and finally a release-candidate stage,

followed soon after by Django 1.0. The timeline is projected to be:

series of beta releases and a release-candidate stage, followed soon

after by Django 1.0. The timeline is projected to be:

* August 1, 2008: Sprint (based in Washington, D.C. and online).

* August 1, 2008: Sprint (based in Washington, DC, and online).

* August 5, 2008: Django 1.0 beta 1 release. This will also constitute

  the feature freeze for 1.0; any feature to be included in 1.0 must

  the feature freeze for 1.0. Any feature to be included in 1.0 must

  be completed and in trunk by this time.

* August 8, 2008: Sprint (based in Lawrence, KS and online).

* August 8, 2008: Sprint (based in Lawrence, KS, and online).

* August 12, 2008: Django 1.0 beta 2 release.

* August 15, 2008: Sprint (based in Austin, TX and online).

* August 15, 2008: Sprint (based in Austin, TX, and online).

* August 19, 2008: Django 1.0 release candidate 1.

* August 22, 2008: Sprint (based in Portland, OR and online).

* August 22, 2008: Sprint (based in Portland, OR, and online).

* August 26, 2008: Django 1.0 release candidate 2.

* September 2, 2008: Django 1.0 final release. The official Django 1.0

  release party will take place during the first-ever DjangoCon, to be

  held in Mountain View, CA September 6-7.

  held in Mountain View, CA, September 6-7.

Of course, like any estimated timeline this is subject to change as

requirements dictate; the latest information will always be available

Of course, like any estimated timeline, this is subject to change as

requirements dictate. The latest information will always be available

on the Django project wiki:

    http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/VersionOneRoadmap

production use, you can help the Django team by trying out the alpha

codebase in a safe test environment and reporting any bugs or issues

you encounter. The Django ticket tracker is the central place to

search for open issues and open new issues if no existing ticket

corresponds to a problem you're running into:

search for open issues:

    http://code.djangoproject.com/timeline

Please open new tickets if no existing ticket corresponds to a problem

you're running into.

Additionally, discussion of Django development, including progress

toward the 1.0 release, takes place daily on the django-developers

mailing list:

    http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers

And in the ``#django-dev`` IRC channel on ``irc.freenode.net``. If

...and in the ``#django-dev`` IRC channel on ``irc.freenode.net``. If

you're interested in helping out with Django's development, feel free

to join the discussions there. Django's online documentation also

includes pointers on how to contribute to Django:

to join the discussions there.

Django's online documentation also includes pointers on how to

contribute to Django:

    http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/contributing/

Contributions on any level -- from developing code to writing

documentation to simply triaging tickets and helping to test proposed

bugfixes -- are always welcome and always appreciated.

Contributions on any level -- developing code, writing

documentation or simply triaging tickets and helping to test proposed

bugfixes -- are always welcome and appreciated.