Sho 2.0.5, IronPython 2.7, and Python Tools for Visual Studio

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Today is a big day for Sho – we’re releasing an update to Sho containing some minor features and bugfixes (version 2.0.5), but the bigger news is that we now have a version that works with IronPython 2.7. This is something our users have been wanting for some time, and we appreciate your requests and feedback about it.  You can now get versions of Sho 2.0.5 for both IronPython 2.7 and IronPython 2.6 – the details and the differences between the versions (and why you might want one or the other) are explained in our new Installers page.  Note that since IronPython 2.7 comes under a different license, you’ll have to install that first, and the IP 2.7 version of Sho will then find and use the appropriate libraries.

In addition, we’re very excited to see the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) 1.0 by our friends on the Python Tools team, which works as a plug-in for Visual Studio 2010; even if you don’t have Visual Studio you can get the free VS shell and use PTVS with that (details are on the PTVS install page).  For years, users have been asking us for a great IDE for Sho, and we’re glad to finally have an answer for them. PTVS makes for a fantastic IDE for Python in general (standard Python as well as IronPython), including powerful debugging capabilities, an editor with syntax highlighting, intellisense, find all references, find definition, and other such great utilities, as well as a very nice interactive window (REPL).  In addition, we’ve done some work to make Sho work smoothly with PTVS, and our new IDE page explains how to install and set it all up. 

You can get the latest bits and find links to the Sho pages mentioned above at https://research.microsoft.com/sho

Sho 2.0.5 changelist:

  • IronPython 2.7 and 2.6 versions
  • Smooth animations in Sho plots via Double Buffering (via the ShoChart.Freeze command)
  • Upgraded MKL to version 10.3.4
  • New ArrayMathInPlace class: implements the same elementwise operations as ArrayMath, but does them in-place on the input array
  • ShoPlotHelper.Grid() now returns a ShoChartGrid object instead of just a Control
  • Fixed Sho.py so scripts run from ipy.exe that import Sho work properly (they used to run twice)
  • Fixed a bug in the slicing of multidimensional arrays
  • Fixed a bug in Multiply Into
  • Fixed console crash when tab-completing certain types
  • Fixed doc() crash when called on certain types