(backport from rev. 51677)

- various minor cleanups for improved consistency

  a unicode string in a build with wide unicode (UCS-4) support.

I will forward port to 2.6.  Can someone backport to 2.4?

Handle a few more error conditions.

Klocwork 301 and 302.  Will backport.

Fix bug #1543303, tarfile adds padding that breaks gunzip.
Patch # 1543897.  (remove the padding)

 (backport from rev. 51416)

object so we don't leak op.  (Fixes an earlier patch to this code)

Klockwork #350

Klocwork #307

 (backport from rev. 51368)

Additionally, remove a faulty example showing PySequence_SetItem applied
to a newly created list object and add notes that this isn't a good idea.
 (backport from rev. 51364)

on systems with low clock resolution.

the final release and all bugfix releases) will be from this branch, not the trunk.

generated for generator expressions.

'Save Copy As' and 'Print' hotkeys to 'y' and 't'.  Change the
Shell menu hotkey from 's' to 'l'.

M    Bindings.py
M    PyShell.py
M    NEWS.txt

    Clarify somewhat how parameters are passed to functions
    (especially explain what integer means).

    Correct the table - Python integers and longs can both be used.
    Further clarification to the table comparing ctypes types, Python
    types, and C types.

Reference:

    Replace integer by C ``int`` where it makes sense.

ignore data that arrives before the opening start tag

of the Python part of a callback function to C.  If it cannot be
converted, call PyErr_WriteUnraisable with the exception we got.
Before, arbitrary data has been passed to the calling C code in this
case.

(I'm not really sure the NEWS entry is understandable, but I cannot
find better words)

exception.  Remove a stray '?' character from the exception text
when the value is retrieved of such an object.

Includes tests.

PyObject_stgdict() and PyType_stgdict() calls are non-NULL before
dereferencing the result.  Hopefully this fixes what klocwork is
complaining about.

Fix a few other nits as well.

Fixes #1535502.