Welcome to EPD 8.0 Beta! We are excited about this release, which includes a brand-new graphical environment (GUI) focused on the needs of scientists and engineers. The new capabilities include a power text editor with integrated IPython prompt, a Python package manager to make it easier to find and install packages, integrated online help, and macro scripting capabilities. The EPD 8 interface is designed to provide a lightweight, easy-to-learn Python development environment for scientists, engineers, and analysts, in contrast to more complex tools for larger application development teams.
The EPD 8 beta program is focused on evaluating the quality and usability of the new GUI. In short, how are we doing towards the goal? We very much appreciate your taking the time to help us evaluate it and provide your feedback. Question, problems, and comments can be sent to beta-feedback@enthought.com.
We will be updating the GUI with improvements and fixes periodically during the beta period. This is done using the integrated update mechanism described in Updating the EPD 8 GUI.
The rest of this document falls into two major sections – a Quick Start Guide for those wishing to get running as quickly as possible, and Advanced Topics, providing more details and background information.