The Jython website doesn't provide much information, but a few days ago, there was a post in the mailing list announcing a new alpha release for Jython 2.2 - and this time (it was already this far back at the end of 2004), it's one that actually works. Many features of the newer Python versions are included, such as generators/iterators. Therefore, it is not identical to Python 2.2, but rather a good step towards Python 2.3 in terms of features. Since the developer works with OS X and develops there, it is relatively easy to install.
For installation, as this is not mentioned anywhere explicitly:
java -jar [jython .version.elend.langer.name.jar]
Then a graphical installer appears that installs everything on the disk. Then, in the target directory, enter the following commands additionally:
chmod 755 jython
chmod 755 jythonc
Then the two (jython is the interpreter and jythonc is a compiler) are also callable and you can get started. When starting jython for the first time, a whole series of system packages are activated, so don't be surprised by the many messages from the sys-package-mgr.
For those who don't know Jython: it is a reimplementation of Python on the Java Virtual Machine. This allows all Java libraries to be used very elegantly, and the interactive shell of Jython allows you to play interactively with Java classes. Very nice to quickly try things out. But of course also very nice to have the portability of Java, but not the crazy language.
And it's just fun to do things like this:
Jython 2.2a1 on java1.4.2_07 (JIT: null)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import java.lang
>>> dir(java.lang.Number)
['byteValue', 'doubleValue', 'floatValue', 'intValue', 'longValue', 'shortValue']
>>> import java
>>> dir(java)
['__name__', 'applet', 'awt', 'beans', 'io', 'lang', 'math', 'net', 'nio', 'rmi', 'security', 'sql', 'text', 'util']
>>> ```