Python-URL! - Weekly Python News and Links (August 12)

Aug 13, 2003, 05:00 (0 Talkback[s])

QOTW: "What can I do with Python that I can't do with C#? You can go home on time at the end of the day." -- Daniel Klein

"Python lends itself to playing with it and to discussing the merits of code snippets with other people. It's one of the 'language' languages, in that it's suitable for people to communicate using it, and it can even be used as [a] tool to check ones thoughts." -- Anton Vredegoor

Discussion

Last week's QOTW from Gary Herron was about three of Python's "shortcomings", or actually, strengths (according to many). This week, we have a true sore point: Python's supposed lack of proper Symmetric Multiprocessor scalability. <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=ad02da8c.0308060705.7ff1fa4f@posting.google.com>

Python's random number generator was improved for Pytho 2.3, but this caused problems when you are upgrading from 2.2 and are depending on the sequence of numbers to be reproducible (for simulations, for instance). Raymond Hettinger has the solution. <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=WiQYa.292$mailto:794.140@nwrdny02.gnilink.net>

Tim Peters explains why it is relatively safe to take Python 2.3 for a test drive on Windows (it won't leave litter behind when uninstalled, and works side-to-side with other existing versions). <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=mailman.1059951487.27773.python-list@python.org>

Bengt Richter puts forward some interesting ideas for a cross- platform 'py2exe' tool and executable file format. <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=bh4i9e$8ah$0@216.39.172.122>

Thomas Heller found a solution for a possible problem with creating an executable with py2exe from python code that requires encodings. (For instance, when you're using pyxml). <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=znilckk9.fsf@python.net>

Announcements

gmpy 1.0 alpha, a wrapper for the well known GNU MP library, to provide multi-precision arithmetic for Python. <http://gmpy.sourceforge.net/>

Confluence 0.6, a functional programming language for digital logic design (FPGA/ASIC) and real-time embedded software development. Confluence source code compiles into Python, amongst others. <http://www.launchbird.com/download.html>

Effbot's ElementTree 1.2 alpha 2, ElementTidy 1.0 alpha 1. The ElementTree package provides a Python implementation of the 'Element' type, plus code to serialize element trees to and from XML files. ElementTidy is an alternative tree builder that can read arbitrary HTML, and turn it into well-formed XHTML element trees. <http://effbot.org/downloads/>

EmPy 3.0.4, a powerful and robust templating system for Python. <http://www.alcyone.com/pyos/empy/>

Snakelets 1.2, a simple Python web application server, mainly for educational purposes. It includes a web server, HTML+Python pages, and code-centric page request handlers. <http://snakelets.sourceforge.net/>

omniORB version 4.0.2 and omniORBpy 2.2, a robust, high performance CORBA ORB. OmniORBpy is a version for Python. <http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/>

Python for .NET preview 2. This gives you near-seamless integration with the .NET CLR. This package does not implement Python as a first-class CLR language. Rather, it is an integration of the C Python engine with the .NET runtime. <http://zope.org/Members/Brian/PythonNet/>

Fredrik Lundh continues writing about the new modules in the Python 2.3 standard library. Read about datetime, heapq, new encodings, and others. <http://effbot.org/zone/librarybook-py23.htm>

pxdom 0.6, a stand-alone pure-Python DOM implementation and non-validating parser, supporting Level 3 Core, XML, Load and Save specs. PXTL 0.9, the Python XML Templating Language, a templating solution for producing XML, HTML and other text-based document types. <http://www.doxdesk.com/software/py/pxdom.html> <http://doxdesk.com/software/py/pxtl.html>

---

Everything Python-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional center of Pythonia

http://www.python.org
Notice especially the master FAQ

http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the daily python url

http://www.pythonware.com/daily

Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new) World-Wide Web articles related to Python.

http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html

While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL are utterly different in their technologies and generally in their results.

comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software. Be sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.

http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

Brett Cannon continues the marvelous tradition established by Andrew Kuchling and Michael Hudson of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every other week.

http://www.python.org/dev/summary/

The Python Package Index catalogues packages.

http://www.python.org/pypi/

The somewhat older Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collects references to all sorts of Python resources.

http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/

Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group mailing lists

http://www.python.org/sigs/

The Python Business Forum "further[s] the interests of companies that base their business on ... Python."

http://www.python-in-business.org

The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium as an independent nexus of activity

http://www.python.org/psf/

Cetus does much of the same

http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html

Python FAQTS

http://python.faqts.com/

The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a SourceForge reincarnation.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html

The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com/. editor@pythonjournal.com and editor@pythonjournal.cognizor.com welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

*Py: the Journal of the Python Language*

http://www.pyzine.com

Archive probing tricks of the trade:

http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/
http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant) or
comp.lang.python

Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome. E-mail to <Python-URL@phaseit.net> should get through.

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning (approximately), ask <claird@phaseit.net> to subscribe. Mention "Python-URL!".

• The Python-URL! Team--

Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and sponsor the "Python-URL!" project.

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