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

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/[email protected]>

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:[email protected]>

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/[email protected]>

Bengt Richter puts forward some interesting ideas for a cross-
platform ‘py2exe’ tool and executable file format. <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=bh4i9e[email protected]>

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/[email protected]>

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/.
[email protected] and
[email protected]
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 <[email protected]>
should get through.

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• The Python-URL! Team–

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