QOTW: “To ‘Tron’ fans: yes, you could assign the name TimBit to
it [the TimBot] but it’s a broken Bit; what’s the use of a Bit
that’s always true?”
- Christos Georgiou
“Whether or not I agree with you, you have made me think. That’s
worth the price of my Internet connection this month.”
- Tim Roberts
Discussion
Aahz writes a rebuttal to Artima.com, because a recent
interview with Bruce Eckel on that site might give the wrong
impression regarding Python’s type system.
<http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=3D7590>The interview with Bruce Eckel is at:
<http://www.artima.com/intv/typing.html>Raymond Hettinger intrigues with the second episode of a series
of mysterious Python puzzles.
<http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3DVorQa.15236$Kw1.587@n=wrdny02.gnilink.net>Tom Plunket starts a huge thread about the way Python treats
objects, names, variables, assignment, references and what not.
Various people have different opinions about what would be the best
way to do things, but in the end, the QOTW of Tim Roberts (above)
kind of says it all.
<http://groups.google.com/[email protected]>Michele Simionato likes to have an endswith method that accepts
a list of strings, instead of a single string argument. But things
are not that easy.
<http://groups.google.com/[email protected]>Alan Kennedy shows what you might do if you need to build a list
of database rows (from a query), without allocating the list
beforehand because you don’t know the size. He uses an iterator to
do the trick.
<http://groups.google.com/[email protected]>Andrew Kuchling has started a mailing list for discussion about
Python Web frameworks.
<http://www.amk.ca/mailman/listinfo/pyweb/>This is partly because perhaps Python needs a single ‘standard’ way
to create web applications, as Andy Robinson points out.
<http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3Dd5mm9v8em9j41kus2tvj2raipd7dagv18k%404ax.com>
Announcements
Python 2.3 release candidate 1. This will become Python 2.3
final if no major new bugs are found this week.
<http://www.python.org/2.3/>Gnosis Utils 1.1.0, several Python modules for XML processing, plus
other generally useful tools such as pickling and indexing.
<http://gnosis.python-hosting.com/Gnosis_Utils-1.1.0.tar.gz>ZODB3 3.3a1, a set of tools for using the Zope Object Database
(ZODB) in Python programs separately from Zope.
<http://www.zope.org/Products/ZODB3.3/>SC-Track Roundup 0.5.9, an issue-tracking system with command-line,
web and e-mail interfaces.
<http://roundup.sourceforge.net/>PyUNO (in OpenOffice.org1.1rc), a generic bridge between python and
OpenOffice.org’s component model UNO (Universal Network
Objects).
<http://udk.openoffice.org/python/python-bridge.html>dnspython 1.1.0b1, a DNS toolkit for Python.
<http://www.dnspython.org/>hYPerSonic is a python/c framework for building and manipulating
real-time sound processing pipelines.
<http://arrowtheory.com/software/hypersonic/index.html>Albatross 1.10, is a small toolkit for developing highly stateful
web applications (including a HTML template language).
<http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/albatross/>ClientForm 0.0.11 and 0.1.5a, a Python module for handling HTML
forms on the client.
<http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/ClientForm/>C=F2nflux Lite 1.0, a web-based groupware and file management
application.
<http://www.conflux.ee/>Quixote 0.6.1, yet another framework for developing Web
applications in Python (but focused on the Python developer).
<http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/>SCGI 1.1, a package that implements the SCGI protocol (similar to
FastCGI, but easier to implement).
<http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/scgi/>
Everything 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
http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=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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