Python-URL! – Weekly Python News and Links (January 6)

QOTW:  "'Too slow' is almost always defined incorrectly. ... Most
developers are wrong about how fast things really need to run."  Peter Hansen

"It's almost impossible to get yourself in trouble using Queue."  Tim Peters   


Discussion
    Thomas Bellman posts PEP 303, suggesting an extension for the
    divmod builtin to allow multiple divisors:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3E1522DE.BB4B6FE6%40alcyone.com
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0303.html

    Yes, it's another "Which language should I choose?" thread, but
    this one got a lot more breadth than usual:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20030102230617.14241.00000512%40mb-cr.news.cs.com

    And again, on the subject of language advocacy, here's an in-depth
    discussion of the differences between Python and Ruby:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=6e07b825.0301021008.2e080db9%40posting.google.com

    Christos Georgiou provides a list of standard library methods that
    could (or should, he argues) be staticmethods:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=oev51vkp7r29q6vq99t5npbedmh15ck17a%404ax.com

    A long but productive thread about multiple dispatch, an
    alternative way to achieving object oriented methods:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=mailman.1041707471.8505.python-list%40python.org
        http://www.tpk.net/~ekidd/dylan/multiple-dispatch.html

    Peter Hansen posts an apt comment entitled "Yet Another Thread on
    Python's Speed":
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3E144BFC.399B8510%40engcorp.com

    Bill Scherer offers a succinct but apposite example of SNMP
    access through Python's snmpget module.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?frame=left&th=2991a2e147b839a0


Software
    Guido van Rossum announces Python 2.3a1, the first alpha release
    of Python 2.3:
        http://www.python.org/2.3/

    Custom is an e-commerce solution for small- to medium-sized 
    businesses:
        http://custom.sourceforge.net/

    cdecl.py understands C declarations as found in header files; the
    latest version comprehends GNU extensions found in gcc standard
    header files:
        http://arrowtheory.com/software/python/index.html

    Detlev Offenbach brings eric, a full featured Python IDE using PyQt
    and QScintilla, to release 3.0.1:
        http://www.die-offenbachs.de/detlev/eric3.html

    tclpython, a package which supports the execution of Python code
    from within a Tcl interpreter, hits a 3.0 milestone:
        http://jfontain.free.fr/tclpython.htm

    pyCMS is a Python module that provides ICC color management, using
    PIL:
        http://www.cazabon.com/pyCMS/

    ReportLab Toolkit version 1.17, a suite which helps generate
    platform-independent PDFs and graphics, has been released:
        http://www.reportlab.com/download.html


Resources
    The development version of the documentation has been updated for
    Python 2.3's alpha releases:
        http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/

    Uche Ogbuji has written a tutorial for developing Python/XML with
    4Suite (free registration required through IBM's Web site):
        https://www6.software.ibm.com/reg/devworks/dw-x4suite5-i/

    A.M. Kuchling announces the checkin of Richard Jones' PEP 301
    (package index and metadata for distutils) implementation, for
    those who wish to play with the code in CVS:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&selm=slrnb1bdqp.l3t.akuchlin%40ute.mems-exchange.org
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0301.html


Meetings
    UC Santa Cruz offers a "Python Programming" course from 2003
    January 6 through March 17, Monday nights:
        http://artemis.ucsc-extension.edu/~wesc/013e44cd.htm


========================================================================

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/
    Partial archives are at
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect 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

    Tenth International Python Conference 
        http://www.python10.org            

    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


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