Mailman 3 December 1997 - Doc-SIG

P R E S S R E L E A S E
by robert＠directed.edu Dec. 24, 1997

Dec. 24, 1997

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XML parser extension module
by Jack Jansen Dec. 23, 1997

Dec. 23, 1997

Has anyone looked at the following package? I downloaded it and glanced at it for a few minutes and it seems like it would be fairly straightforward to put a Python wrapper around it, but I haven't looked at it too carefully yet. Also, I haven't played around with it and the author calls it alpha software, so I have no idea how good it is. > From: Richard Tobin <richard(a)cogsci.ed.ac.uk> > > - The complexity of the XML syntax doesn't matter, because you can > > use a generic XML parser > > but I couldn't find a C library > ftp://ftp.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/pub/richard/rxp.tar.gz > It's an alpha test version. Please report bugs to me. > -- Richard -- Jack Jansen | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++ Jack.Jansen(a)cwi.nl | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++ http://www.cwi.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm _______________ DOC-SIG - SIG for the Python Documentation Project send messages to: doc-sig(a)python.org administrivia to: doc-sig-request(a)python.org _______________

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Re: [DOC-SIG] XML extension module.
by fermigie＠math.jussieu.fr Dec. 19, 1997

Dec. 19, 1997

Forwarded message: >> From: Sean Mc Grath <digitome(a)iol.ie> >> >> I would like to see basic XML support provided as a portable C extension module. >> I believe XML will take off and that the XML support in Python >> will be sufficently useful to go into the standard >> distribution. >> >> 1) XML processing must be fast. Microsoft build but criticise Java XML parsers >> over speed issues and trumpet Windows specific ActiveX components as >> a "solution" to the speed issues. Lets not allow the same charge be leveled >> at Python. >> >> 2) I believe the speed difference will be *significant*. I have Python + C >> implementation of a LoadEsis treebuilding library for Python (the tree building >> process for XML will be analagous I suspect). The C one is massively faster. >> >> At the very least, we could include a C based XML lexer to take care of >> some of the hairy bits and spit out basic XML tokens. Python layers could >> site on top of that to do well formedness checks/tree building/validation. >> James Clark has >> written such a thing (in Ansi C) and made it freely available. Another option would be to use Marc-Andre Lemburg fast tag engine, which is made of a kernel written in C (kind of enhanced Finite State Automaton) and already has an HTML parser written (if you don't know about it, it's on his page on starship I guess). My own opinion is that we should strive to write a modular system where several parsers can be used to the same effect: slow but portable parsers written in Python, parsers built on sgmls ESIS output or fast parser written as C modules. Cheers, S. _______________ DOC-SIG - SIG for the Python Documentation Project send messages to: doc-sig(a)python.org administrivia to: doc-sig-request(a)python.org _______________

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Re: [DOC-SIG] SGML Working Group
by Sean Mc Grath Dec. 19, 1997

Dec. 19, 1997

I would like to see basic XML support provided as a portable C extension module. I believe XML will take off and that the XML support in Python will be sufficently useful to go into the standard distribution. 1) XML processing must be fast. Microsoft build but criticise Java XML parsers over speed issues and trumpet Windows specific ActiveX components as a "solution" to the speed issues. Lets not allow the same charge be leveled at Python. 2) I believe the speed difference will be *significant*. I have Python + C implementation of a LoadEsis treebuilding library for Python (the tree building process for XML will be analagous I suspect). The C one is massively faster. At the very least, we could include a C based XML lexer to take care of some of the hairy bits and spit out basic XML tokens. Python layers could site on top of that to do well formedness checks/tree building/validation. James Clark has written such a thing (in Ansi C) and made it freely available. Sean Mc Grath sean at digitome dot com _______________ DOC-SIG - SIG for the Python Documentation Project send messages to: doc-sig(a)python.org administrivia to: doc-sig-request(a)python.org _______________

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SGML Working Group
by Paul Prescod Dec. 18, 1997

Dec. 18, 1997

I have been encouraged to discuss SGML stuff in the doc-sig. This is my first posting there on this topic (well, as part of an actual project...) SGML/XML interested people should join us there for this discussion. (please followup there, not in comp.lang.python) I would like to urge that the first order of business is a mandate for our "working group" and I propose the following one: This working group exists in order to standardize classes, interfaces and software for the processing of SGML documents (including the XML subset). Concrete goals of the first few months should include: * Python version of the World Wide Web Consortium "Document Object Model" SGML-tree API (this should be a straightforward translation of IDL to Python) * Development of Python-specific event based and tree APIs for processing of SGML documents. (perhaps inspired by similar efforts in the Java or C++ worlds and the existing Python SGML processing packages) * Development of a validating XML parser that would serve to make XML competitive in XML processing. * Development of a filter for the output of NSGMLS that generates the events defined in our API. * Tool for converting events from our API into a DOM tree. Other (longer range?) goals might include: * Embedding of Python into James Clark's C++ SP library. * Wrapping of C++ SP and Grove API with our Python-specific APIs. * Development of higher level tools for SGML processing (e.g. a DSSSL-like tool, an "XML-Writer" library, an XML browser for Grail etc.) Comments (in doc-sig) please. Paul Prescod _______________ DOC-SIG - SIG for the Python Documentation Project send messages to: doc-sig(a)python.org administrivia to: doc-sig-request(a)python.org _______________

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RE: [DOC-SIG] A few thoughts on the docstring standards
by Friedrich, Robin K Dec. 8, 1997

Dec. 8, 1997

>---------- >From: Ken McDonald[SMTP:kmcdona@watson.wustl.edu] >Sent: Monday, December 08, 1997 1:17 PM >To: doc-sig(a)python.org >Subject: [DOC-SIG] A few thoughts on the docstring standards > >Was just using the basic format outlined on the SIG special interest >page, and it's nice--concise, easy to remember, fast to type. This has >likely been discussed before, but I didn't see it in the recent SIG >mail traffic, so will just mention a quick couple of points here. > >1) Do **bold** and *italic* apply in example code? The format says No. >example code is printed "verbatim", but hopefully this applies only to >indenting--it'd be very nice to be able to italicize and bold things in >code (**keywords**, *placeholders*, etc.) But then one has to worry about >actual * usages in code, including in RE's where there might not be the >option setting the asterisk up so it is interpreted as an asterisk. Yes this is the rub as it complicates the scanning RE greatly. So we just punted saying that it wasn't all that important. > >2) There was a mention of restricting the usage of '--' to avoid >confusion between " desc -- a descriptive list element", and other usages >(such as a hyphen). For myself, simply saying that -- only has its special >meaning if surrounded by whitespace would be fine. OK that's what's done now but how does this help other uses of -- as they are likely to be surrounded by whitespace anyway? > >3) Is this effort still going on? The mention of gendoc says the last >update was Sept. 96. This isn't a criticism, I'm just wondering if the >effort has headed in some other direction. (Don't want to use obsolete >standards!) The motivation for that documentation last year was the active work on gendoc. Gendoc work may be resurrected soon and then we revisit these standards more intensely*. However, I don't see any competing doc string markup standards being seriously proposed, so you are safe in using it. * On this note I'd like to see if anyone really wants to see a project for a comprehensive python source documentation toolkit? By "really wants" I mean is willing to contribute design and coding to such an effort. I'd hate to ask Daniel Larsson to redo his tools again without serious help. I know recent comments seem to indicate that a full remodeling is desired by some. Robin F. _______________ DOC-SIG - SIG for the Python Documentation Project send messages to: doc-sig(a)python.org administrivia to: doc-sig-request(a)python.org _______________

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A few thoughts on the docstring standards
by Ken McDonald Dec. 8, 1997

Dec. 8, 1997

Was just using the basic format outlined on the SIG special interest page, and it's nice--concise, easy to remember, fast to type. This has likely been discussed before, but I didn't see it in the recent SIG mail traffic, so will just mention a quick couple of points here. 1) Do **bold** and *italic* apply in example code? The format says example code is printed "verbatim", but hopefully this applies only to indenting--it'd be very nice to be able to italicize and bold things in code (**keywords**, *placeholders*, etc.) But then one has to worry about actual * usages in code, including in RE's where there might not be the option setting the asterisk up so it is interpreted as an asterisk. 2) There was a mention of restricting the usage of '--' to avoid confusion between " desc -- a descriptive list element", and other usages (such as a hyphen). For myself, simply saying that -- only has its special meaning if surrounded by whitespace would be fine. 3) Is this effort still going on? The mention of gendoc says the last update was Sept. 96. This isn't a criticism, I'm just wondering if the effort has headed in some other direction. (Don't want to use obsolete standards!) Thanks, Ken ======================================== Kenneth McDonald Genome Sequencing Center Washington University School of Medicine Phone: 314-286-1831 ======================================== _______________ DOC-SIG - SIG for the Python Documentation Project send messages to: doc-sig(a)python.org administrivia to: doc-sig-request(a)python.org _______________

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Lasers/Optics/Optical Tables - Save!
by Ib1VVtrL4＠offsh1or.com Dec. 6, 1997

Dec. 6, 1997

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