Mailman 3 February 2001 - Python-announce-list

ANN: Auth DBAPI 0.10
by Jon Travis 04 Feb '01

04 Feb '01

Auth DBAPI 0.10 --------------- A mod_snake plugin for Apache authentication and authorization via DBAPI. DBAPI is a specification created by the Python Database SIG which defines a common interface for accessing database modules. Auth DBAPI is a module which allows mod_snake users to use DBAPI 1.0 and 2.0 database modules to authenticate and authorize users (e.g. Gadfly && MySQLdb). URL: http://modsnake.sourceforge.net/msmnet/auth_dbapi Catagories: Internet This is the initial public announcement. Jon Travis (jtravis(a)p00p.org) http://modsnake.sourceforge.net

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ANN: mod_snake 0.5.0
by Jon Travis 04 Feb '01

04 Feb '01

Mod Snake 0.5.0 --------------- An Apache module which allows plugins to be written in Python. Mod Snake is an Apache module written for the purpose to give Python developers the same power that C module writers have. It currently runs in both Apache 1.3 and Apache 2.0, providing access to new functionality such as writing protocol modules and filtering. It includes modules for Python CGI acceleration, embedded Python in HTML, and other example modules. URL: http://modsnake.sourceforge.net Catagories: Internet This release includes a huge number of enhancements and bug fixes. For the definitive list, see the ChangeLog on the mod_snake web site. - Created a RedHat RPM - Setup a testsuite framework - Numerous improvements to the build system - Fixed dependencies on GNU make - Added support for Python 2.0 - Sped up HTML with embedded Python processing (jepler(a)inetnebr.com) - Fixed an issue in the CGI acceleration module - etc. ;-) Jon Travis (jtravis(a)p00p.org) http://modsnake.sourceforge.net

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[Announce] PyUnit 1.3 released
by Steve Purcell 04 Feb '01

04 Feb '01

Version 1.3 of the PyUnit unit testing framework is out, for those who are interested. Quick summary for those not familiar with PyUnit:- - PyUnit is a Python port of Java's popular JUnit testing framework - It provides a framework for easily writing unit and functional tests for your Python code, for aggregating the tests to run en-masse, and for running tests in text or GUI mode - PyUnit has been around since 1999 and is used in many projects, including Zope. Here's what's new in this release:- - Clearer and more verbose text output format - JPython and Python 2 compatibility - New FunctionTestCase class provides support for wrapping legacy test functions into PyUnit test case instances - Support for short descriptions of tests, taken from __doc__ strings by default - Updated and expanded documentation - Convenient new unittest.main() function for use by all test modules - Tests run in text mode can now be interrupted using ctrl-c For further information and downloadable packages, visit:- - http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/ Happy testing! -Steve -- Steve Purcell, Pythangelist Get testing at http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/ Available for consulting and training. "Even snakes are afraid of snakes." -- Steven Wright

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[Application] HappyDoc 1.3
by Parnassus Submission 04 Feb '01

04 Feb '01

HappyDoc 1.3 ------------ Python documentation extraction tool. HappyDoc is a tool for extracting documentation from Python source code. It differs from other such applications by the fact that it uses the parse tree for a module to derive the information used in its output, rather that importing the module directly. This allows the user to generate documentation for modules which need special context to be imported. This release resolves a few errors which slipped through in the 1.1 release. URL: http://happydoc.sourceforge.net License: Python Style Categories: Python Utilities Doug Hellmann -- <a href="http://happydoc.sourceforge.net">HappyDoc 1.3</a> -- Python documentation extraction tool.

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[Application] HappyDoc 1.1
by Doug Hellmann 03 Feb '01

03 Feb '01

HappyDoc 1.1 ------------ Python documentation extraction tool. HappyDoc is a tool for extracting documentation from Python source code. It differs from other such applications by the fact that it uses the parse tree for a module to derive the information used in its output, rather that importing the module directly. This allows the user to generate documentation for modules which need special context to be imported. Version 1.1 - Enhanced boolean command line switch handling to support values like 'yes', 'no', 'on', 'off', 'true', and 'false'. - Added an initial DocBook formatter implementation from Balazs Scheidler <bazsi(a)balabit.hu>. - Per-directory README.txt detection. (Useful for Zope products and Python packages.) - Support LICENSE.txt, CHANGES.txt, ANNOUNCE.txt and other StructuredText files referenced from README.txt. Support external files which do not have .txt extension. - Now installs using distutils. - Include code related to Patch 103054 to fix problems with tables in HTML and to make the HTML output smaller by reducing extra whitespace. - Cleaned up some progress reporting output. - Added option to docset to set a prefix to every file or directory created as output. This is important for creating output with safe names in case module names end up being parsed to something which does not make a valid filename. It can also be useful when storing output in a web application server such as Zope, where some names might be reserved. - Added docset and formatter parmeter info to the output. - Formatter option to disable html quoting of docstring text. Download Download the latest version of HappyDoc from the home page on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/happydoc Doc-string Format How does an author write documentation so that it will be marked up and look fancy? This is a perennial question for Python, and seems to have introduced a roadblock into the development of more robust and useful documentation tools. By separating the formatter classes from the docset classes, HappyDoc allows a user to create their own formatter to interpret comments in any way they see fit. The default for the HTMLTableFormatter (the default formatter for HappyDoc) is to treat __doc__ strings as StructuredText. Don't like StructuredText? Write your own formatter that does something different and drop it into place. Documentation not in Doc-strings It is not always desirable to put all documentation in __doc__ strings. Sometime, notably when working with Zope, special meaning is attached to the presence of __doc__ strings. For this reason, and to support existing code which might not have __doc__ strings, HappyDoc will find and extract documentation in Python comments. Comment documentation can contain all of the same formatting as __doc__ strings. The preceding comment marker will be stripped off and the lines will be assembled and treated as a block of StructuredText. To use this feature, it is important to place the comments **before** the named object which they describe. In this example: # # Class documentation goes here # class ClassWithNoDocStrings: "Using __doc__ strings overrides comment documentation." def method1(self, params): "This method uses a __doc__ string." pass # # Method2 does not use a __doc__ string. # def method2(self): pass The output would include the __doc__ strings for the class and for method1. It would also make it appear that method2 had a __doc__ string with the contents "Method2 does not use a __doc__ string." URL: http://happydoc.sourceforge.net License: Python Style Categories: Python Utilities Doug Hellmann (doughellmann(a)bigfoot.com) -- <a href="http://happydoc.sourceforge.net">HappyDoc 1.1</a> -- Python documentation extraction tool.

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Python 2.1 alpha 2 released
by Jeremy Hylton 02 Feb '01

02 Feb '01

While Guido is working the press circuit at the LinuxWorld Expo in New York City, the Python developers, including the many volunteers and the folks from PythonLabs, were busy finishing the second alpha release of Python 2.1. The release is currently available from SourceForge and will also be available from python.org later today. You can find the source release at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5470 The Windows installer will be ready shortly. Fred Drake announced the documentation release earlier today. You can browse the new docs online at http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/ or download them from ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/doc/2.1a2/ Please give it a good try! The only way Python 2.1 can become a rock-solid product is if people test the alpha releases. If you are using Python for demanding applications or on extreme platforms, we are particularly interested in hearing your feedback. Are you embedding Python or using threads? Please test your application using Python 2.1a2! Please submit all bug reports through SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=5470 Here's the NEWS file: What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 2? ================================= Core language, builtins, and interpreter - Scopes nest. If a name is used in a function or class, but is not local, the definition in the nearest enclosing function scope will be used. One consequence of this change is that lambda statements could reference variables in the namespaces where the lambda is defined. In some unusual cases, this change will break code. In all previous version of Python, names were resolved in exactly three namespaces -- the local namespace, the global namespace, and the builtin namespace. According to this old definition, if a function A is defined within a function B, the names bound in B are not visible in A. The new rules make names bound in B visible in A, unless A contains a name binding that hides the binding in B. Section 4.1 of the reference manual describes the new scoping rules in detail. The test script in Lib/test/test_scope.py demonstrates some of the effects of the change. The new rules will cause existing code to break if it defines nested functions where an outer function has local variables with the same name as globals or builtins used by the inner function. Example: def munge(str): def helper(x): return str(x) if type(str) != type(''): str = helper(str) return str.strip() Under the old rules, the name str in helper() is bound to the builtin function str(). Under the new rules, it will be bound to the argument named str and an error will occur when helper() is called. - The compiler will report a SyntaxError if "from ... import *" occurs in a function or class scope. The language reference has documented that this case is illegal, but the compiler never checked for it. The recent introduction of nested scope makes the meaning of this form of name binding ambiguous. In a future release, the compiler may allow this form when there is no possibility of ambiguity. - repr(string) is easier to read, now using hex escapes instead of octal, and using \t, \n and \r instead of \011, \012 and \015 (respectively): >>> "\texample \r\n" + chr(0) + chr(255) '\texample \r\n\x00\xff' # in 2.1 '\011example \015\012\000\377' # in 2.0 - Functions are now compared and hashed by identity, not by value, since the func_code attribute is writable. - Weak references (PEP 205) have been added. This involves a few changes in the core, an extension module (_weakref), and a Python module (weakref). The weakref module is the public interface. It includes support for "explicit" weak references, proxy objects, and mappings with weakly held values. - A 'continue' statement can now appear in a try block within the body of a loop. It is still not possible to use continue in a finally clause. Standard library - mailbox.py now has a new class, PortableUnixMailbox which is identical to UnixMailbox but uses a more portable scheme for determining From_ separators. Also, the constructors for all the classes in this module have a new optional `factory' argument, which is a callable used when new message classes must be instantiated by the next() method. - random.py is now self-contained, and offers all the functionality of the now-deprecated whrandom.py. See the docs for details. random.py also supports new functions getstate() and setstate(), for saving and restoring the internal state of the generator; and jumpahead(n), for quickly forcing the internal state to be the same as if n calls to random() had been made. The latter is particularly useful for multi- threaded programs, creating one instance of the random.Random() class for each thread, then using .jumpahead() to force each instance to use a non-overlapping segment of the full period. - random.py's seed() function is new. For bit-for-bit compatibility with prior releases, use the whseed function instead. The new seed function addresses two problems: (1) The old function couldn't produce more than about 2**24 distinct internal states; the new one about 2**45 (the best that can be done in the Wichmann-Hill generator). (2) The old function sometimes produced identical internal states when passed distinct integers, and there was no simple way to predict when that would happen; the new one guarantees to produce distinct internal states for all arguments in [0, 27814431486576L). - The socket module now supports raw packets on Linux. The socket family is AF_PACKET. - test_capi.py is a start at running tests of the Python C API. The tests are implemented by the new Modules/_testmodule.c. - A new extension module, _symtable, provides provisional access to the internal symbol table used by the Python compiler. A higher-level interface will be added on top of _symtable in a future release. Windows changes - Build procedure: the zlib project is built in a different way that ensures the zlib header files used can no longer get out of synch with the zlib binary used. See PCbuild\readme.txt for details. Your old zlib-related directories can be deleted; you'll need to download fresh source for zlib and unpack it into a new directory. - Build: New subproject _test for the benefit of test_capi.py (see above). - Build: subproject ucnhash is gone, since the code was folded into the unicodedata subproject. What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1? ================================= Core language, builtins, and interpreter - There is a new Unicode companion to the PyObject_Str() API called PyObject_Unicode(). It behaves in the same way as the former, but assures that the returned value is an Unicode object (applying the usual coercion if necessary). - The comparison operators support "rich comparison overloading" (PEP 207). C extension types can provide a rich comparison function in the new tp_richcompare slot in the type object. The cmp() function and the C function PyObject_Compare() first try the new rich comparison operators before trying the old 3-way comparison. There is also a new C API PyObject_RichCompare() (which also falls back on the old 3-way comparison, but does not constrain the outcome of the rich comparison to a Boolean result). The rich comparison function takes two objects (at least one of which is guaranteed to have the type that provided the function) and an integer indicating the opcode, which can be Py_LT, Py_LE, Py_EQ, Py_NE, Py_GT, Py_GE (for <, <=, ==, !=, >, >=), and returns a Python object, which may be NotImplemented (in which case the tp_compare slot function is used as a fallback, if defined). Classes can overload individual comparison operators by defining one or more of the methods__lt__, __le__, __eq__, __ne__, __gt__, __ge__. There are no explicit "reflected argument" versions of these; instead, __lt__ and __gt__ are each other's reflection, likewise for__le__ and __ge__; __eq__ and __ne__ are their own reflection (similar at the C level). No other implications are made; in particular, Python does not assume that == is the Boolean inverse of !=, or that < is the Boolean inverse of >=. This makes it possible to define types with partial orderings. Classes or types that want to implement (in)equality tests but not the ordering operators (i.e. unordered types) should implement == and !=, and raise an error for the ordering operators. It is possible to define types whose rich comparison results are not Boolean; e.g. a matrix type might want to return a matrix of bits for A < B, giving elementwise comparisons. Such types should ensure that any interpretation of their value in a Boolean context raises an exception, e.g. by defining __nonzero__ (or the tp_nonzero slot at the C level) to always raise an exception. - Complex numbers use rich comparisons to define == and != but raise an exception for <, <=, > and >=. Unfortunately, this also means that cmp() of two complex numbers raises an exception when the two numbers differ. Since it is not mathematically meaningful to compare complex numbers except for equality, I hope that this doesn't break too much code. - Functions and methods now support getting and setting arbitrarily named attributes (PEP 232). Functions have a new __dict__ (a.k.a. func_dict) which hold the function attributes. Methods get and set attributes on their underlying im_func. It is a TypeError to set an attribute on a bound method. - The xrange() object implementation has been improved so that xrange(sys.maxint) can be used on 64-bit platforms. There's still a limitation that in this case len(xrange(sys.maxint)) can't be calculated, but the common idiom "for i in xrange(sys.maxint)" will work fine as long as the index i doesn't actually reach 2**31. (Python uses regular ints for sequence and string indices; fixing that is much more work.) - Two changes to from...import: 1) "from M import X" now works even if M is not a real module; it's basically a getattr() operation with AttributeError exceptions changed into ImportError. 2) "from M import *" now looks for M.__all__ to decide which names to import; if M.__all__ doesn't exist, it uses M.__dict__.keys() but filters out names starting with '_' as before. Whether or not __all__ exists, there's no restriction on the type of M. - File objects have a new method, xreadlines(). This is the fastest way to iterate over all lines in a file: for line in file.xreadlines(): ...do something to line... See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for other file-like objects. - Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on line-by-line input. The file.readline() method has been optimized quite a bit in platform-specific ways: on systems (like Linux) that support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and funlockfile(), those are used by default. On systems (like Windows) without getc_unlocked(), a complicated (but still thread-safe) method using fgets() is used by default. You can force use of the fgets() method by #define'ing USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE at build time (it may be faster than getc_unlocked()). You can force fgets() not to be used by #define'ing DONT_USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE (this is the first thing to try if std test test_bufio.py fails -- and let us know if it does!). - In addition, the fileinput module, while still slower than the other methods on most platforms, has been sped up too, by using file.readlines(sizehint). - Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings. See the description of the warnings module below. - Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code. This mostly affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type numerical operators without having to use coercion), but occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed subtly. Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this is considered an improvement. Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with reflected arguments. - In connection with the coercion changes, a new built-in singleton object, NotImplemented is defined. This can be returned for operations that wish to indicate they are not implemented for a particular combination of arguments. From C, this is Py_NotImplemented. - The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing echo ':pyc:M::\x87\xc6\x0d\x0a::/usr/local/bin/python:' > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument to execve(2)). - %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign, and raised an error if the value of the long was too large to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent across platforms (because the size of an int varies across platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example: >>> "%x" % -0x42L '-42' # in 2.1 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines >>> hex(-0x42L) '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int). %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int. - Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time; using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time. Standard library - In the time module, the time argument to the functions strftime, localtime, gmtime, asctime and ctime is now optional, defaulting to the current time (in the local timezone). - The ftplib module now defaults to passive mode, which is deemed a more useful default given that clients are often inside firewalls these days. Note that this could break if ftplib is used to connect to a *server* that is inside a firewall, from outside; this is expected to be a very rare situation. To fix that, you can call ftp.set_pasv(0). - The module site now treats .pth files not only for path configuration, but also supports extensions to the initialization code: Lines starting with import are executed. - There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for issuing and filtering warnings. There are some new built-in exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We turns warnings into errors). warnings.warn(message[, category]) issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as PyErr_Warn(category, message). - A new module xreadlines was added. This exports a single factory function, xreadlines(). The intention is that this code is the absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open file(-like) object: import xreadlines for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file): ...do something to line... This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using file.readlines(sizehint). Note that if file is a real file object (as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent: for line in file.xreadlines(): ...do something to line... - The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left, bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort"). - The new curses.panel module wraps the panel library that forms part of SYSV curses and ncurses. Contributed by Thomas Gellekum. - The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by default in the TCPServer class. - A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of the caller. This is intended only as a building block for higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation. Build issues - For Unix (and Unix-compatible) builds, configuration and building of extension modules is now greatly automated. Rather than having to edit the Modules/Setup file to indicate which modules should be built and where their include files and libraries are, a distutils-based setup.py script now takes care of building most extension modules. All extension modules built this way are built as shared libraries. Only a few modules that must be linked statically are still listed in the Setup file; you won't need to edit their configuration. - Python should now build out of the box on Cygwin. If it doesn't, mail to Jason Tishler (jlt63 at users.sourceforge.net). - Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt() -- there's too much variation among C library getopt() implementations. - C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a C++ compiler if one is found. Windows changes - select module: By default under Windows, a select() call can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE and recompile Python from source). - Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone. The Lib/dos-8x3 subdirectory is no more! -- Jeremy Hylton <http://www.python.org/~jeremy/>

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Python 2.1 alpha 2 docs released
by Fred L. Drake, Jr. 02 Feb '01

02 Feb '01

The documentation for the Python 2.1 alpha 2 release is now available. View it online at: http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/ (This version will be updated as the documentation evolves, so will be updated beyond what's in the downloadable packages.) Downloadable packages in many formats are also available at: ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/doc/2.1a2/ Please avoid printing this documentation -- it's for the alpha, and could waste entire forests! Thanks to everyone who has helped improve the documentation! As always, suggestions and bug reports are welcome. For more instructions on how to file bug reports and where to send suggestions for improvement, see: http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/about.html -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> PythonLabs at Digital Creations

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ANN: Kura 1.0 released
by Boudewijn Rempt 01 Feb '01

01 Feb '01

Kura 1.0 ------------------------------------------------------------------ I am pleased to announce the first release of Kura. Kura is a complete, professional system for the handling of linguistic data, especially fieldwork data from small-corpus languages. It allows users to enter texts in any language, analyze those texts and bring the analyzed linguistic facts into relation with each other. Kura includes both a desktop application for easy handling of interlinear texts, lexica and other linguistic data, and a special-purpose webserver for the online presentation of the analyzed data. This is the first full release of Kura for Windows and Unix/X11. Kura is a complex piece of software, dependent upon many runtime components. Kura will not run without some installation effort. Kura (both this release and frequent development snapshots) is available at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/linguistics/index.html A sample web-server is available at: http://www.valdyas.org:8000 Kura runs equally well on both Windows and Unix/X11. For those who prefer the convenience, Kura is also available on CD, for $49.95. The CD includes Kura, a sample database, binary versions of all runtime components for Windows and Linux/i386 and full source to Kura and all the runtime components (except for Qt 2.2.2 for Windows, which is available in binary form only). Boudewijn Rempt | boud(a)rempt.xs4all.nl ------------------------------------------------------------------ Features * Interlinear text editor * Interlinear text export * xml text import/export * text parser * Lexicon editor * Web-server * fully Unicode enabled * Unicode character entry application * Pinyin character entry application * sample configuration database * the start of a manual * multi-user * multi-language * network transparent * support for standard tagsets ------------------------------------------------------------------ Requirements Kura uses the following run-time components: MySQL, MySQLdb, Python, PyQt. For full requirements, please look at the web address mentioned above. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Roadmap Kura will likely be extended with the following features in the future: * improved interlinear text editor * lexicon import/export * more text import/export filters * more flexible layout management for the presentation of interlinear texts (using xml templates) * direct printing from the application * editable tables of data * per-language definition of parsers (both syntax/context and morphological parsers) * a real manual * user-definable keyboard layouts * point-and-click keyboard window * more flexible webserver document creation * freely accessible CVS at Sourceforge.net And of course numerous bugfixes. I will try to keep Kura compatible with the runtime components used in this release, for at least a year. ------------------------------------------------------------------ License Kura is free software and distributed under the Python license. This means that anyone can download and use Kura for free, anyone can alter Kura to his or her own liking and distribute the altered version free or for profit. However any changes must be contributed back to the me, and I have the right to incorporate those changes in new, free versions of Kura. ------------------------------------------------------------------ <P><A HREF="http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/linguistics">Kura 1.0</A> - Kura is an application for the analysis and presentation of linguistic data. (01-Feb-2001) Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org

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