Mailman 3 March 2001 - Python-announce-list

Python 2.1b2 released
by Guido van Rossum 24 Mar '01

24 Mar '01

On time, and with a minimum of fuss, we've released Python 2.1b2. Thanks again to the many developers who contributed! Check it out on the Python website: http://www.python.org/2.1/ or on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5470&release_id=28334 As it behooves a second beta release, there's no really big news since 2.1b1 was released on March 2: - Bugs fixed and documentation added. There's now an appendix of the Reference Manual documenting nested scopes: http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/ref/futures.html - When nested scopes are enabled by "from __future__ import nested_scopes", this also applies to exec, eval() and execfile(), and into the interactive interpreter (when using -i). - Assignment to the internal global variable __debug__ is now illegal. - unittest.py, a unit testing framework by Steve Purcell (PyUNIT, inspired by JUnit), is now part of the standard library. See the PyUnit webpage for documentation: http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/ Andrew Kuchling has written (and is continuously updating) an extensive overview: What's New in Python 2.1: http://www.amk.ca/python/2.1/ See also the Release notes posted on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=28334 We are planning to make the final release of Python 2.1 on April 13; we may release a release candidate a week earlier. We're also planning a bugfix release for Python 2.0, dubbed 2.0.1; we don't have a release schedule for this yet. We could use a volunteer to act as the bug release manager! --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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[ANN] Mahogany 0.62 release
by Vadim Zeitlin 23 Mar '01

23 Mar '01

A new release of the `Mahogany' e-Mail and News client has been made. ===================================================================== Source and binaries for a variety of Linux and Unix systems as well as binaries for Win32 are available at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3100 You can also get to the download page starting from http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/ NB: My sincere excuses to all people who have written me asking for Win32 binaries and to whom I couldn't reply because there were so many of them. For personal reasons I couldn't make the Win32 version as soon as I hoped to. In this message: 1. Announcing Mahogany Version 0.62 2. Changes Against the Previous Release Announcing Mahogany Version 0.62 ===================================================================== Mahogany is an OpenSource(TM) cross-platform mail and news client. It is available for X11/Unix and MS Windows platforms, supporting a wide range of protocols and standards, including POP3, IMAP4 and full MIME support as well as secure communications via SSL. Mahogany can be extended far beyond its original functionality using its built-in Python interpreter and/or its loadable modules (plug-ins). Mahogany's wealth of features and ease of use make it one of the most powerful clients available, providing a consistent and intuitive interface across all supported platforms and an ideal GUI email client for advanced and novice users alike. Mahogany includes an extendable address book system supporting hierarchical organisation of entries, group aliases, searching the database and easy editing, with support for other programs' address database formats. Currently Mahogany's native format, (X)Emacs' BBDB address books and PalmOS address books are supported. LDAP support is planned for future versions. Mahogany is written using the OpenSource wxWindows application framework for GUI C++ applications, building on the GTK+ toolkit on Unix and native Win32 API under Windows and imap-2000 (c-client) library developed by University of Washington for mail folder access. Mahogany is constantly being tested on a variety of Linux systems, Solaris-sparc and MS Windows. It should compile and work on any modern Unix platform. Changes Since Release 0.60 ===================================================================== Key changes are: - fixes to several fatal crashes with IMAP servers - significant speed up of some operations (although more optimizations are to come) - availability of Win32 version - Mahogany is now dual licensed under its Artistic License and GPL New features: - support for marking message as flagged/important - "Extract all addresses from message" command - possibility to import all MBOX folders under the given directory - possibility to set a hard limit for number of messages retrieved from a (remote) folder Improvements: - folders in the tree can now be rearranged, system folders are at top by default - messages can now be sorted by status and by size as well - title and status bar of folder view are customizable strings which can include information about the number of new/unread/flagged messages - show filtering progress in the status bar - filters dialog is now more convenient to use - new mail reporting was made less intrusive Bug fixes: - reading newsgroups doesn't crash the program immediately - parsing of complex MIME structures fixed - language autodetection fixed - fixed crash when viewing messages with wrong date Please see the CHANGES file in the distribution for an even more detailed list of changes. Future Plans ===================================================================== Next, we hope to tackle the following: - improving the message editor (work in progress) - full HTML message editing/displaying (almost complete) - multi-threading to allow network operations to happen in background - PGP/GPG support - LDAP support Please direct any queries to mahogany-developers(a)lists.sourceforge.net and don't hesitate to contact us if you would like to participate in Mahogany development! Known bugs: ----------- *** Please note that Mahogany/UNIX is officially in beta state while *** Mahogany/Win32 is still considered to be in alpha stage (although *** we use both versions on the daily basis). There are always some, listed on our bugtracker at http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/bugz/ and we are working on them. Hoping you will find Mahogany useful, M dev-team

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MS SQL 2000 / HTTP / XML db module
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

python HTTP / XML MS-SQL 2000 database access - v0.1 released. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyxsqmll (damn, even i have trouble spelling it. stupid name. whoever picked that?? :) version 0.1 uses HTTP Basic Authentication. Your Microsoft SQL 2000 and IIS Server can be configured to require user / password access. btw, the htmlxmlsql2000 module has exactly the same format as MySQLdb 0.3.0 (with a couple of features and functions removed, because i was in a hurry to get this working!) in other words, other than the differences in the SQL statement interoperability (such as SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('tablename') instead of SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID()), you can replace the module name MySQLdb in your code with the module name httpxmlsql2000db and expect it to work. dependencies: - py-xml-0.6.4 (0.6.2 is known to work, too) - python 2.0 (other versions not tested) - MS SQL 2000 (we didn't bother trying with SQL-7, just upgraded) - MS IIS Server with the SQL-2000 XML isapi component enabled. python r0kz! luke ----- Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl(a)samba-tng.org> ----- "i want a world of dreams, run by near-sighted visionaries" "good. that's them sorted out. now, on _this_ world..."

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[ANNOUNCE] Article: Using Mix-ins with Python
by Chuck Esterbrook 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

I am re-announcing this because at the time of the original announcement, it was not known that the article would be online. This announcement includes the new URL: There is a Python article in the April 2001 issue of the Linux Journal, "Using Mix-ins with Python". It covers the general topic of mix-in programming with some comments on various languages, and then dives into Python specifics including examples. http://noframes.linuxjournal.com/lj-issues/issue84/4540.html I used these concepts when creating the MiddleKit component of Webware (http://webware.sourceforge.net/), which includes a mix-in function in Webware.MiscUtils.MixIn. -Chuck -- Get web dev at http://webware.sourceforge.net/

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EVENT: BayPIGgies mtg Wednesday
by Wesley J. Chun 21 Mar '01

21 Mar '01

Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: BayPIGgies meeting Wednesday The Silicon Valley-San Francisco Bay Area Python Users Group (BayPIGgies.org) is meeting this Wednesday in Mountain View, CA. We will be going over what happened at the Python9 conference. March 21, 2001 Topic: Python9 Conference - News and events from the conference last week in Long Beach - Some of the more interesting papers in the proceedings - Upcoming release of Python 2.1 - Python Software Foundation - Guido's opening keynote: Python Fits Your Brain - Bruce Eckel's closing keynote: Why I Love Python Time and directions available at the website: http://www.baypiggies.org Hope to see some of you there! -wesley - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Silicon Valley-SF Bay Area Python users group: http://baypiggies.org "Core Python Programming", Prentice Hall PTR, December 2000 http://starship.python.net/crew/wesc/cpp/ wesley.j.chun :: wesc(a)baypiggies.org cyberweb.consulting :: silicon.valley, ca http://www.roadkill.com/~wesc/cyberweb/

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PEP 241: Metadata for Python Software Packages
by Andrew Kuchling 20 Mar '01

20 Mar '01

PEP: 241 Title: Metadata for Python Software Packages Version: $Revision: 1.6 $ Author: A.M. Kuchling <amk1(a)bigfoot.com> Type: Standards Track Created: 12-Mar-2001 Status: Draft Post-History: 19-Mar-2001 Introduction This PEP describes a mechanism for adding metadata to Python packages. It includes specifics of the field names, and their semantics and usage. Including Metadata in Packages The Distutils 'sdist' command will be modified to extract the metadata fields from the arguments and write them to a file in the generated zipfile or tarball. This file will be named PKG-INFO and will be placed in the top directory of the source distribution (where the README, INSTALL, and other files usually go). Developers may not provide their own PKG-INFO file. The "sdist" command will, if it detects an existing PKG-INFO file, terminate with an appropriate error message. This should prevent confusion caused by the PKG-INFO and setup.py files being out of sync. The PKG-INFO file format is a single set of RFC-822 headers parseable by the rfc822.py module. The field names listed in the following section are used as the header names. There's no extension mechanism in this simple format; the Catalog and Distutils SIGs will aim at getting a more flexible format ready for Python 2.2. Fields This section specifies the names and semantics of each of the supported metadata fields. Fields marked with "(Multiple use)" may be specified multiple times in a single PKG-INFO file. Other fields may only occur once in a PKG-INFO file. Fields marked with "(optional)" are not required to appear in a valid PKG-INFO file, all other fields must be present. Metadata-Version Version of the file format; currently "1.0" is the only legal value here. Example: 'Metadata-Version: 1.0' Name The name of the package. Example: 'Name: BeagleVote' Version A string containing the package's version number. This field should be parseable by one of the Version classes (StrictVersion or LooseVersion) in the distutils.version module. Example: 'Version: 1.0a2' Platform (multiple use) A comma-separated list of platform specifications, summarizing the operating systems supported by the package. The major supported platforms are listed below, but this list is necessarily incomplete. POSIX, MacOS, Windows, BeOS, PalmOS. Binary distributions will use the Supported-Platform field in their metadata to specify the OS and CPU for which the binary package was compiled. The semantics of the Supported-Platform are not specified in this PEP. Example: 'Platform: POSIX, Windows' Summary A one-line summary of what the package does. Example: "Summary: A module for collecting votes from beagles." Description (optional) A longer description of the package that can run to several paragraphs. (Software that deals with metadata should not assume any maximum size for this field, though one hopes that people won't include their instruction manual as the long-description.) Example: "Description: This module collects votes from beagles\n in order to determine their electoral wishes.\n Do NOT try to use this module with basset hounds; it makes them grumpy." Keywords (optional) A list of additional keywords to be used to assist searching for the package in a larger catalog. Example: 'Keywords: dog puppy voting election' Home-page (optional) A string containing the URL for the package's home page. Example: 'Home-page: http://www.example.com/~cschultz/bvote/' Author (optional) A string containing at a minimum the author's name. Contact information can also be added, separating each line with newlines. Example: 'Author: C. Schultz Universal Features Syndicate Los Angeles, CA' Author-email A string containing the author's e-mail address. It can contain a name and e-mail address in the legal forms for a RFC-822 'From:' header. It's not optional because cataloging systems can use the e-mail portion of this field as a unique key representing the author. A catalog might provide authors the ability to store their GPG key, personal home page, and other additional metadata *about the author*, and optionally the ability to associate several e-mail addresses with the same person. Author-related metadata fields are not covered by this PEP. Example: 'Author-email: "C. Schultz" <cschultz(a)example.com>' License A string selected from a short list of choices, specifying the license covering the package. Some licenses result in the software being freely redistributable, so packagers and resellers can automatically know that they're free to redistribute the software. Other licenses will require a careful reading by a human to determine the software can be repackaged and resold. The choices are: Artistic, BSD, DFSG, GNU PL, Lesser GNU PL, "MIT/X11", Mozilla PL, "public domain", Python, Qt PL, Zope PL, unknown, nocommercial, nosell, nosource, shareware, other The definitions are: Python Python 1.6 or higher license. Version 1.5.2 and earlier are under the MIT/X11 license. public domain Software is public domain, not copyrighted. unknown Status is not known nocommercial Free private use but commercial use not permitted nosell Free use but distribution for profit by arrangement nosource Freely distributable but no source code shareware Payment is requested if software is used other General category for other non-DFSG licenses Some of these licenses can be interpreted to mean the software is freely redistributable. The list of redistributable licenses is: Artistic, BSD, DFSG, GNU PL, Lesser GNU PL, "MIT/X11", Mozilla PL, "public domain", Python, Qt PL, Zope PL, nosource, shareware Note that being redistributable does not mean a package qualifies as free software, 'nosource' and 'shareware' being examples. Example: 'License: MIT/X11' Copyright This document has been placed in the public domain.

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[Module] sql2dtd module
by David Mertz 18 Mar '01

18 Mar '01

sql2dtd module -------------- Convert an SQL query to an XML DTD Convert an SQL query to a DTD that specifies an XML dialect for query results. Possibly useful for automating data flows from RDBMS' to other databases (relational or otherwise at the target). URL: http://gnosis.cx/download/sql2dtd.py Download: http://gnosis.cx/download/sql2dtd.py License: Public Domain Categories: Database, XML David Mertz (mertz(a)gnosis.cx) http://gnosis.cx/publish/ -- <a href="http://gnosis.cx/download/sql2dtd.py">sql2dtd module</a> -- Convert an SQL query to an XML DTD

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[Module] Indexer module
by David Mertz 18 Mar '01

18 Mar '01

Indexer module -------------- Create full-text indexes and search them A full-text indexer in Python, that may be used either as a stand-alone utility, or as a module in larger programs (incl. CGI). Creates a persistent word dictionary with occurrence rates of words in files. Matches files containing multiple words in search, with optional ranking of matches. URL: http://gnosis.cx/download/indexer.py Download: http://gnosis.cx/download/indexer.py License: Public Domain Requires: zlib (recommended), xml_pickle (optional) Categories: Python Utilities, CGI Scripts David Mertz (mertz(a)gnosis.cx) http://gnosis.cx/publish/ -- <a href="http://gnosis.cx/download/indexer.py">Indexer module</a> -- Create full-text indexes and search them

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gdchart-py 0.6
by Mike Steed 17 Mar '01

17 Mar '01

Hi, Version 0.6 of gdchart-py is available at: http://athani.pair.com/msteed/software/gdchart/ New in this version: annotations, background images, scatter, and support for WBMP images. gdchart-py is a Python interface to GDChart, a library for creating charts and graphs in PNG, JPEG, and GIF format. Visit the GDChart home page to get an idea of what it can do: http://www.fred.net/brv/chart/ The Python interface builds on Win32, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and probably other Unices. A pre-build Win32 binary is available at the above URL. The software is free to use and distribute. Regards, Mike Steed

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[Module] Caching
by Ole M.Nielsen 16 Mar '01

16 Mar '01

Caching ------- Smart caching of function results This module allows results of Python functions to be made persistent for subsequent rapid retrieval. Functions are intercepted, evaluated and their results are compressed and pickled using cPickle. Subsequent function calls with same arguments are replaced by the cached results. If the function or its arguments have been modified it will be recomputed. Recomputation can also be made dependent on the time stamp of arbitrary files or it can be triggered explicitly. This form of caching is very useful for time consuming functions that are called repetitively, such as database or WEB queries but it will work for any function which returns picklable objects. The following paper describes the caching module (along with some others) in more detail: A Toolbox Approach to Flexible and Efficient Data Mining Ole M. Nielsen, Peter Christen, Markus Hegland, Tatiana Semenova and Timothy Hancock. Accepted for the PAKDD-2001 Conference, Hong Kong, April 2001. Available at ftp://csl.anu.edu.au/pub/dm/papers/pakdd2001.pdf.gz or by emailing Ole.Nielsen(a)bigfoot.com URL: http://csl.anu.edu.au/ml/dm/dm_software.html Download: ftp://csl.anu.edu.au/pub/dm/dmtools/caching.py License: GPL Requires: zlib (recommended but not essential) Categories: Python Utilities Ole M. Nielsen (Ole.Nielsen(a)bigfoot.com) http://www.bigfoot.com/~Ole.Nielsen -- <a href="http://csl.anu.edu.au/ml/dm/dm_software.html">Caching</a> -- Smart caching of function results

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