Mailman 3 July 2001 - Python-announce-list

ANN: eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Extension Package 2.0.3
by M.-A. Lemburg July 12, 2001

July 12, 2001

________________________________________________________________________ ANNOUNCING: eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Extension Package for Python Version 2.0.3 Full Source Python extensions providing important and useful services for Python programmers. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT IS IT ?: The eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Package for Python is part of the eGenix.com mx Extension Series for Python, a collection of professional quality software tools which enhance Python's usability in many important areas such as ODBC database connectivity, fast text processing, date/time processing and web site programming. This commercial package includes the popular mxODBC extension which allows users to connect to just about any database on the market today from Windows and Unix. By providing a consistent interface on all supported platforms, it provides a perfect base for writing cross-platform database programs and utilities. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT'S NEW ? The mxODBC documentation now also includes details on how to write products using mxODBC which are then wrapped into standalone applications using Thomas Heller's py2exe utility. The RPM packaging scheme was reworked and Cygwin support was added. As always we are providing precompiled versions of the package for Windows and Linux as well as sources which allow you to install the package on all other supported platforms. ________________________________________________________________________ SPECIAL OFFER theKompany.com has licensed the eGenix.com mx Commercial Package (which includes mxODBC) for inclusion in their brand new Qt-based Python IDE BlackAdder. It allows developing portable GUI-based database applications which run on Windows and Linux platforms without any change to the source code. BlackAdder includes a 1 CPU license for this package at no extra cost, so you may want to check out their great new product. See http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#BlackAdder for details. ________________________________________________________________________ EGENIX.COM MX COMMERCIAL PACKAGE OVERVIEW: mxODBC - Generic ODBC 2.0-3.5 interface for Python mxODBC is an extension package that provides a Python Database API compliant interface to ODBC capable database drivers and managers. In addition to the capabilities provided through the standard DB API it also gives access to a rich set of catalog methods which allow you to scan the database for tables, procedures, etc. Furthermore, it uses the mxDateTime package for date/time value interfacing eliminating most of the problems these types normally introduce (other in/output formats are available too). mxODBC allows you to interface to more than one database from one process, making inter-database interfacing very flexible and reliable. The source version includes a varity of preconfigured setups for many commonly used databases such as MySQL, Oracle, Informix, Solid, SAP DB, Sybase ASA and ASE, DBMaker and many more. The precompiled versions for Windows and Linux include the interfaces to the standard ODBC manager on these platforms to allow for a more easily configurable setup. More details are available at: http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxODBC.html ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I GET IT ? The download archives and instructions for installing the packages can be found at: http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/ Note that in order to use mxODBC you will also need to install the eGenix.com mx BASE package which can be downloaded from the same location. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT DOES IT COST ? mxODBC comes with a licenses which allows non-commercial use at no charge, but places a moderate fee on commercial users. Special licensing setups are available for commercial product developers. Please see http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#mxCOMMERCIAL for details. The package comes with full source code. ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ? Commercial quality support for these packages is available from eGenix.com Software GmbH. Please see http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Support for details about the eGenix support offerings. ________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCE: <P><A HREF="http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/">eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Package 2.0.3</A> - eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Interface 2.0.3 with distutils support and precompiled binaries for Windows and Linux. (12-Jul-2001) ________________________________________________________________________ Enjoy, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH ______________________________________________________________________ Company & Consulting: http://www.egenix.com/ Python Software: http://www.lemburg.com/python/

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ANN: eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package 2.0.2
by M.-A. Lemburg July 12, 2001

July 12, 2001

________________________________________________________________________ ANNOUNCING: eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package for Python Version 2.0.2 Open Source Python extensions providing important and useful services for Python programmers. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT IS IT ?: The eGenix.com mx BASE Extensions for Python are a collection of professional quality software tools which enhance Python's usability in many important areas such as fast text searching, date/time processing and high speed datatypes. Python is an open-oriented Open Source programming language which runs on all modern platforms (http://www.python.org/). By integrating ease-of-use, clarity in coding, enterprise application connectivity and rapid application design, Python establishes an ideal programming platform for todays IT challenges. The tools have a proven record of being portable across many Unix and Windows platforms, e.g. you can write applications which use the tools on Windows and then run them on Unix platforms without change due to the consistent platforms independent interfaces. All available packages have proven their stability and usefulness in many mission critical applications and various commercial settings all around the world. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT'S NEW ? The RPM packaging scheme was reworked, Cygwin support was added and a few subpackages were updated to better support Python 2.1's new coercion mechanism. As always we are providing precompiled versions of the package for Windows and Linux as well as sources which allow you to install the package on all other supported platforms. ________________________________________________________________________ EGENIX.COM MX BASE PACKAGE OVERVIEW: mxDateTime - Generic Date/Time Types mxDateTime is an extension package that provides three new object types, DateTime, DateTimeDelta and RelativeDateTime, which let you store and handle date/time values in a much more natural way than by using ticks (seconds since 1.1.70 0:00 UTC; the encoding used by the time module). You can add, subtract and even multiply instances, pickle and copy them and convert the results to strings, COM dates, ticks and some other more esoteric values. In addition, there are several convenient constructors and formatters at hand to greatly simplify dealing with dates and times in real-world applications. In addition to providing an easy-to-use Python interface the package also exports a comfortable C API interface for other extensions to build upon. This is especially interesting for database applications which often have to deal with date/time values (the mxODBC package is one example of an extension using this interface). mxTextTools - Fast Text Processing Tools mxTextTools is an extension package for Python that provides several useful functions and types that implement high-performance text manipulation and searching algorithms in addition to a very flexible and extendable state machine, the Tagging Engine, that allows scanning and processing text based on low-level byte-code "programs" written using Python tuples. It gives you access to the speed of C without the need to do any compile and link steps every time you change the parsing description. Applications include parsing structured text, finding and extracting text (either exact or using translation tables) and recombining strings to form new text. mxStack - Fast and Memory-Efficient Stack Type mxStack is an extension package that provides a new object type called Stack. It works much like what you would expect from such a type, having .push() and .pop() methods and focusses on obtaining maximum speed at low memory costs. mxTools - Collection of Additional Builtins mxTools is an extension package that includes a collection of handy functions and objects giving additional functionality in form of new builtins to the Python programmer. The package auto-installs the new functions and objects as builtins upon first import. This means that they become instantely available to all other modules without any further action on your part. Add the line import NewBuiltins to your site.py script and they will be available to all users at your site as if they were installed in the Python interpreter itself. mxProxy - Generic Proxy Wrapper Type mxProxy is an extension package that provides a new type that is suitable to implement Bastion like features without the need to use restricted execution environments. The type's main features are secure data encapsulation (the hidden objects are not accessible from Python since they are stored in internal C structures), customizable attribute lookup methods and a cleanup protocol that helps in breaking circular references prior to object deletion. The latest version adds a very interesting new feature: weak references which help you work with circular references in a way that doesn't cause memory leakage in a Python system. Note that even though Python 2.1 has its own weak reference implemetation, this package can be used to write applications which also work on Python 1.5.2 and 2.0. mxBeeBase - On-disk B+Tree Based Database Kit mxBeeBase is a high performance construction kit for disk based indexed databases. It offers components which you can plug together to easily build your own custom mid-sized databases (the current size limit is <CODE>sizeof(long)</CODE> which gives you an address range of around 2GB on 32-bit platforms). The two basic building blocks in mxBeeBase are storage and index. Storage is implemented as variable record length data storage with integrated data protection features, automatic data recovery and locking for multi process access. Indexes use a high performance optimized B+Tree implementation built on top of Thomas Niemann's Cookbook B+Tree implementation (http://epaperpress.com/). ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I GET IT ? The download archives and instructions for installing the packages can be found at: http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/ ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT DOES IT COST ? The BASE packages come with a Python 2.0 style license, which means that you can use them in both commercial and non-commercial settings without fee or charge. All packages come with full source code. ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ? Commercial quality support for these packages is available from eGenix.com Software GmbH. Please see http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Support for details about the eGenix support offerings. ________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCE: <P><A HREF="http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/">eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package 2.0.2</A> - eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package 2.0.2 with precompiled binaries for Windows and Linux. (12-Jul-2001) ________________________________________________________________________ Enjoy, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH ______________________________________________________________________ Company & Consulting: http://www.egenix.com/ Python Software: http://www.lemburg.com/python/

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wxPython 2.3.1
by Robin Dunn July 12, 2001

July 12, 2001

Hi All, I've finally gotten the 2.3.1 release of wxPython done and ready to go. You can download source and binaries from the website, or directly from Sourceforge. http://wxpython.org/download.php http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10718 If you are using the Linux RPMs please be sure to read the notes on the download page right under the links to the RPMs. Changes in this release are: Added EVT_GRID_EDITOR_CREATED and wxGridEditorCreatedEvent so the user code can get access to the edit control when it is created, (to push on a custom event handler for example.) Added wxTextAttr class and SetStyle, SetDefaultStyle and GetDefaultStyle methods to wxTextCtrl. Added ability to use xml resource files. Still need to add ability to subclass wxXmlResourceHandler, etc... Added wxGridAutoEditMixin to the mixins library package. Made ColourSelect be derived from wxButton. Fixed img2py to work correctly with Python 2.1. Added enhanced wxVTKRenderWindow by Prabhu Ramachandran -- Robin Dunn Software Craftsman robin(a)AllDunn.com Java give you jitters? http://wxPython.org Relax with wxPython!

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csv-0.4 (John Machin release) released
by Dave Cole July 12, 2001

July 12, 2001

The CSV module provides a fast CSV parser which can split and join CSV records which have been produced by Microsoft products such as Access and Excel. For some reason on Python 2.0, it now outperforms string.split(). Of course the CSV parser can handle much more complex records than string.split()... This is a bugfix release. My thanks to Skip Montanaro for providing most of the following example: CSV files can be syntactically more complex than simply inserting commas between fields. For example, if a field contains a comma, it must be quoted: 1,2,3,"I think, therefore I am",5,6 The fields returned by this example are: ['1', '2', '3', 'I think, therefore I am', '5', '6'] Since fields are quoted using quotation marks, you also need a way to escape them. In Microsoft created CSV files this is done by doubling them: 1,2,3,"""I see,"" said the blind man","as he picked up his hammer and saw" Excel and Access quite reasonably allow you to place newlines in cell and column data. When this is exported as CSV data the output file contains fields with embedded newlines. 1,2,3,"""I see,"" said the blind man","as he picked up his hammer and saw" A single record is split over three lines with text fields containing embedded newlines. This is what happens when you pass that data line by line to the CSV parser. ferret:/home/djc% python Python 2.0 (#0, Apr 14 2001, 21:24:22) [GCC 2.95.3 20010219 (prerelease)] on linux2 Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import csv >>> p = csv.parser() >>> p.parse('1,2,3,"""I see,""') >>> p.parse('said the blind man","as he picked up his') >>> p.parse('hammer and saw"') ['1', '2', '3', '"I see,"\012said the blind man', 'as he picked up his\012hammer and saw'] Note that the parser only returns a list of fields when the record is complete. The changes in this release are: 1- Exception raising was leaking the error message. Thanks to John Machin for fixing this. 2- When a parsing exception is raised during parse(), the parser will automatically call clear() discard accumulated fields and state the next time you call parse(). The old behaviour can be restored either by passing zero as the auto_clear constructor keyword argument, or by setting the auto_clear parser attribute to zero. As well as raising an exception, a parsing error will also set the readonly parser attribute had_parse_error to 1. This is reset next time you call parse() or clear(). Thanks again to John Machin for suggesting this. 3- An obscure parsing bug has been fixed. The old behaviour: >>> p.parse('12,12,1",') ['12', '12', '1",'] >>> The new behaviour: >>> p.parse('12,12,1",') ['12', '12', '1"', ''] >>> I am still of two minds about whether I should raise an exception when I encounter text like that... The module homepage: http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/csv/ For people who do not have a C compiler on Windows I have put a Python 2.1 binary up here: http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/csv/csv.pyd - Dave -- http://www.object-craft.com.au

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ANN: VideoCapture 0.4 released
by Markus Gritsch July 12, 2001

July 12, 2001

VideoCapture-0.4 ================ URL: ---- http://stud4.tuwien.ac.at/~e9326522/VideoCapture/ What it is: ----------- VideoCapture is a Python extension for Win32 which makes it possible to access video-capture devices (e.g. a USB webcam). What is new in version 0.4: --------------------------- *) Added a PyQt based program which periodically retrieves a picture from the web and displays it in a GUI window. A stand-alone binary is temporaly available at http://in1.iue.tuwien.ac.at/temp/webcam-watcher.zip *) Several enhancements to webcam-uploader. Now also a HTML file which displays the uploaded image and periodically reloads itself is placed together with the image on the WebServer. Contact: -------- Markus Gritsch (gritsch(a)iue.tuwien.ac.at) Enjoy and have fun!

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SCons (Python build tool) development under way
by Steven Knight July 11, 2001

July 11, 2001

This is to announce that active development of SCons is now underway at: http://scons.sourceforge.net/ SCons is a Python software construction (or software build) tool. SCons is implemented as a Python script around a central set of Python build-engine modules. SCons configuration files are actually executed as Python scripts, allowing you to use full Python functionality to control your build. You use Python functions and methods in the configuration files to tell the central build engine about your input and output files. Other key features: Dependency calculations are done using MD5 signatures, yielding more reliable builds than timestamp-based dependency analysis. Most dependencies are handled automatically. Building multiple targets in parallel (-j) is supported. It's easy to add your own Builder objects and otherwise customize your build. SCons is still on its way to alpha release, so there's no official package available for download at the moment--sorry. Much of the infrastructure has been coded, though, and is available for anonymous CVS checkout, or browsable via the CVS web interface under the SCons project page at SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/scons/ The usual set of mailing lists (scons-announce, scons-devel, scons-users) has been created. A small development team (n == 3) is working towards finishing enough documentation and basic functionality for a rapid series of alpha releases in the (hopefully) near future. To help that effort, we'd like to become larger than just a "small" team. If you're interested in contributing, we'd love to hear from you. Check out the developer guidelines on the SCons web site. Yes, SCons is the direct descendant of the ScCons design that won the Software Carpentry build tool competition last year. It's been renamed (dropped the extra 'c') to make it slightly easier to type, and to try to reflect weakly the fact that this project is no longer directly related to Software Carpentry. (Sorry, I don't know the current status of Software Carpentry or the other tools they were planning.) The SCons design is based on the design of the Perl-based Cons software construction tool: http://www.dsmit.com/cons/ SCons improves on the Cons architecture by incorporating several years of practical experience with its strengths and weaknesses. (And, of course, by being written in Python... :-) --SK

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[Application] Scribbler
by Parnassus Submission July 11, 2001

July 11, 2001

Scribbler --------- quick, easy, minimalistic diary script Usage: scribbler.py - edit today's diary entry scribbler.py -b - browse old entries Uses vim to edit and lynx to browse. URL: http://silmarill.org/scribbler.py License: GPL Platform: linux Requires: vim, lynx (can be changed) Categories: Miscellany andrei kulakov -- <a href="http://silmarill.org/scribbler.py">Scribbler</a> -- quick, easy, minimalistic diary script

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PyWebLib 1.0.2
by Michael Ströder July 9, 2001

July 9, 2001

HI! I'd like to announce PyWebLib 1.0.2. You can find it on: http://www.stroeder.com/pylib/PyWebLib/ But be warned that documentation is very sparse (some short examples and pydoc-generated HTML). Ciao, Michael. Changes since 1.0.1 - Cleaned up and extended regex handling in pyweblib.forms.Field() - Cleaned up some minor issues found by PyChecker - Fix for non-existent dict keys in pyweblib.session.WebSession._crosscheckSessionEnv() - Modified error handling in pyweblib.session.WebSession._generateSessionID() - other minor fixes - __doc__ strings

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typo.py - Warn of typographical errors in Python scripts
by Alan Klietz July 9, 2001

July 9, 2001

One of the most common annoyances with using Python is that it does not report typographical errors in variable names at compile time. For example, def compute_area(width, height): area = width * hieght # oops Another example is a typo in an attribute for a class, class Square: def __init__(self, width, height): self.width = width self.hieght = height # oops def compute_area(self): return self.width * self.height typo.py will catch these errors and report them: hieght might be used before set at line 2 self.height might be undefined at line 7 You can download typo.py from http://utools.com/typo.htm Alan Klietz Algin Technology alank(a)algintech.NOSPAM.com

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ANNOUNCE: SemanText 0.72 released
by Eric Freese July 9, 2001

July 9, 2001

The 0.72 release of SemanText has just been posted at www.semantext.com. Among the new features are: * Context-based harvesting - This allows topics and associations to be automatically constructed from XML documents by identifying specific information to be harvested. * Full topic map maintenance capability - Topics, associations, occurrences, and facets can be added, modified and deleted via the SemanText interface. * Choice of look-and-feel - A classic web browser style of interface or a push-button style of interface. * Choice of view - Users can select whether to look at the information from a topic map point of view (only the information contained in the topic map) or a knowledge base point of view (information based on interpretting the topic map or generated by the inference rules).</li> * XTM export - Topic maps can be exported in accordance with the new XTM specification. About SemanText SemanText is a prototype application developed, using Python, to demonstrate how the topic map standard (ISO/IEC 13250:2000) and XML Topic Maps (XTM) can be used to represent the knowledge contained within documents by building semantic networks. Semantic networks are a building block for artificial intelligence applications such as inference engines and expert systems.

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