Mailman 3 July 2001 - Python-announce-list

Recall 1.3
by Eric C. Newton July 8, 2001

July 8, 2001

Recall 1.3 has been released. Recall is a framework for building distributed, fault-tolerant, replicated storage servers. Recall uses omniORBpy for distributed communications and standardized interfaces. Recall provides high consistency guarantees, the ability to add and remove replicas at run-time, and service during server recovery. There's a graphical demonstration, a line-by-line HOWTO, and several simple examples. It is now possible to build your own fault-tolerant server in 50 lines of code. Recall has been tested under Linux (RedHat 7.1) and Windows 9x with omniORBpy 1.4 and Python 2.1 and Python 1.5. Get it at: http://recall.sourceforge.net Changes: Win32 support. Python 1.5 testing. Additional extensibility hooks. Contact: recall(a)metaslash.com

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Sketch 0.6.12 - A vector drawing program
by Bernhard Herzog July 5, 2001

July 5, 2001

Sketch 0.6.12 - A vector drawing program Sketch is a vector drawing program for Linux and other unices. It's intended to be a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes. It has advanced features like gradients, text along a path and clip masks and is fully scriptable due to its implementation in a combination of Python and C. More information, sources and binaries are available at the website: http://sketch.sourceforge.net/ Changes: This new release is just a bug fix release, but since some of the bugs have been introduced in recent Sketch versions, users of 0.6.10 and 0.6.11 should probably upgrade.

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[ANNOUNCE] TMDA 0.22 - A qmail-based anti-SPAM system
by Jason R. Mastaler July 5, 2001

July 5, 2001

Since I announced TMDA 0.10 here a couple months ago, the software has undergone several major feature additions including: * Support for site-wide installations using qmail-relay rewriting. This also allows TMDA to be used by non-qmail clients such as those running Microsoft Windows. * A powerful new matching syntax based on Unix shell-style wildcards. * Package installation options for Linux and FreeBSD. TMDA has also reached a level of stability where I feel it is now production-worthy. About TMDA: TMDA is an OSI certified Python application for qmail systems designed to significantly reduce (or eliminate) the amount of SPAM/UCE you receive by using unique, cryptographically enhanced (called tagged) e-mail addresses. TMDA can both filter your incoming e-mail, and tag your outgoing address. For more information, download locations, and installation instructions, visit the TMDA homepage: <URL:http://tmda.sourceforge.net/> Enjoy, Jason R. Mastaler <P><A HREF="http://tmda.sourceforge.net">TMDA 0.22</A> - A qmail-based anti-SPAM system. (05-Jul-2001)

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python-dev summary 2001-06-21 - 2001-07-05
by Michael Hudson July 5, 2001

July 5, 2001

The less typo-ed version! This is a summary of traffic on the python-dev mailing list between June 21 and July 4 (inclusive) 2001. It is intended to inform the wider Python community of ongoing developments. To comment, just post to python-list(a)python.org or comp.lang.python in the usual way. Give your posting a meaningful subject line, and if it's about a PEP, include the PEP number (e.g. Subject: PEP 201 - Lockstep iteration) All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on a PEP if you have an opinion. This is the eleventh summary written by Michael Hudson. Summaries are archived at: <http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/> Posting distribution (with apologies to mbm) Number of articles in summary: 252 40 | [|] | [|] | [|] | [|] | [|] 30 | [|] | [|] | [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] 20 | [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] 10 | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] 0 +-004-019-007-016-042-018-028-013-005-015-016-029-027-013 Thu 21| Sat 23| Mon 25| Wed 27| Fri 29| Sun 01| Tue 03| Fri 22 Sun 24 Tue 26 Thu 28 Sat 30 Mon 02 Wed 04 This will be my last python-dev summary for a while, as I'm going to be mostly away from the internet for the summer. However, Andrew Kuchling has agreed to take up writing them again, so there should be no interruption in the summaries. * Support for "wide" Unicode characters * Paul Prescod posted a draft of PEP 261 'Support for "wide" Unicode characters': <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015644.html> which proposes adding a compile time option to configure unicode objects to store "code points" (the integers that the unicode specification maps to "characters" -- though that word is dangerously overlodaed in the Unicode arena) in 32 bit integers -- they're currently stored in 16 bits. This was (I believe) at least partially inspired by the Unicode Consortium assigning code points outside the "Basic Multilingual Plane" (i.e. the range of 16 bit integers). Noone is convinced that this is the best possible solution (a better solution might be to have unicode objects that could either store code points in 16 bits or 32 bits as necessary, and this solution could have binary compatibility problems), but it seems noone has the time to implement a better one (and a better one would probably have compatibility problems that couldn't be fixed by a simple recompile): <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/015674.html> (I apologise for any abuse of terminology in the above - I know very little about the issues surrounding Unicode). * Python specializing compiler * Armin Rigo announced his "Python specializing compiler", psyco: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015503.html> It works on the principle that you can compile a faster version of a function if you know stuff about the arguments it's likely to be called with. This is one of the more asthetically pleasing of the possible ways to speed Python up (it's similar to some tactics used by the seemingly defunct self compiler), but it's still a very large amount of work away from being useful... * IPv6 * *Very* preliminary support for IPv6 - the "next generation internet protocol" was checked in. The support thus far doesn't actually support IPv6 at all, but rather emulates IPv6's new functions for IPv4 addresses, so that code for Python 2.2 will hopefully be portable between machines that do and do not support IPv6, whilst being able to use IPv6 where it is supported (I hope that makes sense). Unfortunately the checkin broke the build on some platforms (OSF1, Windows) but I believe these problems are now sorted out. IPv6 support has been muttered about for years now, so it's nice to finally see some movement, even if it is causing some x-platform pain. * PEP 260: simplifying xrange * Guido posted PEP 260, a proposal to removed some of the less useful aspects of the xrange type: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015590.html> Support was muted; there's the usual concern on removing "little used" features -- what if someone (who maybe doesn't read comp.lang.python or these summaries) uses them? * site-python, site-packages * Gregor Hoffleit posted a request that <prefix>/lib/site-python be considered a standard install target: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/015715.html> as the current standard of <prefix>/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/ makes life awkward for packagers. It's possible Gregor asked the wrong bunch of people; a non-version dependent path makes life awkward for those who want to mantain more than version of Python, and that includes most of the people on pyton-dev. OTOH, it probably also includes everyone who cares about the cross-version portability of the code they write, so it seems that movemnet is unlikely here (could be wrong, though). Cheers, M.

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Important news for Montreal-area Python fans
by Greg Ward July 3, 2001

July 3, 2001

Sorry for the geographical specificity, but this announcement is of such staggering importance to Python fans in and around Montreal, Canada that the minor inconvenience of spreading this message all over the world can be safely ignored. For whatever reason, the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montreal has chosen this month to put on a MONTY PYTHON RETROSPECTIVE. (Perhaps this is in response to the recent "Yet Another Perl Conference" in Montreal.) Yes, that's right: at long last, you can pony up your five bucks and sit in a darkened theatre to watch not one, not two, but THREE back-to-back original episodes of *Monty Python's Flying Circus*. Over and over again -- it looks like they're showing episodes 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 39, 42 (hmmm), 43, and 45. Plus they're showing all the movies, and a couple of BBC television specials (one from 1979 and one from 1990). The main action is from 11 to 25 July; repeats from 26 to 29 July. Looks like most (all?) shows are at 7pm in Salle Fernand-Seguin. (The Cinématheque is at 335 de Maisonneuve E. in downtown Montreal.) You can get the complete list of shows at http://www.cinematheque.qc.ca/cgi/rechbd.cgi?Mt1=python&FichGab=..%2Fprojec… Sociable Montreal-area Pythonistas: contact me if you'd like to get together before or after any showing. Perhaps a Montreal PIG could grow out of this auspicious occasion... Greg -- Greg Ward - Python bigot gward(a)python.net http://starship.python.net/~gward/ Question authority!

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Libre Software Meeting/ Python track
by Marc Poinot July 2, 2001

July 2, 2001

The Python Track of Libre Software Meeting will start Wed, July 4th, at 14h00, in Bordeaux, France. We hope to see all European Python users there. Check the final program, within the LSM program, at: http://lsm.abul.org -MP-

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