Mailman 3 July 2002 - Python-announce-list

cx_Oracle 2.5
by Anthony Tuininga 16 Jul '02

16 Jul '02

What is cx_Oracle? cx_Oracle is a Python extension module that allows access to Oracle and conforms to the Python database API 2.0 specifications with a few exceptions. Where do I get it? http://computronix.com/utilities What's new? The primary focus of this release was increased performance in certain key areas, elimination of unimplemented parts of the DB-API 2.0 and increased usefulness in a threaded environment. The following list details the changes made in no particular order. 1) Added flag OPT_NoOracle7 which, if set, assumes that connections are being made to Oracle8 or higher databases; this allows for eliminating the overhead in performing this check at connect time 2) Added flag OPT_NumbersAsStrings which, if set, returns all numbers as strings rather than integers or floats; this flag is used when defined variables are created (during select statements only) 3) Added flag OPT_Threading which, if set, uses OCI threading mode; there is a significant performance degradation in this mode (about 15-20%) but it does allow threads to share connections (threadsafety level 2 according to the Python Database API 2.0); note that in order to support this, Oracle 8i or higher is now required 4) Added Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS and Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS pairs where applicable to support threading during blocking OCI calls 5) Added global method attach() to cx_Oracle to support attaching to an existing database handle (as provided by PowerBuilder, for example) 6) Eliminated the cursor method fetchbinds() which was used for returning the list of bind variables after execution to get the values of out variables; the cursor method setinputsizes() was modified to return the list of bind variables and the cursor method execute() was modified to return the list of defined variables in the case of a select statement being executed; these variables have three methods available to them: getvalue([<pos>]) to get the value of a variable, setvalue(<pos>, <value>) to set its value and copy(<var>, <src_pos>, <targ_pos>) to copy the value from a variable in a more efficient manner than setvalue(getvalue()) 7) Implemented cursor method executemany() which expects a list of dictionaries for the arguments 8) Implemented cursor method callproc() 9) Added cursor method prepare() which parses (prepares) the statement for execution; subsequent execute() or executemany() calls can pass None as the statement which will imply use of the previously prepared statement; used for high performance only 10) Added cursor method fetchraw() which will perform a raw fetch of the cursor returning the number of rows thus fetched; this is used to avoid the overhead of generating result sets; used for high performance only 11) Added cursor method executemanyprepared() which is identical to the method executemany() except that it takes a single argument which is the number of times to execute a previously prepared statement and it assumes that the bind variables already have their values set; used for high performance only 12) Added support for rowid being returned in a select statement 13) Added support for comparing dates returned by cx_Oracle 14) Integrated patch from Andre Reitz to set the null ok flag in the description attribute of the cursor 15) Integrated patch from Andre Reitz to setup.py to support compilation with Python 1.5 16) Integrated patch from Benjamin Kearns to setup.py to support compilation on Cygwin -- Anthony Tuininga anthony(a)computronix.com Computronix Distinctive Software. Real People. Suite 200, 10216 - 124 Street NW Edmonton, AB, Canada T5N 4A3 Phone: (780) 454-3700 Fax: (780) 454-3838 http://www.computronix.com

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Pyrite Publisher 2.1.1
by Rob Tillotson 15 Jul '02

15 Jul '02

Pyrite Publisher converts HTML, text, and CSV databases into Palm platform PDA compatible formats, including Doc, zTXT, and JFile. It has a wxWindows-based GUI (optional) and a command-line interface, and runs on Unix/Linux and Windows. For more information or to download, visit the Pyrite Project home page: http://www.pyrite.org/ Mailing lists are available at: http://nyip.net/mailman/listinfo/pyrite-announce [moderated, low volume] http://nyip.net/mailman/listinfo/pyrite-discuss What's New In 2.1.1 =================== Version 2.1.1 is a bugfix release; it has no significant new features. What's New In 2.1.0 =================== - WebInput, a new plugin that recursively spiders a HTML page and concatenates all of its sub-pages into the output document. This is still somewhat experimental; it is not available from the GUI and must be explicitly requested from the command line. - Minor changes to the plugin developer API. Features of Pyrite Publisher ============================ Pyrite Publisher is an extensible, plugin-based system of filters to convert common information formats into documents and databases suitable for use on a Palm platform PDA. Its main focus is on e-book conversion, but database support is being added as well. It has the following features (among others): - Supported e-book formats: Doc, zTXT (Weasel), Doc with RichReader markup, Doc with TealDoc markup - Convert raw data to any supported e-book format - Convert text to any supported e-book format with paragraph wrapping - Convert HTML to any supported e-book format - Auto-bookmarking of HTML headers - Auto-bookmarking based on regular expressions - Direct conversion between Doc and zTXT, preserving bookmarks - Auto-annotation (zTXT) of links in HTML documents - Support for markup (bold, underline, headings, etc.) in formats that support it - Recursive web page retrieval - Convert CSV to JFile (more database formats on the way) - Guess field types from input CSV data - Retrieve input data from local files or ftp/http URLs - Installation of converted files using JPilot (Unix/Linux only) - Direct installation of converted files onto PDA (Unix/Linux only; requires pilot-link and its Python bindings) - Supports external converters to handle unknown file types - wxWindows-based GUI for Unix/Linux and Windows 9x/2000/ME/XP -- Rob Tillotson N9MTB <rob(a)pyrite.org>

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ANNOUNCE: SCons 0.08 (Python build tool) is now available
by Steven Knight 15 Jul '02

15 Jul '02

SCons is a software construction tool (build tool, or make tool) written in Python. It is based on the design which won the Software Carpentry build tool competition in August 2000. Version 0.08 of SCons has been released and is available for download from the SCons web site: http://www.scons.org/ Or through the download link at the SCons project page at SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/scons/ RPM and Debian packages and a Win32 installer are all available, in addition to the traditional .tar.gz and .zip files. WHAT'S NEW IN THIS RELEASE? IMPORTANT: Release 0.08 contains the following interface changes: - The old feature of automatically splitting strings of file names on white space has been REMOVED. - The prefix, suffix and src_suffix arguments to the Builder() function may no longer be callable functions. - The BUILDERS construction variable should now be a dictionary that maps builder names to actions. Existing uses of lists, and the Builder() name= keyword argument, generate warnings about use of deprecated features. - The "shared" keyword argument has been removed from the Object and Library builders. Shared and static objects and libraries should now be created via the separate StaticObject, SharedObject, StaticLibrary and SharedLibrary builders. Object and Library are now synonyms for StaticObject and StaticLibrary, respectively. This release adds the following features: - New construction environment Append() and Replace() methods allow clearer manipulation of construction variables. - New functions: FindFile(), GetLaunchDir(), SetBuildSignatureType(), SideEffect(). - New command-line options: --debug=time, --implicit-deps-changed, --implicit-deps-unchanged, --warn. - New Builders: Tar. - Added a new Platform() method with support for the cygwin, os2, posix, and win32 platforms. - New "platform" and "tools" keyword arguments to Environment(). - Added a new Tool() method with support for the ar, dvipdf, dvips, g++, g77, gas, gcc, gnulink, icc, ilink, latex, lex, lib, masm, mslink, msvc, nasm, pdflatex, pdftex, tar, tex and yacc tools. - A dependency Scanner for native Fortran "include" statements, using a new "F77PATH" construction variable. - The -v option prints more specific version / build information. changes in the case of drive letters don't cause a rebuild. - The "target" argument to a Builder call may now be omitted, in which case the target(s) are deduced from the source file(s) and the Builder's specified suffix. - A new "multi" keyword argument to Builder() specifies that it's okay to call the builder multiple times for a target. - SCons now automatically falls back to using timestamps for out-of-date checks if the Python MD5 module can't be imported. - Multiple calls for a single Alias() will now append values. The following fixes have been added: - File names with multiple dots are now handled correctly. - The --implicit-cache option has been fixed if the scanner returns an empty list; no longer causes redundant rebuilds when the header file list changed; has been fixed when a file has no implicit dependencies and its source is generated. - C dependency scanning now detects #include file names with characters like '-'. - Shared libraries now use LIBS and LIBPATH for dependencies. - A build directory may now be outside of the SConstruct tree. - Shared object builds using g++ and gcc now use $CPPFLAGS, too. - A single interrupt is now guaranteed to halt SCons both when using -j and not. - Relative CPPPATH directories now work correctly when using BuildDir(). - SCons now prints an error message if a file can't be unlinked before being built, instead of just silently terminating the build. - Emitter functions' use of path names work properly using BuildDir or in subdirectories. - Fix .sconsign signature storage so that output files of one build can be safely used as input files to another build. Performance has been improved as follows: - Use our own version of the inefficient stock os.path.splitext() method. - Cache source suffix computation. - Code cleanup in MultiStepBuilder.__call__(). - Replicate some logic in scons_subst(). The following changes have been made to the SCons packaging: - Updated README instructions and setup.py code to catch an installation failure from not having distutils installed. The documentation has been updated to reflect the above changes. ABOUT SCONS Distinctive features of SCons include: - a global view of all dependencies; no multiple passes to get everything built properly - configuration files are Python scripts, allowing the full use of a real scripting language to solve difficult build problems - a modular architecture allows the SCons Build Engine to be embedded in other Python software - the ability to scan files for implicit dependencies (#include files); - improved parallel build (-j) support that provides consistent build speedup regardless of source tree layout - use of MD5 signatures to decide if a file has really changed; no need to "touch" files to fool make that something is up-to-date - easily extensible through user-defined Builder and Scanner objects - build actions can be Python code, as well as external commands An scons-users mailing list is available for those interested in getting started using SCons. You can subscribe at: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scons-users Alternatively, we invite you to subscribe to the low-volume scons-announce mailing list to receive notification when new versions of SCons become available: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scons-announce ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks to Charles Crain, Jeff Petkau, Anthony Roach, Zed Shaw and Terrel Shumway for their contributions to this release. On behalf of the SCons team, --SK

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ANN: Twisted 0.19.0
by Itamar Shtull-Trauring 15 Jul '02

15 Jul '02

Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications, written in Python and licensed under the LGPL. For more information, visit: http://www.twistedmatrix.com Join the list at: http://twistedmatrix.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twisted-python Our IRC channel is #twisted on irc.openprojects.net. What's New in 0.19.0 ==================== - cReactor, a C-based reactor for faster networking. - Reimplemented OSCAR protocol (for AIM and ICQ). - Added a new MVC-based web framework. - Refactoring of Deferreds. - Support for persisting to abstract object tree (this is equivalent to pickle, except that the output is Python source code.) - Processes can now be run setuid/setgid. - Huge number of bugfixes, including much improved SSL support, and lots more documentation. What is Twisted? ================ Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications. It includes a web server, a telnet server, a chat server, a news server, a generic client and server for remote object access, and APIs for creating new protocols and services. Twisted supports integration of the Tk, GTK+, Qt or wxPython event loop with its main event loop. The Win32 event loop is also supported, as is basic support for running servers on top of Jython. Twisted supports TCP, SSL, UDP, Unix sockets and subprocesses out of the box. Twisted currently supports the following protocols, all implemented in pure python, most of them as both servers and clients: - NNTP - FTP - HTTP - SOCKSv4 - SMTP - IRC - telnet - POP3 - AOL's instant messaging TOC - OSCAR, used by AOL-IM as well as ICQ (client only) - DNS - finger - Echo, discard, chargen and friends - Twisted Perspective Broker - LDAP is available as a separate plugin

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ANN : PyUt 1.1 - UML editor with roundtrip
by Cedric Dutoit 14 Jul '02

14 Jul '02

PyUt 1.1 is available at http://pyut.sf.net PyUt 1.1 ======== - is a little UML 1.3 editor which support class diagram and use-cases. - is written in Python - is GPL, free - works under Linux, Unix, Windows (the linux and unix version is a rpm which need wxPython-http://www.wxpython.org; a Macintosh version of wxPython is under construction) Functionalities : =============== - Class diagram - Use-cases - Export to bmp, jpg, ps - REVERSE-ENGINEERING java, python - CODE GENERATION java, python, C++ - XMI import (compatibility with Rational Rose - i18n (French-English) - Plugins support (python) Links ===== PyUt's website : http://pyut.sf.net Direct download : http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=39548 For PyUt's team, C.Dutoit - dutoitc(a)hotmail.com PyUt's team is composed of 6 students at EIVD - Ecole d'ingénieurs du Nord Vaudois, Suisse (www.eivd.ch) (~Computer high school) This project is active and will continue !

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WaselWeb
by ny_r_marquez＠yahoo.com 14 Jul '02

14 Jul '02

This may interest you if have a Palm Pilot, or if you are interested in custom parsing html files. Those of you with Palm Pilots may be familiar with Weasel reader (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gutenpalm/). I really like this reader because, besides being free software, it gives the best compression that I have seen, and it allows for bookmarks to be generated on the fly as it converts from txt format to its ztxt (pdb) format. The problem for me was that the converter did not know how to handle html files. So I wrote a little Python program to do this and I called it WeaselWeb. It is licensed as free software under the GPL. If you are interested, get it from here (eventually it will be under the main Weasel project page): http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/gutenpalm/gutenpalm/ There is a nice self installing package for Windows. However, the Linux version will need a little help since I do not yet have a usable Linux machine. I would like to eventually creaet a standalone version for Linux as well. (If some one would like to help with this, please be my guest.) Any way, I hope you enjoy it. -Ruben

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emPire v. 0.59
by joost_jacob＠hotmail.com 12 Jul '02

12 Jul '02

A portable open source multiplayer game for the default Python distribution without need for any extra modules, see http://www.liacs.nl/~jjacob/emp/ also a screenshot there. Have fun with programming and learn Python in the meantime, for example reprogram the AI class (this version has a not too complicated rule-based AI) or rewrite the GUI class with pygame?

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Announce: Pike Conference 2002
by Johan Sundström 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

Call for Participation and Contributions Pike Conference 2002 - Aug 22-24 Pike and the Semantic Web RISE, the Research Center for Integrational Software Engineering, Linköping University (http://www.ida.liu.se/~rise/), has agreed to take over hosting, development, and maintenance of Pike, formerly at Roxen Internet Software AB. Pike is a second generation Java-like language, has a fast and reliable implementation, many killer applications, and a well running open source development community (http://pike.ida.liu.se/). Pike runs on most flavours of Unix, on the Win32 platform and MacOS X. Besides maintaining Pike a fast and reliable platform as it has been in the past, a main RISE goal is to make it the first scripting language for the Semantic Web. As a language, Pike is much better suited for the Semantic Web than Java or C#, since it provides multiple inheritance, sets, relations, and dynamic arrays. A second goal is to embed software composition technology into Pike. In the long run, Pike will be extended with modern concepts such as connectors or aspects. This way, Pike will strengthen the RISE center, whose mission is to develop practical composition and integration technology for software components. During August 22-24, 2002, RISE will host the next Pike User Group Meeting in Linköping (http://pike.ida.liu.se/conferences/2002/). RISE invites the Pike programmers all over the world to come to Linköping and hear more about these exciting perspectives. The meeting with the focus topic "Pike and the Semantic Web" will reveal more about the future strategy of Pike. - There will be workshops/discussions on various topics. - There will be an opportunity for people to present papers on relevant topics, give short presentations of projects etc. (Papers, abstracts and other material should be submitted in advance so we can schedule them properly. The tentative deadline is July 31 for such submissions.) - A small fee will be charged for participation, to cover the expenses for organising the conference. The fee has not yet been determined, but will be something like 20-30 Euro. Read more about it on http://pike.ida.liu.se/conferences/2002/. Welcome to Linköping! Your Pike people at IDA Uwe Assmann, Marcus Comstedt, Martin Nilsson, Johan Sundström, Leif Stensson.

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RELEASED Mailman 2.0.12
by barry＠zope.com 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

I've released version 2.0.12 of Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager. Mailman is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Version 2.0.12 fixes a cross-site scripting vulnerability among other changes. I recommend that folks upgrade their 2.0.x systems to this new version. See below for a NEWS file excerpt. GNU Mailman is software to help manage electronic mail discussion lists. Mailman gives each mailing list a unique web page and allows users to subscribe, unsubscribe, and change their account options over the web. Even the list manager can administer his or her list entirely via the web. Mailman has most of the features that people want in a mailing list management system, including built-in archiving, mail-to-news gateways, spam filters, bounce detection, digest delivery, and so on. Mailman is compatible with most web servers, web browsers, and mail servers. It runs on any Unix-like operating system. Mailman 2.0.11 requires Python 1.5.2 or newer. To install Mailman from source, you will need a C compiler. For more information on Mailman, including links to file downloads, please see any of the Mailman mirror web pages: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman http://mailman.sourceforge.net http://www.list.org Patches and source tarballs are available at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=103 There are email lists (managed by Mailman, of course!) for both Mailman users and developers. See the web sites above for details. Cheers, -Barry -------------------- snip snip -------------------- 2.0.12 (02-Jul-2002) - Implemented a guard against some reply loops and 'bot subscription attacks. Specifically, if a message to -request has a Precedence: bulk (or list, or junk) header, the command is ignored. Well-behaved 'bots should always include such a header. - Changes to the configure script so that you can pass in the mail host and web host by setting the environment variables MAILHOST and WWWHOST respectively. configure will also exit if it can't figure out these values (usually due to broken dns). - Closed another minor cross-site scripting vulnerability.

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GadflyB5 1.0.0 - SQL Relational Database in Python
by Richard Jones 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

================================================ Gadfly 1.0.0 - SQL Relational Database in Python ================================================ Gadfly is a relational database system implemented in Python based on the SQL Structured Query Language. This is the GadflyB5 release - like a NG release only better :) Note: Aaron Watters is not the contact for this project. The contact for this project is richard(a)users.sourceforge.net. Gadfly requires python 2.1 or later for correct operation. GadflyB5 is mostly the same old Gadfly, but: - updated to use new regular expression engine (regex -> re migration) performed by the fine folk at the Zope Corporation (http://www.zope.com/). - kjbuckets C extension module maintenance and updates (see the kjbuckets documentation for details) - documentation cleanup - cleanup and reorganisation of the gadfly modules, including: - migration to distutils-based installation - cleanup of SQL grammar marshalling - more strict (in places) unit/regression testing - general cleanup of the code itself - cleanup of networking code (note: gfclient argument list has changed!) Please read CHANGES.txt for a complete list of changes since the last release. There is no ongoing support available for usage, unless someone volunteers. If you have found a bug, please submit an issue to the bug tracker at: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=100662&group_id=662 If you've got a great idea for gadfly, and have the time to work on it, please contact the gadfly project admins.

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