Mailman 3 August 2002 - Python-announce-list

ANN: omniORB 4.0.0 beta 2 and omniORBpy 2.0 beta 2
by Duncan Grisby 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

I am pleased to announce the second beta releases of omniORB 4.0.0 and omniORBpy 2.0. omniORB is a robust, high performance CORBA ORB for C++. omniORBpy is a version for Python. They are freely available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (for the libraries), and GNU General Public License (for the tools). For more information, see http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/ Highlights of the new features since omniORB 3.0 and omniORBpy 1: - Updated to CORBA 2.6. - Support for GIOP 1.1 and 1.2. - Wide string and codeset negotiation. - Unix domain and SSL transports. - Bidirectional GIOP. - Flexible thread pool mode. - PortableServer::Current. - Interceptors. - Fixed point. - Complete freeing of all heap allocations. - Efficient in-process calls between C++ and Python. - Python / C++ object reference translation API. - New comprehensive configuration mechanism. - Commercial support. See http://www.omniorb-support.com/ Release notes are available from http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=106616 and http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=106615 You can download the releases themselves via the release notes pages, or from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=51138 Please try out the betas and report any problems you encounter to the omniORB mailing list (see http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/list.html). The intention is to release a release candidate in around two weeks time, followed by a full release shortly afterwards. Enjoy, Duncan. -- -- Duncan Grisby -- -- duncan(a)grisby.org -- -- http://www.grisby.org --

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A new project for Python
by Mr. Neutron 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

Hi all, I am working on a project I call PyAGENT. It is a network server that let's mobile python 'agents' enter the machine and execute on it. The environemnt will try to be restricted and secure as possible, as I would like PyAGENT servers to be accessible through the internet. I created a sourceforge project. For bizarre reason, I call the project Pyggly. While this name is bizarre, there is already a pyagent. PyAGENT and pyagent are fundamentally different things I think. pyagent is for making XML-RPC agents. PyAGENT is a framework for making mobile agents in Python using a server model. It also allows communication between agents through a message queue. But for now it is called Pyggly on SourceForge until I find a better name. In it's simplest design it allows python scripts to be imported into a host and executed as a process over a socket. I've already got most of this working. My goal for using PyAGENT is to write a robot game. Robots are python objects and code. They are written in Python. Eventually I would like to have some sort of command language for robot reasoning, or use CLIPS. It is free for all how you implement robot AI. There will be a standard tools for beginners to learn how to make robots. The emphasis on robots is that it is easy to build a robot and learn how to program at the same time. Robots primarily explore worlds and learn about their environment. They learn to remember where they have been and how to get to interesting places. A robot can have many purposes. It can be a helper robot, which comes along and helps another robot refuel. It can be an explorer robot, mapping out new territory and learning about a new world. Some robots are warriors, and there purpose is to terminate other robots they encounter.This provides an interesting environment for a robot with a purpose to interact in. Some robots are hostile, some are not. Robots should be designed to find out what another robots purpose is, and to react to it. Robots can communicate. How they communicate is up to the designer. Some robots might not communicate at all. Or some may speak in strange languages (R2-D2). There are no rules how a robot communicates. It simply send a message to another robot in it's language and if the robot understands, it can reply. The world environment is a very simple landscape. In the world are portals to stores (where you can buy fuel and repair), and to other worlds (hosts). Robots will also be able to find valuable ores (money) and fuel in their environment. Environments will maintain a balance for fuel and ore and continously spawn new ones on the surface. This way a world does not run out of resources. Robots must look through the world to find them. There is no guarantee they will ever return to the same sport again. Robots should be fundamentally curious. They are continously looking for other robots in their world, and are looking for portals to other hosts, or to stores to buy supplies or get repairs. There should be a way to track your robot. You should be able to find your robot and find out how he/she is doing. You might want to talk to your robot to encourage it. Maybe there is a way to upload a new intelligence program into your robot too, or this might be considered cheating. The idea is that even a kid just learning to program can learn to make a robot. I want to encourage robot building to be as easy as possible but also to be a customizeable experience. Robots can be dumb or smart. It depends how much the robot designer wants to put into their robot. Robots will be based on classes which provide all the tools for interacting with the environment. The emphasis of the programming should be on creating the intelligence of the robot and how it reacts to situations. It should give the designer freedom to make their own robot that works the way they want they want a robot to work, but keeping in mind that some people make robots for very different purposes (and could be hostile). It can also be allowed to restrict violence. A world that has restricted violence prohibits robots from fighting. If there is anyone interested in joining the project as a developer send me an email. You really must know how to program, at least in Python. Experience with C is also a good thing but not necessary. You really must understand sockets and how to write programs that communicate over a socket. You should also be familiar with basic data structures (lists, queues, stacks). Important is the ability to learn fast and be creative. You must also be somewhat dedicated to the project for at least a month or two. I would prefer to find people who are really interested in the development, and not just passing through. If you are interested in being a design guru (and I could definitely use someone with more experience to mull ideas over with) or just a project coach, then you really should be a guru who has some time to answer emails and help on the growth of the project. Having experience in writing a robot game like this would be a major advantage and much appreciated, as I would not have to reinvent the wheel each time to create new solutions. In short if you have experience and would like to be a project coach that would be greatly appreciated. The purpose of robots is to make a simple tool to explore programming. It does not have to be just a simple tool though. It can be used as a framework for creating agents with AI. I would like for it to be used by kids to learn how to program, or also AI researchers interested in creating robots in environments, or by hobbyist that are tired of games like Quake and Doom and want a more challenging game to play with. The primary purpose is to be a tool to learn how to program and experiment with AI techniques (you don't have to be an AI rocket scientist to make a robot, and it's purpose is not JUST for researching into doing AI. Robots are as various as their designers. If you are afraid to fight, build a fast robot with very little armor and guns. If you are a warrior, build a slow warrior with guns and armor. The point is it should be fair that if you don't want to fight, you don't have to. I incorporated fighting into the game to make it more interesting. The purpose of the game is not about fighting. But fighting does add an interesting element to robot design. And if your robot does get blown up, you can leave it there until a helper robot comes (hint hint you can make your own helper robot to go find your robot and fix it). It should be a fun game and not just about blowing things up. In fact there will be an option to completely disengage fighting (leave your guns at the door, please). Tools I would like to see done on the project: a graphical view of you agent on it's world/host, speech synthesis and recognition for talking to your robot and having it talk to you, experimenting with custom languages for robot instruction, and other ideas. As for PyAGENT it is the framework for the game. it's purpose is to provide all the tools that host the game. It is a general purpose tool for executing python programs on the host and hosting the worlds. It provides the tools for interaction. I may just call it PyROBOT and just make it a robot game instead. I thought it would be cool to have two distinct projects in one, one for a mobile agent platform, and one for the Robot game. It is still an open design.

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ANN: Pyrex 0.4.2
by Greg Ewing 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

Pyrex 0.4.2 is now available: http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python/Pyrex/ This version should fix the problem introduced in 0.4.1 that prevented extension classes from showing up in the module namespace. There is also a significant new language feature: C functions which don't return Python objects can now be declared so that they will propagate exceptions to their callers. See "Error Return Values" in the Language Overview. There are numerous other bug fixes and improvements. See the CHANGES file in the distribution for details. What is Pyrex? -------------- Pyrex is a new language for writing Python extension modules. It lets you freely mix operations on Python and C data, with all Python reference counting and error checking handled automatically. -- Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg

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[ANN] PyMP3Cut v0.27
by Jerome Alet 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

Hi, I'm pleased to announce v0.27 of the Python MP3 Cutter. PyMP3Cut is a Python commandline tool designed to cut huge (> 100MB) MP3 files at high speed without requiring the extra disk space and processing time usually needed by visual audio editing tools, which convert the MP3 format to more easily manageable formats like WAV before doing anything. It reads and cuts simultaneously according to the autodetected MP3 frame rate and a timeline passed as a commandline argument. PyMP3Cut was written to automate the slicing of day-long Icecast audio archives in easier to listen per-speaker parts. This new version adds some command line options to process huge MP3 files even if you don't have a timeline file. PyMP3Cut is available under the GNU GPL from : http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/ Beware : PyMP3Cut is FFAASSTT and sharp, it cuts files where you ask it to do so ! Any comment is more than welcome. Jerome Alet

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Python GUI
by danielnuriyev＠yahoo.com 21 Aug '02

21 Aug '02

I am working on a GUI package for Python. At the first stage I am researching the existing GUI possibilities. I am summarizing them on http://python.org.il/ui.html or http://sensei.co.il/python/ui.html This page is under a constant growth I hope it will help developers make choices

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Albatross 1.00 released
by Dave Cole 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

OVERVIEW Albatross is a small toolkit for developing highly stateful web applications. The toolkit has been designed to take a lot of the pain out of constructing intranet applications although you can also use Albatross for deploying publicly accessed web applications. In slightly more than 2600 lines of Python (according to pycount) you get the following: * An extensible HTML templating system similar to DTML including tags for: - Conditional processing. - Macro definition and expansion. - Sequence iteration and pagination. - Tree browsing. - Lookup tables to translate Python values to arbitrary template text. * Application classes which offer the following features: - Optional server side or browser side sessions. - The ability to place Python code for each page in a dynamically loaded module, or to place all page processing code in a single mainline. * The ability to deploy applications either as CGI or via mod_python by changing less than 10 lines of code. The toolkit application functionality is defined by a collection of fine grained mixin classes. Nine different application types and five different execution contexts are prepackaged, you are able to define your own drop in replacements for any of the mixins to alter any aspect of the toolkit semantics. Application deployment is controlled by your choice of either cgi or mod_python Request class. It should be possible to develop a Request class for FastCGI or Medusa to allow applications to be deployed on those platforms with minimal changes. Albatross comes with over 130 pages of documentation. HTML, PDF and PostScript formatted documentation is available from the toolkit homepage. The toolkit homepage: http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/albatross/ The Albatross mailing list subscription and archives: http://object-craft.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/albatross-users INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES * When you use FormRecorderMixin you must now specify LIST attribute on <AL-INPUT> and <AL-TEXTAREA> tags if more than one field in a form has the same name. This also causes the request merging to always place those input values into a list in the local namespace regardless of how many values were sent by the browser. FieldTypeError is raised when LIST attribute value is inconsistent with multiple/singular instances of an input field in a form. * Tag constructors are now passed the execution context as the first argument, which makes them consistent with other methods, and allows greater flexibility in code placement. DETAILED CHANGE LIST * PageModuleError is raised when a page module is loaded which does not define one of page_enter(), page_leave(), page_process() or page_display(). * Application merge_request() method now defers browser request merging to the execution context. This allows the RecorderMixin class to define the correct request merging process. * Include filename in template load errors - when templates are loaded by any means other than <al-include>, the filename was often not in the traceback. * When you use FormRecorderMixin you must now specify LIST attribute on <AL-INPUT> and <AL-TEXTAREA> tags if more than one field in a form has the same name. This also causes the request merging to always place those input values into a list in the local namespace regardless of how many values were sent by the browser. FieldTypeError is raised when LIST attribute value is inconsistent with multiple/singular instances of an input field in a form. * Replaced all relative module imports with absolute imports to avoid namespace clashes. * Several SessionFileAppMixin portability fixes - use "rb" and "wb" mode on open of session files for windows portability, and improvements to handling of platforms without /dev/urandom. * albatross.random module renamed to albatross.randompage. * SessionFileAppMixin now checks that the session-id returned from the browser does not contain any filesystem path components that could be used to access files outside the session file directory. * Tag constructors are now passed the execution context as the first argument, which makes them consistent with other methods, and allows greater flexibility in code placement. * Macros are now registered at load time, rather than execution (to_html) - this allows forward references, and other tricks. * New "ellipsis" mode for tree iterator, which are a variant of lazy trees where nodes at shallower levels are progressively collapsed into ellipses as the user opens deeper nodes. The user can reopen the collapsed nodes by selecting an ellipsis * TreeIterators now support get_open_aliases(), get_selected_aliases(), set_open_aliases(), set_selected_aliases() methods to set and get open and selected nodes for the TreeIterator. This allows you to enter a page with tree nodes already open or selected, and also to save the state of the tree for future use. * Added a basic /etc/init.d style rc script for the TCP session server. The session server script is now installed to you scripts directory (typically /usr/local/bin). Session server component modules simpleserver and pidfile are now installed into the albatross module directory, along with the rest of albatross. -- http://www.object-craft.com.au

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XMail Library 1.00
by Harald Schneider 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

XMail Server is an Internet and intranet mail server featuring an SMTP server, POP3 server plus a huge bunch of additional functionality. Written in multi-platform code, the sources compile under GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and NT/2K. XMail Queue Manager is a tool, that gives you full control over the multi level nested mail queue of XMail Server. xmaillib.py is a collection of Python Classes that are the core of XMail Queue Manager. XMail Library provides a basic server-, queue-, and spoolfile object. So it's pretty easy to write similar tools like XMail Queue Manager, e.g. command line only or with a web interface. Download the archive from http://xmail.marketmix.com/products/xqm/xqm_lib.php All the best, Harald

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cx_Oracle 2.5a
by Anthony Tuininga 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '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? A problem was discovered with Oracle 9i when retrieving strings. It seems that Oracle 9i uses the correct method for dynamic callback but Oracle 8i will not work with the correct method so an #ifdef was added to check for the existence of an Oracle 9i specific feature. Thanks to Paul Denize for discovering this problem and working with me to get a solution. I have provided Oracle 9i specific binaries for Windows and Linux. DO NOT use the Oracle 8i specific binaries in Oracle 9i as they will not work. -- 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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RELEASED: Pymacs 0.18
by pinard＠iro.umontreal.ca 19 Aug '02

19 Aug '02

Hi! A new release of Pymacs is available as: http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard/pymacs/Pymacs.tar.gz Pymacs allows Emacs users to extend Emacs using Python, where they might have traditionally used Emacs LISP. Pymacs runs on systems having sub-processes. Not much since last release, and nothing planned for the incoming weeks... I release now mainly for the benefit of `rebox' users. * The `lisp()' function may now accept many expressions instead of only one; they are all evaluated and the value of the last expression is returned. * For speed, the `*Pymacs*' buffer does not keep an `undo' list anymore. * I corrected tiny bugs in the `rebox' example tool, that could prevent proper operation in some circumstances. -- François Pinard http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard

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ANN: Twisted 0.99.0
by Christopher Armstrong 19 Aug '02

19 Aug '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 mailing list at: http://twistedmatrix.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twisted-python Our IRC channel is #twisted on irc.openprojects.net. What's New in 0.99.0 ==================== - Paul Shwartz contributed Twisted Conch, an SSHv2 implementation. - Twisted Zoot, an implementation of Gnutella for Twisted, was written by Bryce "zooko" Wilcox-O'Hearn. - Rewritten connection APIs to make writing clients with Twisted easier. - A "Pager" for Twisted Spread allowing one to easily stream large amounts of data with Perspective Broker. - A new FreeBSD Kqueue reactor (mainloop implementation) contributed by Matt Campbell. - Refactored Authorizers and Application so twisted.internet has no dependance on twisted.cred. - Many API cleanups, tons of bugfixes, and more documentation as usual. 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: - FTP - HTTP - NNTP - SOCKSv4 (server only) - SMTP - IRC - telnet - POP3 - AOL's instant messaging TOC - OSCAR, used by AOL-IM as well as ICQ (client only) - DNS - MouseMan - finger - Echo, discard, chargen and friends - Twisted Perspective Broker -- Chris Armstrong << radix(a)twistedmatrix.com >> http://twistedmatrix.com/users/radix.twistd/

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Python-announce-list August 2002