Mailman 3 April 2003 - Python-announce-list

RELEASED Mailman 2.1.2
by Barry Warsaw 27 Apr '03

27 Apr '03

I've released version 2.1.2 of Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager. Mailman is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Version 2.1.2 is a bug fix release, including language updates and two new languages, Portuguese/Portugal and Polish. It is recommend that all Mailman 2.1.x sites upgrade to version 2.1.2. Mailman is free software that enables users to manage email mailing lists and e-newsletters. Its integrated web interface provides easy-to-use access for list members and list administrators. Mailman supports built-in archiving, automatic bounce processing, content filtering, digest delivery, spam filters, and more. Mailman is compatible with most web servers, web browsers, and mail servers. It runs on any Unix-like operating system. Mailman 2.1.2 requires Python 2.1.3 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 (not yet updated) 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 -------------------- 2.1.2 (22-Apr-2003) - New languages Portuguese (Portugal) and Polish. - Many convenient constants have been added to the Defaults.py module to (hopefully) make it more readable. - Email addresses which contain 8-bit characters in them are now rejected and won't be subscribed. This is not the same as 8-bit characters in the realname, which is still allowed. - The X-Originating-Email header is removed for anonymous lists. Hotmail apparently adds this header. - When running make to build Mailman, you can specify $DESTDIR to the install target to specify an alternative location for installation, without influencing the paths stored in e.g. Defaults.py. This is useful to package managers. - New Defaults.py variable DELIVERY_RETRY_WAIT which controls how long the outgoing qrunner will wait before it retries a tempfailure delivery. - The semantics for the extend.py hook to MailList objects has changed slightly. The hook is now called before attempting to lock and load the database. - Mailman now uses the email package version 2.5.1 - bin/transcheck now checks for double-%'s - bin/genaliases grew a -q / --quiet flag - cron/checkdbs grew a -h / --help option. - The -c / --change-msg option has been removed from bin/add_members - bin/msgfmt.py has been added, taken from Python 2.3's Tools/i18n directory. The various .mo files are now no longer distributed with Mailman. They are generated at build time instead. - A new file misc/sitelist.cfg which can be used with bin/config_list provides a small number of recommended settings for your site list. Be sure to read it over before applying! sitelist.cfg is installed into the data directory. - Many bug fixes, including these SourceForge bugs closed and patches applied: 677668, 690448, 700538, 700537, 673294, 683906, 671294, 522080, 521124, 534297, 699900, 697321, 695526, 703941, 658261, 710678, 707608, 671303, 717096, 694912, 707624, 716755, 661138, 716754, 716702, 667167, 725369, 726415

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ANN: Leo 3.11 outlining editor
by Edward K. Ream 27 Apr '03

27 Apr '03

leo.py 3.11 final is now available at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/leo/ This version of Leo contains many important improvements since 3.10, especially support for unicode and a new plugin architecture. The Highlights of 3.11 final: ** Leo supports unicode. - New @encoding directives specifies encoding for derived files. - New settings specify default encodings for .leo and derived files. - Derived files specify encodings used to create them. ** A new plugin architecture for customizing Leo. - New commands: - Toggle Angle Brackets. - Insert Time/Date (in headline or body text). - Go To First/Last Node, Parent, Next/Previous Sibling. - Write Missing @file Nodes. - Expand/Contract Node. - Improved commands: - Fixed a huge performance bug that slowed moving nodes left. - Expand/Contract commands now operate on the selected tree. - Sort Siblings command can now sort top-level nodes. - Leo now allows multiple writes of cloned nodes. (Useful when different @path directives are in effect.) - Other improvements: - New @lineending directive specifies line endings. - Improved syntax coloring for html and xml. - Leo scrolls partially visible headlines into full view. - Added "Replace tabs with spaces" checkbox in Prefs panel. - New settings in leoConfig.leo/.txt. - Added "tk_encoding" setting and related logic. - Colors for Show Invisibles command and body_insertion_cursor - Settings affecting when control-drags start. - Defaults for unicode (see above). - Many other bug fixes and improvements. Quote of the Month: ------------------- I gave Leo a try a while ago, but did not recognize its strengths as an outliner. In April 2003 a gave it another try. And when I saw in the online help mentioning clones almost in passing (you got to emphasis this much more!), I knew: This is it. If you are like me, you have a kind of knowledge base with infos gathered over time. And you have projects, where you use some of those infos. Now, with conventional outliners you begin to double these infos, because you want to have the infos needed for the project with your project. With Leo you can do this too, but if you change text in one place IT IS UPDATED IN THE OTHER PLACE TOO! This is a feature I did not see with any other outliner (and I tried a few). Amazing! Leo directly supports the way I work! -- F. Geiger What is Leo? ------------ - A programmer's editor, an outlining editor and a flexible browser. - A literate programming tool, compatible with noweb and CWEB. - A data organizer and project manager. Leo provides multiple views of projects within a single outline. - Fully scriptable using Python. Leo saves its files in XML format. - Portable. leo.py is 100% pure Python. - Open Software, distributed under the Python License. leo.py requires Python 2.1 or above and tcl/tk 8.3 or above. leo.py works on Linux, Windows and MacOs X Jaguar. Links: ------ Leo: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html Home: http://sourceforge.net/projects/leo/ Download: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3458 CVS: http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=3458 Edward ** Please note my new email address and Leo's new URL below ** -------------------------------------------------------------------- Edward K. Ream email: edreamleo(a)charter.net Leo: Literate Editor with Outlines Leo: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Sybase module 0.36 released
by Dave Cole 27 Apr '03

27 Apr '03

WHAT IS IT: The Sybase module provides a Python interface to the Sybase relational database system. It supports all of the Python Database API, version 2.0 with extensions. NOTES: This is another incremental improvement to FreeTDS support. You can build for FreeTDS like this: python setup.py build_ext -D HAVE_FREETDS -U WANT_BULKCOPY python setup.py install If you are using FreeTDS 0.60 or 0.61 change the compile command to: python setup.py build_ext -D HAVE_FREETDS=60 -U WANT_BULKCOPY or python setup.py build_ext -D HAVE_FREETDS=61 -U WANT_BULKCOPY The module is available here: http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/download/sybase-0.36.tar.gz The module home page is here: http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/ CHANGES SINCE 0.36pre6: * Output parameters from stored procedures are supported via the OUTPUT() function. The parameter to OUTPUT() determines the type and size of the buffer which will be allocated to receive the output value. c.callproc('test_proc', {'@type': 'business', '@tot_sales': 5, '@num_books': Sybase.OUTPUT(1)}) * Added Time() and TimeFromTicks() DB API functions. * Fixed fmx.maxlength typo. * Reorganised result fetching to use "fetcher" classes; _FetchNow, _FetchNowParams, and _FetchLazy. This was in response to testing against the Python DB API 2.0 Anal Compliance Unit Test. CHANGES SINCE 0.35: * Fixed bug in ctx.c:ct_con_drop() which caused SEGFAULT with FreeTDS. * Export version of FreeTDS used in sybasect.__have_freetds__ * Set Sybase._ctx as the global context soon as in Sybase.py to avoid problems with undefined global ctx. * Look for SYBASE_OCS on all platforms. * Fixed spelling error in ctx.c:global_ctx(). * Fixed cursor locking bug with .nextset() method. * Added .debug_msg() method to context type which writes to the debug log when debugging is enabled for the context object. * Merged AIX build changes from Dietmar Rothkamp. * Now compiles with FreeTDS 0.61. * Limit size of TEXT fields to 65536. * Removed references to CS_PENDING and CS_BUSY in Sybase.py. * Bind CS_VARBINARY_TYPE as CS_BINARY_TYPE. * Do not attempt to ct_cancel() when handling an exception if have not connected to the server. Bug fix in Sybase.py. * Seems like FreeTDS reports the wrong maxlength in ct_describe() for CS_NUMERIC_TYPE and CS_DECIMAL_TYPE. Ignore FreeTDS and assume a maxlength of sizeof(CS_NUMERIC). Bugfix in databuf.c. * Use correct T_STRING_INPLACE type in structure member descriptions. The code does not use Python API for these members. * Debug output for DataFmt now includes scale and precision. * More definitions added to freetds.h; CS_SRC_VALUE, CS_CLEAR. -- http://www.object-craft.com.au

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Reminder to PEP authors
by David Goodger 26 Apr '03

26 Apr '03

There are several PEPs with "Draft" status which are ripe for review. PEP 1 states: Once the authors have completed a PEP, they must inform the PEP editor that it is ready for review. PEPs are reviewed by the BDFL and his chosen consultants, who may accept or reject a PEP or send it back to the author(s) for revision. Once a PEP has been accepted, the reference implementation must be completed. When the reference implementation is complete and accepted by the BDFL, the status will be changed to "Final". PEP authors, please keep your PEPs up to date. When you think the PEP is ready for review, please send a note to <peps(a)python.org> stating "PEP X is ready for review". Otherwise the PEP may remain in "Draft" limbo indefinitely. It is the PEP author's responsibility to move the process forward: Each PEP must have a champion -- someone who writes the PEP using the style and format described below, shepherds the discussions in the appropriate forums, and attempts to build community consensus around the idea. Authors with CVS check-in privileges are welcome to check in their own content changes. Others should send updates to <peps(a)python.org> (please make updates to the latest text from CVS). -- David Goodger <http://starship.python.net/~goodger> Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) Editor <http://www.python.org/peps/> (Please cc: all PEP correspondence to <peps(a)python.org>.)

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RELEASED: Python 2.3b1
by Guido van Rossum 25 Apr '03

25 Apr '03

Python 2.3b1 is the first beta release of Python 2.3. Much improved since the last alpha, chockfull of things you'd like to check out: http://www.python.org/2.3/ Some highlights of what's new since 2.3a2: - sum() builtin, adds a sequence of numbers, beats reduce(). - csv module, reads comma-separated-value files (and more). - timeit module, times code snippets. - os.walk(), a generator slated to replace os.path.walk(). - platform module, by Marc-Andre Lemburg, returns detailed platform information. For more highlights, see http://www.python.org/2.3/highlights.html New since Python 2.2: - Many new and improved library modules, e.g. sets, heapq, datetime, textwrap, optparse, logging, bsddb, bz2, tarfile, ossaudiodev, and a new random number generator based on the highly acclaimed Mersenne Twister algorithm (with a period of 2**19937-1!). - New builtin enumerate(): an iterator yielding (index, item) pairs. - Extended slices, e.g. "hello"[::-1] returns "olleh". - Universal newlines mode for reading files (converts \r, \n and \r\n all into \n). - Source code encoding declarations. (PEP 263) - Import from zip files. (PEP 273 and PEP 302) - FutureWarning issued for "unsigned" operations on ints. (PEP 237) - Faster list.sort() is now stable. - Unicode filenames on Windows. - Karatsuba long multiplication (running time O(N**1.58) instead of O(N**2)). See also http://www.python.org/doc/2.3b1/whatsnew/ - Andrew Kuchling's description of all important changes since 2.2. We request widespread testing of this release but don't recommend using it for production situations yet. Beta releases contain bugs. New APIs are expected to be stable, and may be changed only if serious deficiencies are found. No new APIs or modules will be added after the first beta release. If you have an important Python application, we strongly recommend that you try it out with a beta release and report any incompatibilities or other problems you may encounter, so that they can be fixed before the final release. To report problems, use the SourceForge bug tracker: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470&atid=105470 Enjoy! --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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ANN: eGenix mxODBC Zope Database Adapter, Version 1.0.4
by M.-A. Lemburg 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

________________________________________________________________________ ANNOUNCEMENT EGENIX.COM mxODBC Zope Database Adapter Version 1.0.4 Available for Zope 2.3 - 2.6 on Windows, Linux and Solaris ________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION The eGenix mxODBC Zope Database Adapter (Zope DA) allows you to easily connect your Zope installation to just about any database backend on the market today, giving you the reliability of the commercially supported eGenix.com product mxODBC and the flexibility of the ODBC standard as middle-tier architecture. Unlike Zope's ZODBC Zope DA, the mxODBC Zope DA works on Windows XP/NT/2000/98/95, Linux and Solaris using the same interface on all platforms. The mxODBC Zope DA implements thread-safe connection pooling and multiple physical connects per logical Zope connection. You can safely run Z SQL Methods in parallel, achieving a much better performance than ZODBC Zope DA or similar Zope database adapters under heavy load. This makes it ideal for deployment in Zope Clusters and Zope hosting environments where stability and high performance are a top priority. ________________________________________________________________________ FEATURES * Zope Level 3 Database Adapter: the mxODBC Zope DA is fully multi-threaded and can handle multiple connections to multiple databases. * Fully compatible to Z SQL Methods. * Drop-in compatible to the ZODBC DA: the mxODBC Zope DA provides the same interfaces as Zope's ZODBC DA to allow a smooth upgrade path from this simplistic adapater to the high performance mxODBC Zope DA. * Fully compatible to the Znolk SQL Wizard Product and other similar products relying on the common database schema access methods .tables() and .columns(). * Connection Pooling: physical database connections are pooled and kept open, to reduce the connection overhead to a minimum. This is especially important for high latency database connections and ones like Oracle which take a considerable amount of time to setup * Parallel Execution of Queries on a single logical connection: the mxODBC Zope DA can manage any number of physical connections on a single logical connection. This enables running truly parallel Z SQL Method queries -- a feature not available in other Zope DAs. * Robust Mode of Operation: connections which have timed out or go away due to network problems are automatically reconnected. * Cross-platform Connection Objects: The Zope DA will automatically choose the right platform specific ODBC manager for you. * Per Connection Adjustable ODBC Interface: mxODBC comes with many different subpackages to choose from on Unix. The Zope DA allows you to select these subpackages on a per-connection basis. * Per Connection Error Handling: you can tell each connection whether it should report ODBC warnings or not; furthermore all warnings and errors are made available as list .messages on the DatabaseConnection object. * Transaction safe automatic reconnect: when the DA finds that a connection has timed out, it automatically tries a reconnect and replays the transaction on the connection (unlike other DAs which break the transaction scheme by doing a reconnect without replay). * Built-in Schema Cache: this results in improved performance under heavy load. * Database Schema Access: all ODBC catalog methods are made available for much better database schema inquiry. The catalog methods allow building generic database interrogation or manipulation tools and facilitates writing database independent Zope products. ________________________________________________________________________ NEWS We have had a lot of positive user feedback about the mxODBC Zope Database Adapter 1.0.0. * Some users have reported problems with certain ODBC drivers which required adding work-arounds and special options to the adapter. The version 1.0.4 includes a whole set of connection options which make the mxODBC Zope DA even more compatible to ODBC drivers in the field. * We also added a few usability enhancements, e.g. the default for creating connections is now to create closed connections. This makes it much easier setting up and configuring the connection objects. * Due to popular demand we put a lot of work into getting the mxODBC Zope DA to work with the 0.61 release of the FreeTDS ODBC driver. This driver is typically used when connecting from Linux to MS SQL Server. * Connections to non-transactional data sources are now also possible using a special connection option. This allows direct read-only access to e.g. Access or Excel files on Windows. It also makes connections to MySQL 3.x possible. * Because the mxODBC Zope DA supports multiple result sets, we added an option to always fetch the last available result set. This is sometimes needed when moving from ZODBC DA to mxODBC Zope DA if you are working with stored procedures. * Last not least, the mxODBC Zope DA is now also available for the Solaris platform. In short: mxODBC Zope DA is moving to become the number one solution for integrating relational databases with Zope applications. ________________________________________________________________________ UPGRADING If you have already bought mxODBC Zope DA licenses, you can use these license for the updated version as well. There is no need to buy new licenses. The same is true for evaluation license users. ________________________________________________________________________ MORE INFORMATION For more information on the mxODBC Zope DA, licensing and download instructions, please visit our web-site: http://www.egenix.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ Thank you, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com Professional Python Software directly from the Source (#1, Apr 23 2003) >>> Python/Zope Products & Consulting ... http://www.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ... http://python.egenix.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ EuroPython 2003, Charleroi, Belgium: 62 days left

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ANN: matplotlib 0.1
by John Hunter 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

Matplotlib Matplotlib is a pure python plotting package for python and pygtk. My goal is to make high quality, publication quality plotting easy in python, with a syntax familiar to matlab users. matplotlib is young, and several things need to be done for this goal is achieved. But it works well enough to make nice, simple plots. Requirements python 2.2+, GTK2, pygtk-1.99.x, and Numeric. Download See the homepage - http://nitace.bsd.uchicago.edu:8080/matplotlib Here are some of the things that matplotlib tries to do well * Allow easy navigation of large data sets. Right click on figure window to bring up navigation tool bar for pan and zoom of x and y axes. This requires a wheel mouse. Place the wheel mouse over the navitation buttons and scroll away. * Handle very large data sets efficiently by making use of Numeric clipping. I have used matplotlib in an EEG plotting application with 128 channels and several minutes of data sampled at 400Hz, eg, plotting matrices with dimensions 120,000 x 128. * Choose tick marks and labels intelligently * make easy things easy (subplots, lines styles, colors) * make hard things possible (OO interface for full control) Matplotlib is a class library that can be used to make plots in pygtk applications. But there is a matlab functional compatibility interface that you can get with, eg:: from matplotlib.matlab import plot, subplot, show, gca Example scripts and screenshots available at http://nitace.bsd.uchicago.edu:8080/matplotlib John Hunter _______________________________________________ pygtk mailing list pygtk(a)daa.com.au http://www.daa.com.au/mailman/listinfo/pygtk Read the PyGTK FAQ: http://www.async.com.br/faq/pygtk/

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EDDIE-Tool 0.32 Released
by Chris Miles 21 Apr '03

21 Apr '03

EDDIE-Tool 0.32 has just been released. http://eddie-tool.net/ What is it ? The EDDIE-Tool is an intelligent UNIX monitoring tool written entirely in Python. It provides system, network and security monitoring features, with an extensive configuration facility for defining customized monitoring rules. What is new ? Minor features and bugfixes. Why is it interesting to Python users ? Besides system and network administrators, Python users may find EDDIE-Tool interesting as it is an example of a threaded, multi-platform software package, providing easy access to system statistics and using Python's power to offer a dynamic and programmable rules engine. Regards, Chris -- Chris Miles http://chrismiles.info/

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ANN: Twisted 1.0.4
by Itamar Shtull-Trauring 21 Apr '03

21 Apr '03

Twisted is an event-driven networking framework for server and client applications. More detailed information can be found after the "What's New" section. For more information, visit http://www.twistedmatrix.com, join the list http://twistedmatrix.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twisted-python or visit us on #twisted at irc.freenode.net. What's New in 1.0.4 =================== This release is mainly a bug fix release. 1.0.4 includes large numbers of bug fixes, small feature enhancements, additional tests and so on. Additional reliability is assured by our deployment of Brian Warner's Buildbot (http://buildbot.sf.net) for real-time testing (http://twistedmatrix.com/~warner.twistd/ -- note that certain functionality is experimental and therefore the tests will be failing, but this does not affect the stability or performance of supported, stable packages). What is Twisted? ================ Twisted is an event-driven framework for building networked clients and servers. It contains a powerful and simple networking core, a full-featured suite of interoperable protocols, among them a powerful web server and applications framework. Twisted supports many event loops for both server apps and GUI integration on the client side, including: - Win32 events, including GUI support - GTK+ - GTK+ 2 - Qt - wxPython - Tkinter - Java Twisted can run protocols over TCP, SSL, UDP, multicast, Unix sockets and subprocesses. It also includes scheduling support, threading integration, RDBMS event loop integration and other basic requirements for networked applications. Also included are implementations of many protocols. In some cases this includes complete frameworks providing facilities on top of the base protocol: - SSH - FTP - HTTP, including a complete web framework - XML-RPC - SOAP server framework - NNTP and complete NNTP server framework - 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 serial mice, and GPS devices - Twisted Perspective Broker, a remote object protocol

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ANNOUNCE: Optik 1.4.1
by Greg Ward 20 Apr '03

20 Apr '03

Optik 1.4.1 =========== Optik is a powerful, flexible, extensible, easy-to-use command-line parsing library for Python. Using Optik, you can add intelligent, sophisticated handling of command-line options to your scripts with very little overhead. Here's an example of using Optik to add some command-line options to a simple script: from optik import OptionParser [...] parser = OptionParser() parser.add_option("-f", "--file", action="store", type="string", dest="filename", help="write report to FILE", metavar="FILE") parser.add_option("-q", "--quiet", action="store_false", dest="verbose", default=1, help="don't print status messages to stdout") (options, args) = parser.parse_args() With these few lines of code, users of your script can now do the "usual thing" on the command-line: <yourscript> -f outfile --quiet <yourscript> -qfoutfile <yourscript> --file=outfile -q <yourscript> --quiet --file outfile (All of these result in options.filename == "outfile" options.verbose == 0 ...just as you might expect.) Even niftier, users can run one of <yourscript> -h <yourscript> --help and Optik will print out a brief summary of your script's optons: usage: <yourscript> [options] options: -h, --help show this help message and exit -fFILE, --file=FILE write report to FILE -q, --quiet don't print status messages to stdout That's just a taste of the flexibility Optik gives you in parsing your command-line. See the documentation included in the package for details. AUTHOR, COPYRIGHT, AVAILABILITY ------------------------------- Optik was written by Greg Ward <gward(a)python.net> The latest version of Optik can be found at http://optik.sourceforge.net/ Copyright (c) 2001-2003 Gregory P. Ward. All rights reserved. CHANGES IN OPTIK 1.4 -------------------- * Changed to use the new textwrap module included with Python 2.3. Includes a copy of textwrap.py for use with older Python versions. * Set __all__ in each of the optik.* modules, to make life easier for optik/__init__.py. * Rewrote the test suite to use PyUnit, and added some new tests that revealed some long-hidden bugs. Fixed those bugs. (Thanks to Johannes Gijsbers for doing all the work!) * For versions of Python with builtin True and False values (ie. Python 2.2.1 and later), make store_true/store_false use them. * Add forwards-compatibility 'optparse' module, so scripts can import from 'optparse' and work under base Python 2.3, or under older Pythons with Optik 1.4.1 or later installed. -- Greg Ward <gward(a)python.net> http://www.gerg.ca/ Rules for Urban Cycling, #1: Green means go; yellow means go like hell; red means proceed with caution.

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