Python-announce-list December 2004

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[ANNOUNCE] gmpy 1.0 alpha released
by Alex Martelli 12 Nov '05

12 Nov '05

See http://gmpy.sourceforge.net/ for details. What is it: a wrapper for the GMP library, to provide multi-precision arithmetic for Python. Multi-precision floats, and unbounded-precision rationals, are not present in stock Python; multi-precision integers ('long') are, but gmpy's version of multi-precision integers is faster for some operations (NOT all -- used to be, but Python 2.3 did serious enhancements to some operations on longs) and provides lots of nifty pre-packaged additional functions. Minor changes and bug-fixes since the latest 0.9 pre-alpha; support for Python 2.3. The Windows binary release is now for Python 2.3 _only_ (if you're stuck with Python 2.2 on Windows, you can keep using gmpy 0.9 pre-alpha and not really suffer from that). Known bug on Windows: the scan0 and scan1 functions appear broken (perhaps related to the lack of a GMP 4.0 library for Windows -- haven't found one around yet). Alex

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ANN: matplotlib-0.70
by John Hunter 31 Dec '04

31 Dec '04

matplotlib is a 2D graphics package that produces plots from python scripts, the python shell, or embeds them in your favorite python GUI -- wx, gtk, tk, fltk currently supported with qt in the works. Unlike many python plotting alternatives is written in python, so it is easy to extend. matplotlib is used in the finance industry, web application servers, and many scientific and enginneering disciplines. With a large community of users and developers, matplotlib is approaching the goal of having a full featured, high quality, 2D plotting library for python. A lot of development has gone into matplotlib since the last major release, which I'll summarize here. For details, see the notes for the incremental releases at http://matplotlib.sf.net/whats_new.html. Major changes since matplotlib-0.60 - The alpha version of the users guide - http://matplotlib.sf.net/users_guide.pdf. There are still a number of sections to be completed, but it's a start! - The matlab namespace renamed pylab - if you are upgrading from a version older than 0.64, please remove site-packages/matplotlib before upgrading. See http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/matlab_to_pylab.py - New plot types: contour plots (contour), polar charts (polar), horizontal bar charts (barh), pie charts (pie), sparse matrix visualization (spy and spy2). Eg, http://matplotlib.sf.net/screenshots.html#polar_demo - Full ipython http://ipython.scipy.org integration in the "pylab" mode for interactive control of matplotlib plots from the python shell. - A significantly improved interactive toolbar for panning, zooming, zoom to rect - see http://matplotlib.sf.net/tutorial.html#toolbar2. - New backends: FLTK, Cairo, GTKCairo - Text - rotated mathtext, mathtext for postscript, text bounding boxes - Colormaps - 14 colormaps built-in http://matplotlib.sf.net/screenshots.html#pcolor_demo - Images - performance optimizations for 4x faster large image handling, PIL support, interpolation and colorbar improvements, imread - Event handling for capturing mouse clicks, movements, keypresses, etc. - same pylab interface works across GUIs. See examples/keypress_demo.py, examples/picker_demo.py, examples/coords_demo.py - set and get matlab style property introspection - http://matplotlib.sf.net/examples/set_and_get.py - improved dates handling for dates and date string formatting from 0000-9999, eg http://matplotlib.sf.net/screenshots.html#finance_work - Be sure to check out the 120 examples at http://matplotlib.sf.net/examples Home page : http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net Downloads : http://sourceforge.net/projects/matplotlib Screenshots : http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html Tutorial : http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html Credits : http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/credits.html John Hunter

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PSF donations update
by Stephan Deibel 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

Hi, Just wanted to follow up on my earlier message requesting donations to the Python Software Foundation. The PSF has now announced the projects we are funding in our first round of grants: http://www.python.org/psf/grants/ We received many other quality grant proposals that could not be funded due to the relatively small size of our budget ($40K this year). I hope we'll be able to raise substantially more money in the coming year to allow us to fund more projects in the next cycle. There are something like 750,000 Python users in the world -- imagine what we could do with just $10 from each! Also new since my previous email: Credit card donations are now (finally) working properly. We can also still accept PayPal and mailed checks. The PSF is a registered non-profit and donations are tax-deductible in the USA. To donate, please go to: http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html I hope you will consider including the PSF in your year-end giving. In addition to funding grants, your donation will help the PSF to run PyCon annually (http://www.python.org/pycon) and to protect the intellectual property rights behind Python. Thanks very much, and Happy New Year! Stephan Deibel Chairman of the Board Python Software Foundation http://python.org/psf

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Amara XML Toolkit 0.9.1 changes
by Uche Ogbuji 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

Forgot the changes in the original announcement: * Fixed embarrassing misinterpretation of sax.handler.feature_namespace_prefixes Now Namespace prefixes work fine with or without PyXML installed * Add saxtools.namespace_mixin utility class * Clean up bindery.document_base name attributes * Add bindery.element_base.xml_remove_child and .xml_index_on_parent-- methods for easier removal of children * tenorsax was useless due to accidental late mangling before 0.9.0 release. Fixed. * Use tenorsax fully in Scimitar. Scimitar is now a complete ISO schematron implementation in about 500 lines of Python code (including the skeletons for code generation) http://lists.fourthought.com/pipermail/4suite/2004-December/013143.html -- Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc. http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com Use CSS to display XML - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-xmlcss-i.html Full XML Indexes with Gnosis - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/12/08/py-xml.html Be humble, not imperial (in design) - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10286 UBL 1.0 - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think28.html Use Universal Feed Parser to tame RSS - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipufp.html Default and error handling in XSLT lookup tables - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tiplook.html A survey of XML standards - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-stand4/ The State of Python-XML in 2004 - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/10/13/py-xml.html

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ANN: Amara XML Toolkit 0.9.1
by Uche Ogbuji 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/4Suite/amara ftp://ftp.4suite.org/pub/Amara/ [1] Amara XML Toolkit is a collection of Python tools for XML processing-- not just tools that happen to be written in Python, but tools built from the ground up to use Python idioms and take advantage of the many advantages of Python. Amara builds on 4Suite [http://4Suite.org], but whereas 4Suite focuses more on literal implementation of XML standards in Python, Amara focuses on Pythonic idiom. It provides tools you can trust to conform with XML standards without losing the familiar Python feel. The components of Amara are: * Bindery: data binding tool (fancy way of saying: a very Pythonic XML API) * Scimitar: implementation of the ISO Schematron schema language for XML; converts Schematron files to Python scripts * domtools: set of tools to augment Python DOMs * saxtools: set of tools to make SAX easier to use in Python There's a lot in Amara, but here are highlights: Amara Bindery: XML as easy as py -------------------------------- Based on the retired project Anobind, but updated to use SAX rather than DOM to create bindings. Bindery reads an XML document and returns a data structure of Python objects corresponding to the vocabulary used in the XML document, for maximum clarity. Bindery turns the document <monty> <python spam="eggs">What do you mean "bleh"</python> <python ministry="abuse">But I was looking for argument</python> </monty> Into a set of objects such that you can write binding.monty.python.spam In order to get the value "eggs" or binding.monty.python[1] In order to get the value "But I was looking for argument". There are other such tools for Python, and what makes Anobind unique is that it's driven by a very declarative rules-based system for binding XML to the Python data. You can register rules that are triggered by XPattern expressions specialized binding behavior. It includes XPath support and supports mutation. Bindery is very efficient, using SAX to generate bindings. Scimitar: exceptional schema language for an exceptional programming language ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Merged in from a separate project, Scimitar is an implementation of ISO Schematron that compiles a Schematron schema into a Python validator script. You typically use scimitar in two phases. Say you have a schematron schema schema1.stron and you want to validate multiple XML files against it, instance1.xml, instance2.xml, instance3.xml. First you run schema1.stron through the scimitar compiler script, scimitar.py: scimitar.py schema1.stron A file, schema1.py is generated and can be used to validate XML instances: python schema1.py instance1.xml Which emits a validation report. Amara DOM Tools: giving DOM a more Pythonic face ------------------------------------------------ DOM came from the Java world, hardly the most Pythonic API possible. Some DOM-like implementations such as 4Suite's Domlettes mix in some Pythonic idiom. Amara DOM Tools goes even further. Amara DOM Tools feature pushdom, similar to xml.dom.pulldom, but easier to use. It also includes Python generator-based tools for DOM processing, and a function to return an XPath location for any DOM node. Amara SAX Tools: SAX without the brain explosion ------------------------------------------------ Tenorsax (amara.saxtools.tenorsax) is a framework for "linerarizing" SAX logic so that it flows more naturally, and needs a lot less state machine wizardry. License ------- Amara is open source, provided under the 4Suite variant of the Apache license. See the file COPYING for details. Installation ------------ Amara requires Python 2.3 or more recent and 4Suite 1.0a3 or more recent. Make sure these are installed, unpack Amara to a convenient location and run python setup.py install [1] We have some problem reports with certain Web browsers and the ftp.4suite.org firewall. Please try an alternate FTP client if you have problems, and kindly bear with us while we sort this out. -- Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc. http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com Use CSS to display XML - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-xmlcss-i.html Full XML Indexes with Gnosis - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/12/08/py-xml.html Be humble, not imperial (in design) - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10286 UBL 1.0 - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think28.html Use Universal Feed Parser to tame RSS - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipufp.html Default and error handling in XSLT lookup tables - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tiplook.html A survey of XML standards - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-stand4/ The State of Python-XML in 2004 - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/10/13/py-xml.html

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UK Python Conference, 20-23 April 2005 - Last Call for Talks
by pyuk2005＠reportlab.com 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

The UK Python Conference for 2005 will take place at the Randolph Hotel, Oxford on 20-23 April 2005. This is the FINAL CALL for talks. The original deadline of 26th December has been extended to 6 January, to help all those folks who were concentrating on the PyCon deadline of 6th December. Recycled PyCon talks are acceptable. About the event =============== This will once again be held as a track within the ACCU conference. The conference site is here: http://www.accu.org/conference/ Python track information will be reachable from here once talk selection is complete: http://www.accu.org/conference/highlights.html#python The ACCU event is one of the foremost conferences for programmers, attracting the inventors and/or leading proponents of C, C++, Java, .NET and Python over the last few years. Past Python speakers have included Guido van Rossum, David Ascher, Alex Martelli, Armin Rigo, Paul Everitt, Marc-Andre Lemburg and many others, and the ACCU now treats Python as being fully on par with Java and C++. The event is priced midway between commercial and community events, at approx. £100 per day, and is professionally managed. It is located in a historic hotel in the centre of Oxford and is ideal for anyone wanting to combine a holiday with a conference. We aim to hold a Python 'masterclass' the day before, and are working to arrange a PyPy sprint the week after. Conference Format ================= The Python conference will span THREE days, with ONE track. The first slot each morning is taken by the cross-conference keynote. This was the overwhelming preference of those we polled last year. (There will NOT be a separate Open Source track this year; the "rotating special subject" is Security. As a result, Python-related security talks would be of interest) You may propose 90 minute or 45 minute talks. The ACCU's general preference is for a small number of high quality, well prepared talks on subjects of broad interest to programmers, and the Python track will follow this. There will also be space for less formal lunchtime talks, evening BOFs and other events. Speakers' compensation is yet to be confirmed, but in the past those doing 90 minutes (or 2x45 minute talks) will be eligible for 4 days paid accomodation and admission to the 4 day event; 45 minute speakers will gain 1 day's admission. Where possible, we will attempt to allocate resources to ensure that the best speakers are able to attend irrespective of circumstances. Submission Procedure =================== Please send an email to pyuk2005_talks at reportlab.com not later than 6th January (this is the FINAL deadline!), with the following information: Your Name Short Biography Talk Title Talk Synopsis This is a simple mailbox; the committee will review and acknowledge submissions next week. If the talk is selected, you will be given a chance to refine the details through a web based system in January. Committee ========= A small committee has been formed to scrutinize talk proposals including those whol volunteered last year. This includes myself, Dr. Tim Couper and Dr. John Lee. General discussion about the event should be directed to the python-uk list (python-uk at python.org) ReportLab Europe Ltd. is managing parts of the event infrastructure and will be providing some staff time to provide a guaranteed point of contact. --- Best Regards Andy Robinson CEO/Chief Architect ReportLab Europe Ltd tel +44-20-8544-8049

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ANNOUNCE: ReSTedit v0.50
by bbum＠mac.com 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

ReSTedit v0.50 is now available for download. ReSTedit is a GUI tool for editing and interactivly exploring texts in the ReStructuredText format (or ReST) as introduced by the Docutils project. Despite being quite simple, ReSTedit is very useful for quickly checking if Docutils renders some text as you would expect it. You only paste it into a ReSTedit window to see if it's ok or not, without writing any test code around it. It adds three features of note: - the underlying document is monitored via a kqueue. Any change to the on-disk file will cause ReSTedit to re-render the document. - it now uses RBSplitView such that the document can be switched between text only, rendered content only, or split display via a Toolbar control. - the app is packaged via py2app such that the binary distribution is completely self-contained and significantly smaller than previous distributions. More information can be found here: http://www.pycs.net/bbum/2004/12/29/#200412292 General information on ReStructured Text and the underlying docutils rendering engine can be found here: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/ A self-contained binary of ReSTedit.app can be found on my .mac downloads page. It does not require any additional components to be installed as pyobjc and docutils are both embedded in the .app wrapper. http://homepage.mac.com/bbum/BumFiles/FileSharing27.html b.bum

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Dec 30)
by Cameron Laird 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

QOTW: "I found the discussion of unicode, in any python book I have, insufficient." -- Thomas Heller "If you develop on a Mac, ... Objective-C could come in handy. . . . PyObjC makes mixing the two languages dead easy and more convenient than indoor plumbing." -- Robert Kern Among other activities, the PSF aggregates donors with dollars destined to do good Python works, and developers expert in obscure corners of Pythonia. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python.announce/browse_thread… http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python.announce/browse_thread… Yippee! The martellibot promises to explain Unicode for Pythoneers. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/6015a5a05c206712 The glorious SciPy project supports *multiple* worthwhile Wikis. http://www.scipy.org/wikis Good style in Python does not generally include "in-place" operations on lists. Several cleaner idioms are possible. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/c… Assume you're comfortable with tuples' semantics, immutability, and so on. Do you correctly understand the basics of their syntax, though? This is another opportunity to think about Unicode, by the way. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/9… Robert Kern, Paul Rubin, Mike Meyer, Alex Martelli, and others provide disproportionately high-quality advice (and tangents!) on the subject of languages which complement Python. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/b… ======================================================================== Everything Python-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages: Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional center of Pythonia http://www.python.org Notice especially the master FAQ http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the marvelous daily python url http://www.pythonware.com/daily Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new) World-Wide Web articles related to Python. http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL are utterly different in their technologies and generally in their results. comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software. Be sure to scan this newsgroup weekly. http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce Brett Cannon continues the marvelous tradition established by Andrew Kuchling and Michael Hudson of intelligently summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every other week. http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ The Python Package Index catalogues packages. http://www.python.org/pypi/ The somewhat older Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collects references to all sorts of Python resources. http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/ Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group mailing lists http://www.python.org/sigs/ The Python Business Forum "further[s] the interests of companies that base their business on ... Python." http://www.python-in-business.org Python Success Stories--from air-traffic control to on-line match-making--can inspire you or decision-makers to whom you're subject with a vision of what the language makes practical. http://www.pythonology.com/success The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has replaced the Python Consortium as an independent nexus of activity. It has official responsibility for Python's development and maintenance. http://www.python.org/psf/ Among the ways you can support PSF is with a donation. http://www.python.org/psf/donate.html Kurt B. Kaiser publishes a weekly report on faults and patches. http://www.google.com/groups?as_usubject=weekly%20python%20patch Cetus collects Python hyperlinks. http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html Python FAQTS http://python.faqts.com/ The Cookbook is a collaborative effort to capture useful and interesting recipes. http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python Among several Python-oriented RSS/RDF feeds available are http://www.python.org/channews.rdf http://bootleg-rss.g-blog.net/pythonware_com_daily.pcgi http://python.de/backend.php For more, see http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php?ShowMatch=python&ShowStatus=all The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a SourceForge reincarnation. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com. editor(a)pythonjournal.com and editor(a)pythonjournal.cognizor.com welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work. deli.cio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary. It already aggregates quite a bit of Python intelligence. http://del.icio.us/tag/python *Py: the Journal of the Python Language* http://www.pyzine.com Archive probing tricks of the trade: http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100 http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.pyth… Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here: http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/ http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant) or http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lan… Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome. E-mail to <Python-URL(a)phaseit.net> should get through. To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning (approximately), ask <claird(a)phaseit.net> to subscribe. Mention "Python-URL!". -- The Python-URL! Team-- Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and sponsor the "Python-URL!" project.

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The PSF has awarded three grants
by "Martin v. Löwis" 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

In 2004, the PSF issued its first call for grant proposals. In response to that call, over 60 proposals where submitted. Three of them were selected: 1. Brian Zimmer will manage the project Moving Jython Forward 2. Ilya Etingof will manage the project Implementation of SNMPv3 3. Greg Wilson will manage the project Software Engineering with Python for Scientist and Engineers Details of these projects can be found at http://www.python.org/psf/grants/ We would like to thank all submitters for their efforts to draft the proposals, and the PSF sponsors and donors for making the grants possible in the first place. Regards, Martin v. Löwis Chairman, Grant Committee

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ANN: pyobjc-1.2
by Ronald Oussoren 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

PyObjC 1.2 is now available for download at http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/ PyObjC is a bridge between Python and Objective-C. It allows full featured Cocoa applications to be written in pure Python. It is also easy to use other frameworks containing Objective-C class libraries from Python and to mix in Objective-C, C and C++ source. Python is a highly dynamic programming language with a shallow learning curve. It combines remarkable power with very clear syntax. The installer package includes a number of Xcode templates for easily creating new Cocoa-Python projects. PyObjC also supports full introspection of Objective-C classes and direct invocation of Objective-C APIs from the interactive interpreter. PyObjC requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later and Python 2.3 or later. PyObjC works both with the Apple provided Python installation in Mac OS X 10.3 (and later) and with MacPython 2.3. This release features several bugfixes, improved documentation as well as support for categories, easier customization and basic support for creating Interface Builder palettes. See the news file at http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/NEWS-1.2.txt for more information. PyObjC is released with an open source license (MIT style).

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Python-announce-list December 2004