Mailman 3 July 2004 - Python-announce-list

ANN: Vancouver Python Workshop - Jon Udell new keynote speaker
by Brian Quinlan July 28, 2004

July 28, 2004

What's New? =========== Due to a cancellation, we are pleased to announce that John Udell will be our second keynote speaker. Jon Udell is an author, information architect, software developer and groupware evangelist. He has been an independent consultant, was BYTE Magazine's editor-at-large, executive editor and Web maven, and long ago developed business information products for Lotus. In June 2002 he joined InfoWorld as lead analyst. He also writes a monthly column for the O'Reilly Network. Due to this change of plans, early bird conference registration has been extended until Friday (July 9th). Registration is CDN$100 with significant discounts for students. Late registration will be available until the conference starts, but at a greater cost. To register, see: http://www.vanpyz.org/conference/registration For general conference information, see: http://www.vanpyz.org/conference About the Vancouver Python Workshop =================================== The conference will begin on July 31st with a keynote address by Guido van Rossum (the creator of Python) and Jon Udell (InfoWorld lead analyst). Further talks (and tutorials for beginners) will take place on August 1st and 2nd. The conference will be roughly divided into three tracks: o General Python Topics o Web application development with Python (esp. Zope and Plone) o Python for beginners More information see: http://www.vanpyz.org/conference/ or contact Brian Quinlan at: brian(a)sweetapp.com Vancouver ========= In addition to the opportunity to learn and socialize with fellow Pythonistas, the Vancouver Python Workshop also gives visitors the opportunity to visit one of the most extraordinary cities in the world (1). For more information about traveling to Vancouver, see: http://www.vanpyz.org/conference/travel.html http://www.tourismvancouver.com Important dates =============== Attendee registration: until July 9th Late registration: from July 10th Keynotes: July 31st Conference and tutorial dates: August 1st and 2nd (1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2299119.stm http://www.mercerhr.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml?idContent=1128760 Cheers, Brian

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ANN: Scimitar 0.5.0
by Uche Ogbuji July 28, 2004

July 28, 2004

http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/4Suite/scimitar Scimitar is an implementation of ISO Schematron that compiles a Schematron schema into a Python validator script, making it a faster and somewhat more flexible approach than the usual XSLT implementations. http://www.ascc.net/xml/resource/schematron/schematron.html Schematron is an XML schema language in which you express a set of rules that the document must meet, rather than expressing a full grammar for the XML vocabulary (which is the more common approach to XML schemata). It is by far the most flexible XML schema language available. Scimitar support all of the Schematron 1.5 subset except for keys. See the TODO file for gaps in Scimitar functionality and convenience, which are being worked on. Scimitar is open source, provided under the 4Suite variant of the Apache license. The compiler program runs standalone on Python 2.2 or more recent, although if you are using an earlier version than 2,3, you must also install Optik 1.4.1 or more recent. In addition to the above requirements the generated validators require 4Suite 1.0a3 or more recent (really only tested with latest 4Suite CVS). -- Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc. http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com Perspective on XML: Steady steps spell success with Google - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=9663 Use XML namespaces with care - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-namcar.html Managing XML libraries - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=9160 Commentary on "Objects. Encapsulation. XML?" - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=9090 Harold's Effective XML - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think25.html A survey of XML standards - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-stand4/

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SMS to LJ Gateway in Python
by Premshree Pillai July 27, 2004

July 27, 2004

Hello, I wrote an SMS to LiveJournal gateway using which you can post to your LiveJournal by sending an SMS. The source is available at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=107524&package_id=125… There are certain issues ... and I am working on it. -Premshree Pillai http://www.livejournal.com/~premshree/ ===== -Premshree [http://www.qiksearch.com/] ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online Go to: http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony

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ANN: googlism.py 1.0 -- Python access to googlism.com
by Erik Max Francis July 26, 2004

July 26, 2004

Summary Command line and Python module access to googlism.com. Overview The googlism.py module provides both Python module and command line access to googlism.com, the Web site which sifts through the results of the popular search engine Google and reports information about individual keywords. Getting the software The current version of googlism is 1.0. The latest version of the software is available in a tarball here: http://www.alcyone.com/software/googlism/googlism-latest.tar.gz. The official URL for this Web site is http://www.alcyone.com/software/googlism/. Requirements googlism.py is intended to be used with Python 2.2 or later. License This code is released under the GPL. -- __ Erik Max Francis && max(a)alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ / \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis \__/ I grow with each breath that I take / I cherish my freedom -- Chante Moore

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jul 26)
by Peter Otten July 26, 2004

July 26, 2004

QOTW: "With only one historian, there are no errors, everything written becomes fact." - Raymond Hettinger about Brett Cannon as the author of the python-dev summary "[C]ode runs in the scope it was *defined* in, not the scope it is invoked in." - Jp Calderone Dan Bishop posts a string-to-date conversion oneliner for Martin Bless. http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ad052e5c.0407201114.71ba95a0%40posting… When Chris asked for a translation of his QBasic drawing code into Python, I was about to answer "you need a little more boilerplate". But then I learned about turtle module. http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=Xns952E8286F18Fduncanrcpcouk%40127.… Marduk wants string formatting to work with arbitrary sequences instead of tuples. It should not be required that all items in the sequence are consumed by the format string. Hans Nowak proposes a nice try-and-error approach. http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=40FF1A61.9050408%40zephyrfalcon.org [Off topic] Watch gumshoes Quinlan, Rowe, and Andreas uncover the evil *** (I won't spoil it) haunting newbie Fred's Python experience. http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=urqsf0lvs9eq64b4ruv5rpsa57ddl35gb8%… Dave Reed has written an article about "Rapid Application Development with Python and Glade". http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7421 Istvan Albert describes how to use standard Python classes with Zope. http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=dY6dnXGNQOQMvJzcRVn-og%40giganews.com Steve wants to extract numbers embedded in a text following a certain pattern. A job for regular expressions? If you follow c.l.py, you will probably have noted that everything that can be done with regexps can also be achieved with Paul McGuire's pyparsing. Time to give it a try. http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=e3805b94.0407240932.6d43a16b%40post… http://pyparsing.sourceforge.net "It really shouldn't be considered 'amazing' that people donate, I think... it just makes sense.", as Peter Hansen puts it. Thanks to a large number of donors, the Python Software Foundation is able to support Python-related projects. http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=40fcaa90%240%2427091%249b622d9e%40n… http://www.python.org/psf/call-2004.html http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html ======================================================================== 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 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 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. *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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ANN: pytz 2004b.2 - Python world timezone library
by Stuart Bishop July 25, 2004

July 25, 2004

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Changes for this release: - Improved localtime handling, and added a localize() method enabling correct creation of local times. pytz - World Timezone Definitions for Python ============================================ :Author: Stuart Bishop <stuart(a)stuartbishop.net> :Version: $Revision: 1.10 $ Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ pytz brings the Olson tz database into Python. This library allows accurate and cross platform timezone calculations using Python 2.3 or higher. It also solves the issue of ambiguous times at the end of daylight savings, which you can read more about in the Python Library Reference (datetime.tzinfo). 546 of the Olsen timezones are supported [*]_. Note that if you perform date arithmetic on local times that cross DST boundaries, the results may be in an incorrect timezone (ie. subtract 1 minute from 2002-10-27 1:00 EST and you get 2002-10-27 0:59 EST instead of the correct 2002-10-27 1:59 EDT). This cannot be resolved without modifying the Python datetime implementation. However, these tzinfo classes provide a normalize() method which allows you to correct these values. Installation ~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a standard Python distutils distribution. To install the package, run the following command as an administrative user:: python setup.py install Example & Usage ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >>> from datetime import datetime, timedelta >>> from pytz import timezone >>> utc = timezone('UTC') >>> eastern = timezone('US/Eastern') >>> fmt = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z' The preferred way of dealing with times is to always work in UTC, converting to localtime only when generating output to be read by humans. >>> utc_dt = datetime(2002, 10, 27, 6, 0, 0, tzinfo=utc) >>> loc_dt = utc_dt.astimezone(eastern) >>> loc_dt.strftime(fmt) '2002-10-27 01:00:00 EST-0500' This library also allows you to do date arithmetic using local times, although it is more complicated than working in UTC as you need to use the `normalize` method to handle daylight savings time and other timezone transitions. In this example, `loc_dt` is set to the instant when daylight savings time ends in the US/Eastern timezone. >>> before = loc_dt - timedelta(minutes=10) >>> before.strftime(fmt) '2002-10-27 00:50:00 EST-0500' >>> eastern.normalize(before).strftime(fmt) '2002-10-27 01:50:00 EDT-0400' >>> after = eastern.normalize(before + timedelta(minutes=20)) >>> after.strftime(fmt) '2002-10-27 01:10:00 EST-0500' Creating localtimes is also tricky, and the reason why working with local times is not recommended. Unfortunately, you cannot just pass a 'tzinfo' argument when constructing a datetime (see the next section for more details) >>> dt = datetime(2002, 10, 27, 1, 30, 0) >>> dt1 = eastern.localize(dt, is_dst=True) >>> dt1.strftime(fmt) '2002-10-27 01:30:00 EDT-0400' >>> dt2 = eastern.localize(dt, is_dst=False) >>> dt2.strftime(fmt) '2002-10-27 01:30:00 EST-0500' Problems with Localtime ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The major problem we have to deal with is that certain datetimes may occur twice in a year. For example, in the US/Eastern timezone on the last Sunday morning in October, the following sequence happens: - 01:00 EDT occurs - 1 hour later, instead of 2:00am the clock is turned back 1 hour and 01:00 happens again (this time 01:00 EST) In fact, every instant between 01:00 and 02:00 occurs twice. This means that if you try and create a time in the US/Eastern timezone using the standard datetime syntax, there is no way to specify if you meant before of after the end-of-daylight-savings-time transition. >>> loc_dt = datetime(2002, 10, 27, 1, 30, 00, tzinfo=eastern) >>> loc_dt.strftime(fmt) '2002-10-27 01:30:00 EST-0500' As you can see, the system has chosen one for you and there is a 50% chance of it being out by one hour. For some applications, this does not matter. However, if you are trying to schedule meetings with people in different timezones or analyze log files it is not acceptable. The best and simplest solution is to stick with using UTC. If you insist on working with local times, this library provides a facility for constructing them almost unambiguously >>> loc_dt = datetime(2002, 10, 27, 1, 30, 00) >>> est_dt = eastern.localize(loc_dt, is_dst=True) >>> edt_dt = eastern.localize(loc_dt, is_dst=False) >>> print est_dt.strftime(fmt), '/', edt_dt.strftime(fmt) 2002-10-27 01:30:00 EDT-0400 / 2002-10-27 01:30:00 EST-0500 Note that although this handles many cases, it is still not possible to handle all. In cases where countries change their timezone definitions, cases like the end-of-daylight-savings-time occur with no way of resolving the ambiguity. For example, in 1915 Warsaw switched from Warsaw time to Central European time. So at the stroke of midnight on August 4th 1915 the clocks were wound back 24 minutes creating a ambiguous time period that cannot be specified without referring to the timezone abbreviation or the actual UTC offset. What is UTC ~~~~~~~~~~~ `UTC` is Universal Time, formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. All other timezones are given as offsets from UTC. No daylight savings time occurs in UTC, making it a useful timezone to perform date arithmetic without worrying about the confusion and ambiguities caused by daylight savings time transitions, your country changing its timezone, or mobile computers that move roam through multiple timezones. License ~~~~~~~ BSD style license. I'm happy to relicense this code if necessary for inclusion in other open source projects. Latest Versions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This package will be updated after releases of the Olsen timezone database. The latest version can be downloaded from Sourceforge_. The code that is used to generate this distribution is available in the Sourceforge_ project's CVS repository. .. _Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pytz/ Issues & Limitations ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - - Offsets from UTC are rounded to the nearest whole minute, so timezones such as Europe/Amsterdam pre 1937 will be up to 30 seconds out. This is a limitation of the Python datetime library. Further Reading ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More info than you want to know about timezones:: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm Contact ~~~~~~~ Stuart Bishop <stuart(a)stuartbishop.net> .. [*] The missing few are for Riyadh Solar Time in 1987, 1988 and 1989. As Saudi Arabia gave up trying to cope with their timezone definition, I see no reason to complicate my code further to cope with them. (I understand the intention was to set sunset to 0:00 local time, the start of the Islamic day. In the best case caused the DST offset to change daily and worst case caused the DST offset to change each instant depending on how you interpreted the ruling.) - -- Stuart Bishop <stuart(a)stuartbishop.net> http://www.stuartbishop.net/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (Darwin) iD8DBQFBBBsxAfqZj7rGN0oRAsb5AJsHk/7ZIQFXbFFXedttcs/H5wEGiACdE5DY iY3X1ddjuEAbeWc6OlEQGYo= =gMyS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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ANN: Naja 1.0.5 is now available
by webmaster＠keyphrene.com July 25, 2004

July 25, 2004

Naja is a download manager and a website grabber written in Python/wxPython.You can add some plugins (newsreader, FTP client,WebDAV client) and take control of your downloads from your office. Naja supports proxy(HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SOCKS v4a, SOCKS v5), and use some authentication methods. The downloading maybe achieved by splitting the file being downloaded into several parts and downloading these parts at the same time (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP). Donwload speeds are increased by downloading the file from the mirrors sites, when the sites propose it. Others features: Csv filter Cheksums (CRC32, MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA, SHA1, MDC2, RMD160) Crypt (Only for the eXtended version) and Decrypt (AES, DES, 3DES ...) newsreader, newsposter (uue, yEnc) CGI & WebDAV Server Web Interface basic and digest authentication for client and server Compress and decompress (zip, tar.gz, tar.bz2) Picture viewer Naja is available for download from the Keyphrene web site: http://www.keyphrene.com/products/naja

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ANNOUNCE: Optik 1.5a1 released
by Greg Ward July 24, 2004

July 24, 2004

Optik 1.5a1 =========== 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", dest="filename", help="write report to FILE", metavar="FILE") parser.add_option("-q", "--quiet", action="store_false", dest="verbose", default=True, 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 which result in the 'options' object looking like this: options.filename == "outfile" options.verbose == 0 Even niftier, users can run one of <yourscript> -h <yourscript> --help and Optik will print out a brief summary of your script's options: usage: <yourscript> [options] options: -h, --help show this help message and exit -f FILE, --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> Optik 1.5a1 can be downloaded from: http://optik.sourceforge.net/Optik-1.5a1.tar.gz http://www.gerg.ca/software/optik/Optik-1.5a1.tar.gz More information can be found at: http://optik.sourceforge.net/ http://www.gerg.ca/software/optik/ Copyright (c) 2001-2004 Gregory P. Ward. All rights reserved. CHANGES IN OPTIK 1.5 (since 1.4.1) ---------------------------------- * Optik now requires Python 2.2 or later. * Add expansion of default values in help text: the string "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of that option's default value, or "none" if no default value. * SF bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False). * SF bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'. * SF feature #815264: change the default help format for short options that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting. * SF patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user- targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). Also added po/ directory for message catalog and translations, so that Optik-based applications have a single place to go for translations of Optik's built-in messags. Include translations for Danish and German (thanks to Frederik S. Olesen and Martin v. Löwis respectively), and partial translations for French (by me). * SF bug #878453 (Python): respect $COLUMNS environment variable for wrapping help output. * SF feature #964317: allow type objects to specify option types; allow "str" as an alias for "string". * SF feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings. (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.) * Added HTML-formatted docs to the source distribution (in addition to the reStructuredText source files). * Added three new examples: custom_source.py, custom_type.py, and no_help.py. -- Greg Ward <gward(a)python.net> http://www.gerg.ca/ I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress I repeat---

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EDDIE-Tool 0.33 Released
by Chris Miles July 24, 2004

July 24, 2004

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 EDDIE-Tool 0.33 has just been released. http://eddie-tool.net/ What is it ? The EDDIE-Tool is an intelligent UNIX monitoring agent written entirely in Python. It provides system, network and security monitoring features, with an extensive configuration facility for defining customized monitoring and data collection rules. What is new ? Support for two new platforms: OpenBSD and Darwin/OS X. Consider support for these platforms as beta - we still need plenty of testing, so volunteers would be great. Some other major updates are: Fine-grained HTTP timing; Configurable HTTP request timeouts (using Python 2.3+); Directive checktime parameter to specify exact times of day or days of week to perform tests; MySQL monitoring; and SNMP support for 64-bit counters. 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/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) iD8DBQFBAsMxzitzBnMzNcIRAvb0AKCTvNqLzYLdRar30/MmZBHd6Op+2gCgigsC ZgwgTv8EbM/6k4kHVFoax4M= =ySlU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[ANNOUNCE] Durus object database
by Neil Schemenauer July 23, 2004

July 23, 2004

I am happy to announce the first public release of the Durus object database. Durus offers an easy way to maintain a consistent persistent collection of Python object instances used by one or more processes. For more information, see the web site: http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/durus/ Although this release is numbered 0.1, we believe Durus is stable and reliable. We have been using it seriously for a some months now. Please give it a try and let us know what you think. Note that Durus does not support multi-threaded database access. If that is a requirement for your application, we recommend using the Zope Object Database (ZODB) instead.

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