Mailman 3 May 2005 - Python-announce-list

decorator module
by Michele Simionato 16 May '05

16 May '05

I have written a decorator module to make easier to write good decorators (i.e. decorators preserving the signature of the functions they decorate). The documentations contains a (hopefully) nice collections of use cases (which are also test cases, sice I take doctest very seriously ;). You can find it here: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~micheles/python/decorator.zip It is released under the Python licence. Let me know if you are using it and if you would like further additions/improvements/changes/etc. Feeback is welcome! Michele Simionato

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SoCal Piggies Meeting 05/17
by Grig Gheorghiu 16 May '05

16 May '05

The Southern California Python Interest Group (aka SoCal Piggies) will meet tomorrow 05/17 at USC from 7 PM to 9 PM. If you are interested, please check the group's Wiki for more details: http://agile.unisonis.com/socalpiggies Grig Gheorghiu

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (May 16)
by Simon Brunning 16 May '05

16 May '05

QOTW: "As you learn Python, you will find that your PHP code will improve, possibly becoming more and more concise until it disappears completely." - Jorey Bump (Responding to a quotaton of Sturgeon's law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap.") "fwiw, this is of course why google displays 10 results on the first page. according to the law, one of them is always exactly what you want." - Fredrik Lundh Testing for an empty iterator: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/413614 Python email libraries, part 1: POP3: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Python/Python-Email-Libraries-part-1-POP3/ Solipsis, a peer-to-peer system for a massively multi-participant virtual world: http://solipsis.netofpeers.net/wiki/HomePage/ Twisted reStructuredText server: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/413609 How can Python's documentation be improved? http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d… Static typing exposed: http://seanmcgrath.blogspot.com/archives/2005_05_08_seanmcgrath_archive.htm… Finding Unique Elements in a List: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/3… Diving into PyParsing: http://www.advogato.org/person/titus/diary.html?start=89 Notable releases: PyGTK 2.6.2: http://www.pygtk.org/ Python for .NET 1.0 RC1 http://www.zope.org/Members/Brian/PythonNet ======================================================================== 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. For far, FAR more Python reading than any one mind should absorb, much of it quite interesting, several pages index much of the universe of Pybloggers. http://lowlife.jp/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/PythonProgrammersWeblog http://www.planetpython.org/ http://mechanicalcat.net/pyblagg.html 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 Steve Bethard, Tim Lesher, and Tony Meyer continue the marvelous tradition early borne by Andrew Kuchling, Michael Hudson and Brett Cannon 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. del.icio.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/ (requires subscription) http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=python-url+group:comp.lang.python*&s… 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: Rekall/WEB
by John Dean 16 May '05

16 May '05

Hi I would like to announce the release of Rekall/WEB. Through the power of Python, you can now turn your Rekall desktop application into a web based application, with any loss of functionality and with a comparable look 'n feel. You can now design on the desktop and deploy on the web. There is no long an need to go through endless cycles of editing, uploading, and testing. You can even design your database tables, develope and test complex quiries, develope your back-end business logic, etc all within one powerful easy to use desktop application - Rekall. Take a look at www.rekallrevealed.org for a very simple example of a Rekall/WEB powered web site. More information on Rekall/WEB is available at both www.rekallrevealed.org and www.totalrekall.co.uk -- Best Regards John

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ANN: org.keyphrene is now available
by webmaster＠keyphrene.com 16 May '05

16 May '05

org.keyphrene is a Python wrapper for LibSSH2 and OpenSSL libraries. Includes: yEnc coder and decoder org.keyphrene is available for download from the Keyphrene web site: http://www.keyphrene.com/products/org.keyphrene/

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BayPIGgies: May 19, 7:30pm (FIRST meeting at Google)
by Aahz 16 May '05

16 May '05

NOTE: we are no longer meeting at Stanford; the May meeting is at Google in Mountain View. The next meeting of BayPIGgies will be Thurs, May 19 at 7:30pm. NOTE: to celebrate our first meeting at Google, Google will be providing a buffet dinner starting at 6:45pm. Alex Martelli will be repeating his OSCON/PyCon presentations about OOP and design patterns -- with improvements! BayPIGgies meetings alternate between IronPort (San Bruno, California) and Google (Mountain View, California). For more information and directions, see http://www.baypiggies.net/ Advance notice: The June 9 meeting agenda has been set. Drew Perttula will be talking about his Python-based lighting system controller. Advance notice: The July 14 meeting agenda has not been set. Please send e-mail to baypiggies(a)baypiggies.net if you want to suggest an agenda (or volunteer to give a presentation). -- Aahz (aahz(a)pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "And if that makes me an elitist...I couldn't be happier." --JMS

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Optimise Europython competition
by jacob＠cd.chalmers.se 15 May '05

15 May '05

A classic dilemma for conferences is that if you have many tracks, you may find that all of a sudden, a room is swamped, and there is a queue of people wanting to get in. Another problem is that you risk scheduling talks against each other that have a very large set of interested people in common. At Europython we are this year going to try a new way of scheduling, in order to reduce these problems. Before the schedule is made, we will give all attendees the opportunity to register what talks they are most interested in. We then want to make a schedule that is optimised based on these data. Since I am no expert in optimising algorithms of this type, and since the time I have available for these things is limited, I'm turning to the readers of c.l.p and python-logic for help. I'm offering the following bounty for a working solution (in Python): - Free attendance at this years Europython, as a guest of honour - A Europython T-shirt in a limited special edition - Fame and gratitude from conference attendees who get better scheduling The winner of the bounty is the person who scores most points, according to the criteria below. If we get more than one solution that does good optimisation, we will award more than one bounty. Here are the parameters: 1. There are 10 tracks with between 1 and 30 talks in each track. You may not schedule two talks in the same track against each other, unless there is more talks than available calendar time. 2. A track should be continuous. Each track that is continuous gives you 10 points. 3. We expect about 300 attendees. About half of them are expected to register their interests. Interests may range from a single talk to more than half of all the talks. You get one point for each talk an attendee can attend out of the ones the attendee has registered interest in. 4. Talks are of varying lengths. Lengths can be 30, 45, 60 and 90 minutes. The large majority of talks are 30 minutes. Only a very few are 45 minutes. 5. Rooms come in different sizes Room A has 180 seats Room B has 140 seats Room C has 140 seats Room D has 70 seats Room E has 70 seats Room A-D should be scheduled throughout the conference while room E is extra expansion space, only to be used when absolutely necessary. For every person scheduled above (Room capacity * (Number of responding attendees / Total number of attendees)) you get one point taken off your score. 6. There are a total of 10 90-minute time blocks. Day 1: 09:00 Day 1: 11:00 Day 1: 14:00 Day 1: 16:00 Day 2: 09:00 Day 2: 11:00 Day 2: 14:00 Day 2: 16:00 Day 3: 09:00 Day 3: 11:00 A track should not change room in the middle of a time block. Doing so reduces your score by 50 points. 7. Input data You get your input data in the form of a list of tuples; one tuple per talk. Each tuple looks like this: (<talk id>, <talk length>, <track id>, [list of interested attendees]) Talk length is an integer, all other items are strings. 8. Output data You should supply your output data in the form of a list of tuples; one tuple per talk. Each tuple should look like this: (<talk id>, <room>, <day>, <starting time>) Talk id should be the same as in the input. Room should be a one letter string with a value in the range A-E. Day should be a one letter string in the range 1-3. Starting time should be a string on the form HH:MM, in the 24 hour clock. Solutions should be sent by email to europython(a)python.org no later than 1 June 2005. Currently we haven't started gathering real data, but there should be some available for real world testing before 1 June. --

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X2Y 1.1.7 Document Processor Released!
by Chris Withers 15 May '05

15 May '05

X2Y is a flexible, configurable and extendable server-based document processing framework written in python. It has the following feaures: - Cross platform - Fully documented - Run as either a cron job, scheduled task or by hand - Fully configurable logging and notification - Fully configurable processing chains, including multiple seperate processing chains on a single server - Scriptable conversion plugins, inputs and outputs - Processors can be written in ANY language - Input from local file system, http get or imap folder supplied as standard - Output to local file system, http post or mail message supplied as standard - Supplied processors for EasyPDF and OpenOffice for document conversion Potential applications include server-side document conversion, virus scanning. We are particularly interested in hearing from anyone who develops new inputs, outputs and processors! For more information, please see: http://www.simplistix.co.uk/software/applications/x2y cheers, Chris -- Simplistix - Content Management, Zope & Python Consulting - http://www.simplistix.co.uk

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Release of version 0.3a1 of xlrd (Excel read) package
by sjmachin＠lexicon.net 15 May '05

15 May '05

The first publicly-released version of the xlrd (Excel read) package is now available for download from: * http://www.lexicon.net/sjmachin/xlrd.htm * PyPI (Windows installer only; unresolved problem with uploading source-distribution zip file) Purpose: Provide a library for developers to extract data from Microsoft Excel (tm) spreadsheet files. It is not an end-user tool. Platform: Any. You dont need to be on Windows. If you are, you can avoid hassles with approaches like COM, ODBC, save-as-CSV, etc Python requirements: Works with Python 2.2 or later. There are no dependencies on modules or packages outside the standard Python distribution. Versions of Excel supported: 2004, 2002, XP, 2000, 97, 95, 5.0, 4.0, 3.0. Features: * Strong support for handling dates, and documentation of Excel date problems and how to avoid them. * Unicode aware; correctly handles "compressed" Unicode in modern files; decodes legacy charsets in older files (if Python has the codec). * Extracts all data (including Booleans and error-values) Exclusions: xlrd will not attempt to decode password-protected (encrypted) files. Otherwise, it will safely and reliably ignore any of these if present: * Anything to do with the on-screen presentation of the data (fonts, panes, column widths, row heights, ...) * Charts, Macros, Pictures, any other embedded object. WARNING: currently this includes embedded worksheets. * Visual Basic (VBA) modules * Formulas (results of formula calculations are extracted, of course) * Comments and hyperlinks WANTED: *ALPHA* testers with: * bigendian platforms, and/or * Excel 95 (or earlier) files created in non-Latin1 locales Feedback: mailto: sjmachin(a)lexicon.net preferably with [xlrd] in the message subject. ------- End of forwarded message -------

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mma - Musical MIDI Accompaniment version Beta 0.14
by Bob van der Poel 14 May '05

14 May '05

I'm pleased to announce the release of my program mma - Musical MIDI Accompaniment version: Beta 0.14 MMA is a accompaniment generator -- it creates midi tracks for a soloist to perform with. User supplied files contain pattern selections, chords, and MMA directives. MMA is very versatile and generates excellent tracks. It comes with an extensive user-extendable library with a variety of patterns for various popular rhythms, an extensive user manual, and many demo songs. MMA is a command line driven program. It creates MIDI files which need a sequencer or MIDI file play program. MMA is written in Python. You'll need Python 2.3 (or later) for MMA to function. MMA is supplied in 4 tar.gz archives. Included: mma-bin -- the main script and library files. mma-html -- documentation in HTML format. mma-pdf -- documentation in PDF format. mma-songs -- a collection of about 230 songs in MMA format. If you get all four download packages the total size is still less than 1.5 megabytes. MMA is currently in final BETAs. We are hoping for a 1.0 release in summer 2005. Right now we need help in debugging the program, creating songs for distribution, and new and improved library files. Best of all, MMA is free. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It has been developed on a Linux platform, but should be usable on just about any system. A detailed page now exists on our web site on how-to install on a Windows system. MMA is available on my personal home page: http://mypage.uniserve.com/~bvdp/mma/ If you have any questions or comments, please send them to: bvdp(a)uniserve.com Beta 0.14: A number of bug fixes, many more system macros, ALLTRACKS command added, major fixes to chord generation. Comments appreciated! -- Bob van der Poel ** Wynndel, British Columbia, CANADA ** EMAIL: bvdp(a)uniserve.com WWW: http://mypage.uniserve.com/~bvdp

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