Mailman 3 December 2006 - Python-announce-list

IMDbPY 2.8
by alberanid＠libero.it Dec. 15, 2006

Dec. 15, 2006

IMDbPY 2.8 is available (tgz, deb, rpm, exe) from: http://imdbpy.sourceforge.net/ IMDbPY is a Python package useful to retrieve and manage the data of the IMDb movie database about both movies and people. With this release some major bugs were fixed, especially in the "http" and "sql" data access systems; moreover FAQs about movies and airing dates about tv series can be retrieved. Platform-independent and written in pure Python (and few C lines), it can retrieve data from both the IMDb's web server and a local copy of the whole database. IMDbPY package can be very easily used by programmers and developers to provide access to the IMDb's data to their programs. Some simple example scripts are included in the package; other IMDbPY-based programs are available from the home page. -- Davide Alberani <alberanid(a)libero.it> [PGP KeyID: 0x465BFD47] http://erlug.linux.it/~da/

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[ANN] Python 2.5 Quick Reference
by Richard Gruet Dec. 14, 2006

Dec. 14, 2006

Hi all, An updated version of the Quick Reference for Python 2.5 is available in different formats at http://rgruet.free.fr/#QuickRef. Please report errors, inaccuracies and suggestions to Richard Gruet (pqr at rgruet.net). Richard

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Registration for PyCon 2007 now open
by A.M. Kuchling Dec. 14, 2006

Dec. 14, 2006

Online registration for PyCon 2007 is now open. Please go to: http://us.pycon.org/TX2007/Registration for instructions and a link to the registration form. Register before January 15th to get the lower early-bird rate. And don't forget to also book your hotel room before February 1st to get the conference rate; see http://us.pycon.org/Addison/Hotels for details. Pricing: Regular Student Early-bird registration (before Jan. 15 2007) US$195 $125 Online/mail registration (before Feb. 16 2007) US$260 $150 At the conference US$360 $250 Our apologies for the delays in getting registration open. Andrew M. Kuchling amk(a)amk.ca Co-chair, PyCon 2007 http://us.pycon.org Jeff Rush jeff(a)taupro.com Co-chair, PyCon 2007 http://us.pycon.org

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Python training in Colorado, January 2007
by lutz＠rmi.net Dec. 14, 2006

Dec. 14, 2006

Python author and trainer Mark Lutz will be teaching another 3-day Python class at a conference center in Longmont, Colorado, on January 23-25, 2007. This is a public training session open to individual enrollments, and covers the same topics as the 3-day onsite sessions that Mark teaches, with hands-on lab work. For more information on this, and our other 2007 public classes, please visit these web pages: http://home.earthlink.net/~python-training/longmont-public-classes.htm http://home.earthlink.net/~python-training/public_classes.html Thanks for your interest. --Python Training Services, Inc.

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BayPiggies Dec. 14 Meeting "Programming Productivity: What Really Matters?"
by Shannon -jj Behrens Dec. 14, 2006

Dec. 14, 2006

Thursday Dec. 14, 2006 7:30-8:50 p.m. Technical Program ------------------------------------ Title Programming Productivity: What Really Matters? Presenter Shannon -jj Behrens (Foxmarks) About the talk Are you fascinated by programmer productivity? Do you wish you could get more done in less time without sacrificing quality? This talk will cover a broad range of topics such as work environment, development environment, and programming language features. 8:50 p.m-... Mapping and Random Access ------------------------------------------ Mapping Moderator TBD Mapping is a rapid-fire audience announcement open to all of topic headings (one speaker at a time). Random Access session (everyone breaks up into self-organized small-group discussion) follows immediately after Mapping. More information: http://baypiggies.net

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Please donate to the Python Software Foundation
by sdeibel Dec. 13, 2006

Dec. 13, 2006

Hi, I'm writing to urge members of the Python community to please keep the Python Software Foundation in mind in your "year end giving". The PSF is the 501(c)3 non-profit organization that holds and protects the intellectual property rights behind Python. We deal with the licensing, contribution agreements, and legal requirements of copyright and trademark in order to keep Python open and free of legal claims. The PSF also: * Provides the financial backing that makes PyCon possible: http://us.pycon.org/ * Funds special projects such as the recent website redesign: http://python.org/ and the current Python Advocacy Coordinator experiment: http://python.org/psf/grants/advocacy/orig-proposal.pdf http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonAdvocacyCoordinator * Funds grants: http://www.python.org/psf/grants/ * Responds to legal queries about the license, trademarks, or US export control registration, owns/renews the key Python domain names, and other such administrative chores. How to Donate ------------- We take credit cards, checks, wire transfers, and PayPal: http://www.python.org/psf/donations/ Donations are tax deductible for US citizens and for any business where donations or sponsorship can be considered pre-tax business expenses. Businesses can also consider becoming a sponsor member of the PSF: http://www.python.org/psf/sponsorship/ Or, become a sponsor of PyCon 2007: http://us.pycon.org/TX2007/HowToSponsor If you have any questions, please email me directly. Thanks! Stephan Deibel Chairman of the Board Python Software Foundation http://python.org/psf

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Sybase module 0.38pre1 released
by Sébastien Sablé Dec. 13, 2006

Dec. 13, 2006

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. MAJOR CHANGES SINCE 0.37: * This release works with python 2.5 * It also works with sybase 15 * It works with 64bits clients * It can be configured to return native python datetime objects * The bug "This routine cannot be called because another command structure has results pending." which appears in various cases has been corrected * It includes a unitary test suite based on the dbapi2.0 compliance test suite

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python-dev Summary for 2006-11-16 through 2006-11-30
by steven.bethard＠gmail.com Dec. 13, 2006

Dec. 13, 2006

python-dev Summary for 2006-11-16 through 2006-11-30 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ .. contents:: [The HTML version of this Summary is available at http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2006-11-16_2006-11-30] ============= Announcements ============= -------------------------- Python 2.5 malloc families -------------------------- Remember that if you find your extension module is crashing with Python 2.5 in malloc/free, there is a high chance that you have a mismatch in malloc "families". Fredrik Lundh's FAQ has more: http://effbot.org/pyfaq/why-does-my-c-extension-suddenly-crash-under-2.5.htm Contributing thread: - `2.5 portability problems <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069971.html>`__ --------------------------------- Roundup tracker schema discussion --------------------------------- If you'd like to be involved in the discussion of the setup for the `new tracker`_, you can now file issues on the `meta tracker`_ or post to the `tracker-discuss mailing list`_. Be sure to sign up for an account so your comments don't show up as anonymous! .. _new tracker: http://psf.upfronthosting.co.za/roundup/tracker/ .. _meta tracker: http://psf.upfronthosting.co.za/roundup/meta/ .. _tracker-discuss mailing list: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tracker-discuss Contributing thread: - `discussion of schema for new issue tracker starting <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069976.html>`__ ========= Summaries ========= ---------------------------------------- Python and the Linux Standard Base (LSB) ---------------------------------------- Ian Murdock, the chair of the Linux Standard Base (LSB), explained that they wanted to add Python to `LSB 3.2`_. Martin v. Lowis promised to go to their meeting in Berlin and report back to python-dev. The discussion then turned to the various ways in which the different Linux variants package Python. A number of people had been troubled by Debian's handling of distutils. At one point, Debian had excluded distutils completely, requiring users to install the "python-dev" package to get distutils functionality. While current versions of Debian had put distutils back in the stdlib, they had excluded the ``config`` directory, meaning that distutils worked only for pure Python modules, not extension modules. And because Debian had no way of knowing that a computer with both gcc and Python installed would likely benefit from having the ``config`` directory installed, the user still had to install "python-dev" separately. There was also some discussion about how to handle third party modules so that updating a module didn't break some application which was expecting a different version. These kinds of problems were particularly dangerous on distributions like Gentoo and Ubuntu which relied heavily on their own system Python for the OS to work properly. Guido suggested introducing a vendor-packages directory for the third party modules required by the OS and Martin v. Lowis reopened an `earlier patch`_ suggesting this. A number of folks also thought that adding a ~/.local/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages directory for user specific (not site wide) packages could be useful. Phillip J. Eby pointed out that distutils and setuptools already allow you to install packages this way by putting:: [install] prefix = ~/.local into ./setup.cfg, ~/.pydistutils.cfg, or /usr/lib/python2.x/distutils/distutils.cfg. He also explained that setuptools could address some of the application-level problems: setuptools-generated scripts adjust their sys.path to include the specific eggs they need, and can specify these eggs with an exact version if necessary. Thus OS-level scripts would likely specify exact versions and then users could feel free to install newer eggs without worrying that the OS would try to use them instead. .. _LSB 3.2: http://www.freestandards.org/en/LSB_Roadmap .. _earlier patch: http://bugs.python.org/1298835 Contributing thread: - `Python and the Linux Standard Base (LSB) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070027.html>`__ ---------------------- Thread-safe operations ---------------------- Fredrik Lundh has been working on `cleaning up the Python FAQ`_ and asked about what kinds of operations could be considered "atomic" for the purposes of thread-safety. While almost any statement in Python can invoke an arbitrary special method (e.g. ``a = b`` can invoke ``a.__del__()``), Fredrik was interested in situations where the objects involved were either builtins or objects that didn't override special methods. In situations like these, you can be guaranteed things like:: * If two threads execute ``L.append(x)``, two items will be added to the list (though the order is unspecified) * If two threads execute ``x.y = z``, the field ``y`` on the ``x`` object will exist and contain one of the values assigned by one of the threads You get these guarantees mainly because the core operation in these examples involves only a single Python bytecode. However, Martin v. Lowis pointed out that even the above examples are not truly atomic in the strictest sense because they invoke bytecodes to load the values of the variables in addition to the bytecode to perform the operation. For example, if one thread does ``x = y`` while another thread does ``y = x``, at the end of the code in an "atomic" system, both ``x`` and ``y`` would have the same value. However, in Python, the values could get swapped if a context switch occurred between the loading of the values and the assignment operations. Much of this discussion was also posted to `the FAQ item`_. .. _cleaning up the Python FAQ: http://effbot.org/pyfaq/ .. _the FAQ item: http://effbot.org/pyfaq/what-kinds-of-global-value-mutation-are-thread-safe… Contributing thread: - `PyFAQ: thread-safe interpreter operations <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069981.html>`__ -------------------------------------------- >From an empty directory to a package on PyPI -------------------------------------------- Talin suggested that distutils/setuptools and their documentation should be updated so that new users could more easily answer the question: "What is the smoothest path from empty directory to a finished package on PyPI?" In particular, Talin thought that having to cross-reference between distutils/setuptools/unittest/etc. was confusing, and that a more stand-alone version of the documentation was necessary. A number of people agreed that the documentation could use some reorganization and the addition of some more tutorial-like sections. Mike Orr promised to put together an initial "Table of Contents" that would have links to the most important information for package distribution, and Talin made `his notes`_ available on the "baby steps" necessary to prepare a module for setuptools (e.g. create the directory structure, write a setup.py file, create source files in the appropriate directories, etc.) .. _his notes: http://wiki.python.org/moin/ExtensionTutorial Contributing thread: - `Distribution tools: What I would like to see <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070034.html>`__ -------------------------------------------- Monitoring progress with urllib's reporthook -------------------------------------------- Martin v. Lowis looked at a `patch to urllib's reporthook`_ aimed at more accurate progress reporting. The original code in urllib was passing the ``read()`` block size as the second argument to the reporthook. The patch would have instead passed as the second argument the actual count of bytes read. Guido pointed out that the block size and the actual count would always be identical except for the last block because of how Python's ``file.read(n)`` works. Thus urllib was already giving the reporthook as accurate a progress report as possible given the implementation, and so the patch was rejected. .. _patch to urllib's reporthook: http://bugs.python.org/849407 Contributing thread: - `Passing actual read size to urllib reporthook <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069977.html>`__ --------------------------- Infinity and NaN singletons --------------------------- Tomer Filiba asked about making the positive-infinity, negative-infinity and not-a-number (NaN) singletons available as attributes of the ``float`` type, e.g. ``float.posinf``, ``float.neginf`` and ``float.nan``. Bob Ippolito pointed him to `PEP 754`_ and the fpconst_ module which addressed some of these issues though in a separate module instead of the builtin ``float`` type. When Tomer asked why `PEP 754`_ had not been accepted, Martin v. Lowis explained that while people were interested in the feature, it was difficult to implement in general, e.g. on platforms where the double type was not IEEE-754. .. _PEP 754: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0754/ .. _fpconst: http://www.python.org/pypi/fpconst/ Contributing thread: - `infinities <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070020.html>`__ ------------------------------------------ Line continuations and the tokenize module ------------------------------------------ Guido asked about modifying the tokenize module to allow a better round-tripping of code with line continuations. While the tokenize module was generating pseudo-tokens for things like comments and "ignored" newlines, it was not generating anything for line continuation backslashes. Adding the appropriate yield would have been trivial, but would have been a (minor) backwards incompatible change. Phillip J. Eby pointed Guido to `scale.dsl`_ which dealt with similar issues, and suggested that even though the change was small, it might cause problems for some existing tools. Guido proposed a somewhat more backwards compatible version, where a NL pseudo-token was generated with '\\\n' as its text value, and asked folks to try it out and see if it gave them any trouble. .. _scale.dsl: http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/scale.dsl#converting-tokens-back-to… Contributing thread: - `Small tweak to tokenize.py? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070099.html>`__ ----------------------- Summer of Code projects ----------------------- Georg Brandl asked about the status of the Google Summer of Code projects and got a number of responses: * Nilton Volpato reported the completion of the new ziparchive_ module, which includes file-like access to zip members, support for BZIP2 compression, support for member file removal and support for encryption. He explained that he was still doing a little work to clean up the API, and that he would appreciate any feedback people had on the module. * Facundo Batista reported that the decimal Python-to-C transliteration was completed successfully, but that they learned in the process that a simple transliteration was not going to suffice and the decimal module was going to have to undergo a structural redesign to perform well in C. * Jim Jewett reported that the work to make more stdlib modules use the logging module was incomplete, and not ready for stdlib inclusion yet. .. _ziparchive: http://ziparchive.sourceforge.net/ Contributing threads: - `Summer of Code: zipfile? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069955.html>`__ - `Results of the SOC projects <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069968.html>`__ - `Summer of Code: zipfile? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069969.html>`__ - `Results of the SOC projects <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069970.html>`__ =============== Skipped Threads =============== - `Weekly Python Patch/Bug Summary <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069973.html>`__ - `Python in first-year MIT core curriculum <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069974.html>`__ - `POSIX Capabilities <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069986.html>`__ - `[1593035] Re: readline problem with python-2.5 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069987.html>`__ - `DRAFT: python-dev summary for 2006-10-01 to 2006-10-15 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069990.html>`__ - `Suggestion/ feature request <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/069993.html>`__ - `DRAFT: python-dev summary for 2006-10-16 to 2006-10-31 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070009.html>`__ - `DRAFT: python-dev summary for 2006-11-01 to 2006-11-15 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070012.html>`__ - `ctypes and powerpc <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070016.html>`__ - `(no subject) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070028.html>`__ - `Cloning threading.py using processes <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070048.html>`__ - `Objecttype of 'locals' argument in PyEval_EvalCode <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-November/070071.html>`__ ======== Epilogue ======== This is a summary of traffic on the `python-dev mailing list`_ from November 16, 2006 through November 30, 2006. It is intended to inform the wider Python community of on-going developments on the list on a semi-monthly basis. An archive_ of previous summaries is available online. An `RSS feed`_ of the titles of the summaries is available. You can also watch comp.lang.python or comp.lang.python.announce for new summaries (or through their email gateways of python-list or python-announce, respectively, as found at http://mail.python.org). This python-dev summary is the 17th written by Steven Bethard. To contact me, please send email: - Steven Bethard (steven dot bethard at gmail dot com) Do *not* post to comp.lang.python if you wish to reach me. The `Python Software Foundation`_ is the non-profit organization that holds the intellectual property for Python. It also tries to advance the development and use of Python. If you find the python-dev Summary helpful please consider making a donation. You can make a donation at http://python.org/psf/donations.html . Every cent counts so even a small donation with a credit card, check, or by PayPal helps. -------------------- Commenting on Topics -------------------- To comment on anything mentioned here, just post to `comp.lang.python`_ (or email python-list(a)python.org which is a gateway to the newsgroup) with a subject line mentioning what you are discussing. All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on something. And if all of this really interests you then get involved and join `python-dev`_! ------------------------- How to Read the Summaries ------------------------- This summary is written using reStructuredText_. Any unfamiliar punctuation is probably markup for reST_ (otherwise it is probably regular expression syntax or a typo :); you can safely ignore it. We do suggest learning reST, though; it's simple and is accepted for `PEP markup`_ and can be turned into many different formats like HTML and LaTeX. .. _python-dev: http://www.python.org/dev/ .. _python-dev mailing list: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev .. _comp.lang.python: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.python .. _PEP Markup: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0012.html .. _reST: .. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html .. _Python Software Foundation: http://python.org/psf/ .. _archive: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ .. _RSS feed: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/channews.rdf

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ANN: wxPython 2.8.0.1
by Robin Dunn Dec. 12, 2006

Dec. 12, 2006

Announcing ---------- The 2.8.0.1 release of wxPython is now available for download at http://wxpython.org/download.php. This is the first of the new stable 2.8.x release series and is the culmination of the massive enhancement and stabalization effort done in the 2.7.x series. Source code is available, as well as binaries for both Python 2.4 and 2.5, for Windows and Mac, as well some pacakges for various Linux distributions. A summary of changes is listed below and also at http://wxpython.org/recentchanges.php. What is wxPython? ----------------- wxPython is a GUI toolkit for the Python programming language. It allows Python programmers to create programs with a robust, highly functional graphical user interface, simply and easily. It is implemented as a Python extension module that wraps the GUI components of the popular wxWidgets cross platform library, which is written in C++. wxPython is a cross-platform toolkit. This means that the same program will usually run on multiple platforms without modifications. Currently supported platforms are 32-bit Microsoft Windows, most Linux or other Unix-like systems using GTK2, and Mac OS X 10.3+, in most cases the native widgets are used on each platform to provide a 100% native look and feel for the application. Changes in 2.8.0.1 ------------------ Lots of fixes and updates to the AUI classes. Added wx.CollapsiblePane. On wxGTK it uses a native expander widget, on the other platforms a regular button is used to control the collapsed/expanded state. Added the wx.combo module, which contains the ComboCtrl and ComboPopup classes. These classes allow you to implement a wx.ComboBox-like widget where the popup can be nearly any kind of widget, and where you have a lot of control over other aspects of the combo widget as well. It works very well on GTK and MSW, using native renderers for drawing the combo button, but is unfortunatly still a bit klunky on OSX... Use system default paper size for printing instead of A4 by default. Added wx.combo.OwnerDrawnComboBox, which is a ComboCtrl that delegates the drawing of the items in the popup and in the control itself to overridden methods of a derived class, similarly to how wx.VListBox works. Added wx.combo.BitmapComboBox which is a combobox that displays a bitmap in front of the list items. Added the wx.lib.mixins.inspect module. It contains the InspectMixin class which can be mixed with a wx.App class and provides a PyCrust window that can be activated with a Ctrl-Alt-I keystroke (or Cmd-Alt-I on the Mac.) Added some modules from Riaan Booysen: * wx.lib.flagart: contains icons of the flags of many countries. * wx.lib.art.img2pyartprov: makes images embedded in a python file with img2py available via the wx.ArtProvider. * wx.lib.langlistctrl: A wx.ListCtrl for selecting a language, which uses the country flag icons. * An I18N sample for the demo. wx.lib.masked: Patch from Will Sadkin. Includes Unicode fixes, plus more helpful exceptions and ability to designate fields in mask without intervening fixed characters. Added wx.SearchCtrl, which is a composite of a wx.TextCtrl with optional bitmap buttons and a drop-down menu. Controls like this can typically be found on a toolbar of applications that support some form of search functionality. On the Mac this control is implemented using the native HISearchField control, on the other platforms a generic control is used, although that may change in the future as more platforms introduce native search widgets. Added a set of button classes to wx.lib.buttons from David Hughes that uses the native renderer to draw the button. -- Robin Dunn Software Craftsman http://wxPython.org Java give you jitters? Relax with wxPython!

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[ANN] ChiPy Monthly Meeting: Thurs. Dec. 14 2006. 7 pm.
by bray＠sent.com Dec. 12, 2006

Dec. 12, 2006

Thurs. December 14 2006. 7 pm. Come join us for our December meeting. This might be our best one yet! Mark Ramm <http://compoundthinking.com/> TurboGears expert will present. Here is Mark's blog entry: <http://tinyurl.com/w33zw>. We will then open the floor for discussion on Chicago's 2008 Bid to host PyCon. It will be nice to hear what updates those actively involved with finding a venue have to say. Also, it may be a good time to gather a team of volunteers for other tasks. Help us get PyCon in Chicago for 2008. This will be our first DePaul University sponsored meeting. A special thanks to Massimo Di Pierro, CTI DePaul University, mdipierro at cs.depaul.edu <http://www.metacryption.com/mdp/>. No need to RSVP. When ---- Thurs. December 14 2006. 7 pm. What ---- Mark Ramm on ''Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears'' Ian Bicking might present on his ZjangoGears** metaphor PyCon 2008 Chicago Bid Updates ** presumable the current state of Python in Web Programming. Where ----- `DePaul CTI 243 S Wabash Ave. room 924 <http://www.cti.depaul.edu/news/news.asp?id=2983&section=news>`_ About ChiPy ----------- ChiPy is a group of Chicago Python Programmers, l33t, and n00bs. Meetings are held monthly at various locations around Chicago. Also, ChiPy is a proud sponsor of many Open Source and Educational efforts in Chicago. Stay tuned to the mailing list for more info. ChiPy website: <http://chipy.org> ChiPy Mailing List: <http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago> Python website: <http://python.org> ---

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