Mailman 3 May 2007 - Python-announce-list

Open Source Developers' Conference 2007 - Brisbane - Call for Papers
by Richard Jones May 29, 2007

May 29, 2007

Call for Papers --------------- Open Source Developers' Conference 2007 - Brisbane, Australia "Success in Development & Business" OSDC is a grass-roots conference providing Open Source developers with an opportunity to meet, share, learn, and of course show-off. OSDC focuses on Open Source developers building solutions directly for customers and other end users, anything goes as long as the code or the development platform is Open Source. Last year's conference attracted over 180 people, 60 talks, and 6 tutorials. Entry for delegates is kept easy by maintaining a low registration fee (approx $300), which always includes the conference dinner. This year OSDC will be held in Brisbane from the 26th to the 29th of November, with an extra dedicated stream for presentations on Open Source business development, case studies, software process, and project management. The theme for this year's conference is "Success in Development & Business". If you are an Open Source maintainer, developer or user we would encourage you to submit a talk proposal on the open-source tools, solutions, technologies, or languages you are working with. Previous years have included numerous talks on topics such as: - FOSS Software Development Tools, Software Process and Project Management - Languages/Platforms: C/C++, Java, C#/Mono/OSS.Net - Scripting: Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby - Databases - Education - Web Technologies - Emerging Technologies and Innovation For more details and to submit your proposal(s), see http://osdc.com.au/papers/cfp.html If you have any questions or require assistance with your submission, please don't hesitate to ask! We recognise the increasing importance of Open Source in providing a medium for collaboration between individuals, researchers, business and government. In recognition of this, we offer optional peer-review for those members of our community who desire it. We are still finalising our review board, in addition to which those requesting peer-review will be asked to contribute reviews for up to three papers. OSDC 2007 Brisbane - Key Program Dates -------------------------------------- 30 Jun - Proposals deadline 31 Jul - Proposal acceptance 31 Aug - Submission deadline 15 Sep - Peer-review response (optional) 30 Sep - Final version for proceedings 26 Nov - OSDC 2007 Tutorials 27-29 Nov - OSDC 2007 Main Conference! For all information, contacts and updates, see the OSDC conference web site at http://osdc.com.au/ Sponsorship ----------- We gratefully acknowledge the following companies for their early commitment in sponsoring OSDC 2007: - Apress (http://apress.com/) - Common Ground (http://commongroundgroup.com/) - Google (http://google.com.au/) - OpenGear (http://opengear.com.au/) Interested in sponsoring also? See http://www.osdc.com.au/sponsors/opportunities.html

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SyPy Social Meetup Thursday 7 June 2007
by Mark Rees May 29, 2007

May 29, 2007

On Thursday, June 7 2007 from 6:30PM, there will be a social gathering of Sydney Python Users Group and any individuals interested in discussing Python, Web, Ruby, Perl etc. Laptops, code review, show and tell etc allowed and encouraged. We meet in the ground floor area next to P.J. O'Briens Pub internal entrance in the Grace Hotel, Cnr York and King Street Sydney, New South Wales 2000 Please register your attendance at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/197328 or reply to this email. I have been overseas working for much of the time since the last meetup, but I promise that if I can be resident in Sydney long enough, the July meeting will be a more formal one with presentations. Thanks Mark

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update of scalar package
by uymqlp502＠sneakemail.com May 29, 2007

May 29, 2007

I just released version 1.3 of my scalar package in Python. This package implements scalar physical units (meters, seconds, feet, degrees, etc.). It eliminates unit errors, a common source of bugs in engineering and scientific applications. The entire SI (metric) system is implemented, plus many other common units. You can also easily define your own smaller set of units for specific applications or domains. The advantage of my implementation over others, I believe, is that it allows the user to easily switch off the unit checks for efficient production runs. This speeds up the processing dramatically (by well over an order of magnitude), making it virtually as efficient as using built-in numeric types (without changing the output, of course). It's free, and it comes with a complete user guide (in both pdf and html). Take a look at it. I think you'll like it. I think it's well written, but I would also be interested in any feedback on code quality from Python experts. You can get it at http://RussP.us/scalar.htm

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ANN: Porcupine Web Application Server v0.1 is released!
by t.koutsovassilis＠gmail.com May 28, 2007

May 28, 2007

The inno:script team is pleased to announce the release of Porcupine 0.1. After twenty three months of constant development this is the first stable release candidate, with plans to go full stable in the next release. Apart from numerous bug fixes and optimizations, this release also includes a new bunch of exciting and longly awaited new features. Porcupine now supports synchronous event handlers per object type and the native data types have been enriched by a new data type supporting links to external files that reside on the file system. This release also introduces personal repositories used for keeping each user's personal items. On the UI side, QuiX supports tooltips, third party custom widgets and dynamic loading of external stylesheets. Furthermore, a new slider control is added to the growing list of controls available out of the box. It is also worth mentioning that widget redraws are optimized by using a far more efficient algorithm. Enjoy! Helpful Links ========== What is Porcupine? http://www.innoscript.org/content/view/30/42/ Porcupine Downloads: http://www.innoscript.org/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,33/f... Porcupine online demo: http://www.innoscript.org/content/view/21/43/ Porcupine Wiki: http://wiki.innoscript.org

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Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (May 28)
by Gabriel Genellina May 28, 2007

May 28, 2007

QOTW: "Good God! Is there *anything* that python does not already do? I hardly feel the need to write programs anymore ... Its really 80% like of the questions that are asked here get answered along the lines of: import some_fancy_module solution = some_fancy_module.exactly_the_right_function_to_solve(problem) " - Wildemar Wildenburger "Whenever you are tempted to create dynamically variables names, 99% of the time what you really want is a data structure, typically a dict or a list." - George Sakkis An example shows how much more convenient it is to use cElementTree than to write a custom expat parser: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/441995.html The Time Machine in action again: How to enumerate classes in a module, in the same order they were defined: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/442009.html str.lower()/upper() may not work as expected even on familiar encodings like utf-8: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/442195.html Steve Holden shows the power of __getattr__, modifying functions on-the-fly: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/442432.html Learning by example: Ten small-but-useful programs increase from one line to ten lines in length and demonstrate key Python concepts: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/442529.html http://wiki.python.org/moin/SimplePrograms Python cheerleading: http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/368040.htm http://www.devchix.com/2007/05/24/beautiful-python-the-programming-language… The advantages of using a module as a singleton - let Python do the hard work: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/442640.html Debugging extension modules on Windows may be difficult without the proper (commercial) compiler. This topic shows how to do that using only freely available tools: http://groups.google.de/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/e441a58… Think before using inheritance: a Point is not a list: http://groups.google.de/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/0cdfa8c… Michelle Simioniato on decorators again: functools makes it easy to decorate methods: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/442057.html Tips on how to "sell" yourself as a freelancer: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/442476.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. The Python Papers aims to publish "the efforts of Python enthusiats". http://pythonpapers.org/ Readers have recommended the "Planet" sites: http://planetpython.org http://planet.python.org 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 Python411 indexes "podcasts ... to help people learn Python ..." Updates appear more-than-weekly: http://www.awaretek.com/python/index.html Steve Bethard continues the marvelous tradition early borne by Andrew Kuchling, Michael Hudson, Brett Cannon, Tony Meyer, and Tim Lesher 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/ 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 Although unmaintained since 2002, the Cetus collection of Python hyperlinks retains a few gems. 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 Many Python conferences around the world are in preparation. Watch this space for links to them. 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://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0042/ 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/topic/python/ (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… There is *not* an RSS for "Python-URL!"--at least not yet. Arguments for and against are occasionally entertained. 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!". Write to the same address to unsubscribe. -- The Python-URL! Team-- Phaseit, Inc. (http://phaseit.net) is pleased to participate in and sponsor the "Python-URL!" project. Watch this space for upcoming news about posting archives.

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[ANN] argparse 0.8 - Command-line parsing library
by Steven Bethard May 27, 2007

May 27, 2007

======================= Announcing argparse 0.8 ======================= The argparse module is an optparse-inspired command line parser that improves on optparse by supporting: * positional arguments * sub-commands * required options * options with a variable number of args * better usage messages * a much simpler extension mechanism and a number of other improvements on the optparse API. Download argparse ================= argparse home: http://argparse.python-hosting.com/ argparse single module download: http://argparse.python-hosting.com/file/trunk/argparse.py?format=raw argparse bundled downloads at PyPI: http://www.python.org/pypi/argparse/ Example argparse code ===================== Here's a simple program that sums its the command-line arguments and writes them to a file:: parser = argparse.ArgumentParser() parser.add_argument('integers', nargs='+', type=int) parser.add_argument('--log', default=sys.stdout, type=argparse.FileType('w')) args = parser.parse_args() args.log.write('%s\n' % sum(args.integers)) args.log.close() About this release ================== This release adds support for options with different prefix characters, a parser-level default for all arguments, and help messages for subparser commands. The deprecated 'outfile' type was finally removed in this release. Please update your code to use the FileType factory. New features ------------ * Options with different prefix characters, e.g. ``+foo`` or ``/bar``, using the new ``prefix_chars=`` keyword argument to ArgumentParser. * A parser-level argument default using the new ``argument_default=`` keyword argument to ArgumentParser. * Support for ``help=`` in the ``add_parser()`` method of subparsers. Bugs fixed ---------- * ``set_defaults()`` now correctly overrides defaults from ``add_argument()`` calls * ``default=SUPPRESS`` now correctly suppresses the action for positional arguments with ``nargs='?'`` or ``nargs='*'``.

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PySWIP 0.1.1 Released
by yucetekol＠gmail.com May 27, 2007

May 27, 2007

I am pleased to announce the 0.1.1 version of PySWIP. PySWIP is a GPL'd Python/SWI-Prolog bridge enabling to query SWI- Prolog in your Python programs. Example: >>> from pyswip.util import PrologRunner >>> prolog = PrologRunner() >>> prolog.query("assertz(father(michael,john)).") [{}] >>> prolog.query("assertz(father(michael,gina)).") [{}] >>> prolog.query("father(michael,X).") [{'X': 'john'}, {'X': 'gina'}] >>> for soln in prolog.queryGenerator("father(X,Y)."): ... print soln["X"], "is the father of", soln["Y"] ... michael is the father of john michael is the father of gina Requirements: * Python 2.3 and higher (most probably other versions will also work). * ctypes 0.9.9.9 and higher (most probably other versions will also work). * SWI-Prolog 5.6.x and higher(most probably other versions will also work). * libpl as a shared library. * Tested only on Linux, should be working for other POSIX and Win32. This release adds the `queryGenerator` to `PrologRunner` and the `examples` directory with a program that solves the classic "SEND +MORE=MONEY" problem. PySWIP homepages is at: http://code.google.com/p/pyswip Direct link for download: http://pyswip.googlecode.com/files/pyswip-0.1.1.tar.gz Regards, Yuce Tekol

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ANN : Karrigell-2.3.5
by Pierre Quentel May 26, 2007

May 26, 2007

Karrigell is a flexible Python web framework, with a clear and intuitive syntax. It is independant from any database, ORM or templating engine, and lets the programmer choose between a variety of coding styles The main new features in version 2.3.5 are : - a first version of the integration of Karrigell behind Apache using CGI mode, making the integration possible for a wide range of web hosters - a few enhancements in the built-in namespace where scripts run, and in the documentation for this namespace - the usual bug fixes Home page : http://karrigell.sourceforge.net Regards, Pierre

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First PyCon UK Conference
by PyConUK Publicist May 24, 2007

May 24, 2007

The first ever PyCon UK takes place in Birmingham on 8th & 9th September 2007. Bookings are open at http://www.pyconuk.org/booking.html. An early bird rate is offered until 30th June. For more information please visit http://www.pyconuk.org/ CALL FOR PAPERS Want to share your expertise? PyConUK 2007 is looking for proposals to fill the formal presentation tracks. We will accept a broad range of presentations, from reports on academic and commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. As long as the presentation is interesting and potentially useful to the Python community, it will be considered for inclusion in the program. Can you show the conference-goers something new and useful? Can you show attendees how to: use a module? explore a Python language feature? package an application? Most talks will be 30 minutes, although 60 minutes may be allocated for a particularly valuable talk requiring an extended length of time. There will also be a dedicated Lightning Talk session for talks no longer than five minutes. PyconUK is a not for profit community conference, so we sadly cannot reward speakers (but what price on glory!). To submit a talk go to http://www.pyconuk.org/submit.html

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ANN: Veusz-0.99.0 - a scientific plotting package
by Jeremy Sanders May 24, 2007

May 24, 2007

I am pleased to announce a new beta of a largely rewritten Veusz plotting package. This now uses Qt4 and numpy, adding support for Windows. Windows and Linux binaries are provided. For details see below: Veusz 0.99.0 (new Qt4/numpy beta) ------------ Velvet Ember Under Sky Zenith ----------------------------- http://home.gna.org/veusz/ Veusz is Copyright (C) 2003-2007 Jeremy Sanders <jeremy(a)jeremysanders.net> Licenced under the GPL (version 2 or greater). Veusz is a scientific plotting package written in Python, using PyQt4 for display and user-interfaces, and numpy for handling the numeric data. Veusz is designed to produce publication-ready Postscript/PDF output. The user interface aims to be simple, consistent and powerful. Veusz provides a GUI, command line, embedding and scripting interface (based on Python) to its plotting facilities. It also allows for manipulation and editing of datasets. Changes from 0.10: This is the first release of a much rewritten version of Veusz It has been updated to run under Qt4 and numpy, and now supports Windows The user interface is also signficantly easier to use Other useful features include: * Colorbars for images (better color scaling for images too) * Grids of graphs with different sized subgraphs * Much better import dialog * Antialiased screen output * Native PNG and PDF export * Separate formatting/properties dialog * Handling of INF/NaN in input data * Transparency of graphs (not for EPS output) Plus many more useful changes (see ChangeLog) Features of package: * X-Y plots (with errorbars) * Line and function plots * Contour plots * Images (with colour mappings and colorbars) * Stepped plots (for histograms) * Fitting functions to data * Stacked plots and arrays of plots * Plot keys * Plot labels * LaTeX-like formatting for text * EPS/PDF/PNG export * Scripting interface * Dataset creation/manipulation * Embed Veusz within other programs * Text, CSV and FITS importing Requirements: Python (2.3 or greater required) http://www.python.org/ Qt >= 4.1 (free edition) http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/ PyQt >= 4.1 (SIP is required to be installed first) http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/ http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/sip/ numpy >= 1.0 http://numpy.scipy.org/ Microsoft Core Fonts (recommended for nice output) http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ PyFITS >= 1.1rc3 (optional for FITS import) http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyfits For documentation on using Veusz, see the "Documents" directory. The manual is in pdf, html and text format (generated from docbook). Issues: * This is a new beta, so there are likely to be a number of bugs, even though it has been used by a couple of people for some time. * Can be very slow to plot large datasets if antialiasing is enabled. Right click on graph and disable antialias to speed up output. * Some older versions of Qt (<4.2.2) can produce very large postscript output and random crashes. This may not be completely resolved (especially on windows). * The embedding interface appears to crash on exiting. If you enjoy using Veusz, I would love to hear from you. Please join the mailing lists at https://gna.org/mail/?group=veusz to discuss new features or if you'd like to contribute code. The latest code can always be found in the SVN repository. Jeremy Sanders

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