Mailman 3 June 2007 - Python-announce-list

Open Source Developers' Conference 2007 - Brisbane - Call for Papers
by Richard Jones 16 Jun '07

16 Jun '07

Call for Papers Open Source Developers' Conference 2007 - Brisbane Australia "Success in Development & Business" OSDC is an Australian 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 (Australia) 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 (Australia) - Key Program Dates: 30 Jun - Initial proposals (short abstract) due 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/ 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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ANN: Front Range Pythoneers Meeting, Wed, June 20, 6-8 PM, in Boulder, Colorado - NLP with Python
by frpythoneers＠gmail.com 15 Jun '07

15 Jun '07

== Meeting: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 == * Time: 6-8 PM * Location: bivio Software, Inc., 28th and Iris, Boulder, CO. Above Hair Elite in Suite S. There is abundant parking. This coming Wednesday: * Steve Bethard will present on Python and Natural Language Processing: the computational semantics group at the University of Colorado at Boulder is interested in improving machine understanding of text by moving past the basic word-level approaches used by most commercial applications these days. Whether they're teaching computers how to tell a person from an organization, how to decide what order a set of events occurred in, or how to convert a document into a complex semantic graph, Python plays a key role in the process. Steve will be discussing a number of the uses they've found for Python, including the handling of complex data formats, modularizing their natural language processing components, and the different types of feature extraction they perform when building machine learning models. * Lightning talks for SciPy 2007. Are you working on a project combining scientific computing and Python? Feel free to try out an idea for a talk at SciPy on on our group with a 5-10 min informal presentation! The SciPy conference is Aug 16-17 at CalTech, and the deadline for abstracts is June 29. We will have free food & drink as usual. We're meeting from 6-8 PM at bivio Software, which is at 28th and Iris in Boulder, above Hair Elite in Suite S. For our next meeting (July 18), we will be having presentations showcasing web frameworks for Python. And we are planning to have a sprint or jam on Saturday, August 4 around web frameworks. More details to come. Hope to see you there Wednesday! More details: http://wiki.python.org/moin/FrontRangePythoneers

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Regular Toronto Area Python User's Group (PyGTA) meeting on Tuesday
by Mike C. Fletcher 15 Jun '07

15 Jun '07

We will be having our regular PyGTA meeting this upcoming Tuesday (June 19th). We'll make the start-time 7pm, as Linux Caffe now has extended Summer hours (open until 11pm) and we can thus hang around longer (and maybe even have ice cream floats and the like there after the meeting). Our tentative topic for the meeting is the CSound Python binding, which is a programmatic music synthesis library that is used in the OLPC Activity "TamTam". Seneca Cunningham will be presenting her explorations with the library in attempting to produce a Theremin-like activity/instrument for/with the OLPC platform. Have fun all, Mike -- ________________________________________________ Mike C. Fletcher Designer, VR Plumber, Coder http://www.vrplumber.com http://blog.vrplumber.com

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pybonjour 1.1.0: Pure-Python interface to Apple Bonjour and compatible DNS-SD libraries
by Christopher Stawarz 14 Jun '07

14 Jun '07

pybonjour provides a pure-Python interface (via ctypes) to Apple Bonjour and compatible DNS-SD libraries (such as Avahi). It allows Python scripts to take advantage of Zero Configuration Networking (Zeroconf) to register, discover, and resolve services on both local and wide-area networks. Since pybonjour is implemented in pure Python, scripts that use it can easily be ported to Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and other systems that run Bonjour. pybonjour 1.1.0 includes a new TXTRecord class for generating and parsing DNS TXT records. The code base has also undergone a bit of internal cleanup. For more information: http://o2s.csail.mit.edu/o2s-wiki/pybonjour To download: http://o2s.csail.mit.edu/download/pybonjour/ Cheers, Chris Stawarz

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Leo 4.4.3 beta 2 released
by Edward K Ream 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

Leo 4.4.3 beta 2 is available at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3458&package_id=29106 Leo is a text editor, data organizer, project manager and much more. See: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/intro.html The highlights of Leo 4.4.3: ---------------------------- - Added support for chapters in Leo's core. Chapters are disabled by default. To enable, set @bool use_chapters = True. - Added support for zipped .leo files. - Added a leoBridge module that allows full access to all of Leo's capabilities from programs running outside of Leo. - Removed all gui-dependent code from Leo's core. - Better support for the winpdb debugger. - Added support for @enabled-plugins nodes in settings files. - Added support for @open-with nodes in settings files. - Added support for @bool write_strips_blank_lines setting. - The__wx_gui plugin is now functional. - Leo can use aspell on Linux when using Python 2.5 or later. - Many minor improvements, new settings, commands and bug fixes. Links: ------ Leo: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html Home: http://sourceforge.net/projects/leo/ Download: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3458 CVS: http://leo.tigris.org/source/browse/leo/ Quotes: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/testimonials.html Edward -------------------------------------------------------------------- Edward K. Ream email: edreamleo(a)charter.net Leo: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Calling for Python Writers/Authors
by Jeff Rush 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

For those who write books and articles, I've established a wiki page just as we already have a page for those who offer training services for Python. If you would like to be reachable by those needing writing services of various kinds, please add yourself to the list, along with some indication of what you prefer to work on, your portfolio of work and your experience level: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonWriters I'm open to creative ideas on how to format the information. A link to the page has been added to the sidebar menu under "Community". Jeff Rush Advocacy Coordinator

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multitask 0.2.0: Cooperative multitasking and asynchronous I/O using generators
by Christopher Stawarz 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

multitask allows Python programs to use generators (a.k.a. coroutines) to perform cooperative multitasking and asynchronous I/O. Applications written using multitask consist of a set of cooperating tasks that yield to a shared task manager whenever they perform a (potentially) blocking operation, such as I/O on a socket or getting data from a queue. The task manager temporarily suspends the task (allowing other tasks to run in the meantime) and then restarts it when the blocking operation is complete. Such an approach is suitable for applications that would otherwise have to use select() and/or multiple threads to achieve concurrency. multitask 0.2.0 includes the following changes: * Child tasks now return values to their parent by raising StopIteration with the return values as arguments: >>> def parent(): ... print (yield return_none()) ... print (yield return_one()) ... print (yield return_many()) ... >>> def return_none(): ... yield ... # implicit StopIteration here ... >>> def return_one(): ... yield ... raise StopIteration(1) ... >>> def return_many(): ... yield ... raise StopIteration(2, 3) ... >>> multitask.add(parent()) >>> multitask.run() None 1 (2, 3) This mechanism was suggested by Dustin Mitchell [1] and provides a cleaner, more explicit way of returning values than the mechanism used in multitask 0.1.0 (which was to assume that the last value yielded by a child was its return value). [1] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-May/438370.html * Added get_default_task_manager() to provide access to the default TaskManager instance used by add() and run() * Added readline(), which (on Unix-like systems) is useful for doing non-blocking reads from the stdout of a child process For more information: http://o2s.csail.mit.edu/o2s-wiki/multitask To download: http://o2s.csail.mit.edu/download/multitask/ Cheers, Chris Stawarz

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Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jun 11)
by Gabriel Genellina 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

QOTW: "That's the Martellibot for you. Never use a word where a paragraph with explanatory footnotes will do. Sigh. I miss him on c.l.py." - Simon Brunning "Conclusion: advice to 'try Python for yourself' is apt in a way the original questioner might not realize." - Cameron Laird A small survey revealing so many people using Python for so many different tasks... http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/64b947… "Bragging about Python": A call for good examples to impress non-Pythoneers generates a nice and compact solution to the 8 Queens problem by Paul McGuire. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/61c108… Naming conventions again: this time, how people construct meaningful names, and what they consider a "good" name: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/4f1610… Several attempts to speed up date conversions - and at the end, perhaps one doesn't even *need* the conversion at all! http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-June/444306.html If you thought that you could not use multiple Python interpreters inside the same process, you were wrong, and this is how to do it: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/4ac31c… Did you know that you could skip a value using string interpolation? Here is the trick: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/79bb6c… ======================================================================== 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: xlrd 0.6.1 final is now available
by John Machin 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

The final release of version 0.6.1 of xlrd is now available from http://www.lexicon.net/sjmachin/xlrd.htm and from the Cheeseshop (http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/xlrd). What is xlrd? It's a small (download approx 0.1 Mb) pure-Python library for extracting information from Microsoft Excel (tm) files, anywhere Python 2.1 or later will run -- no need for Excel itself, nor COM, nor even Windows. Further info: follow the links on the home page. This major release incorporates the functionality of 0.6.0 which was not released independently for various reasons including the need to push ahead with the 0.6.1 functionality. New in 0.6.0: facility to access named cell ranges and named constants (Excel UI: Insert/Name/Define). New in 0.6.1: extracts formatting information for cells (font, "number format", background, border, alignment and protection) and rows/ columns (height/width etc). To save memory and time for those who don't need it, this information is extracted only if formatting_info=1 is supplied to the open_workbook() function. The cell records BLANK and MULBLANKS which contain no data, only formatting information, will continue to be ignored in the default (no formatting info) case. There have been several changes made to handle anomalous files (written by 3rd party software) which Excel will open without complaint, but failed with xlrd, usually because an assertion fails or xlrd deliberately raises an exception. Refer to HISTORY.html for details. These have been changed to accept the anomaly either silently or with a NOTE message or a WARNING message, as appropriate. Many thanks are due to Simplistix Ltd (http://www.simplistix.co.uk). for funding the new functionality in 0.6.1. Since 0.6.1a4 was released in February, only one bug-fix and some tidying up have been done -- see HISTORY.html for details. Feedback: general discussion on the python-excel newsgroup (sign up at http://groups.google.com.au/group/python-excel?lnk=li&hl=en) or mailto: sjmac...(a)lexicon.net preferably with [xlrd] as part of the message subject. Cheers, John

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ANN: papyros 0.1
by George Sakkis 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

I am pleased to announce the first alpha release of Papyros, a lightweight platform-independent package for parallel processing. Papyros provides a master-slave model: clients can submit jobs to a master object which is monitored by one or more slave objects that do the real work. Two main implementations are provided, one using multiple threads and one multiple processes in one or more hosts through Pyro (http://pyro.sourceforge.net/). Papyros' primary design goal is simplicity: a time consuming loop in a single-thread single-process program can be replaced with an equivalent parallel version in a few lines, with minimal boilerplate code overhead. To get a copy, visit http://code.google.com/p/papyros/; also available from the Cheeseshop at http://www.python.org/pypi/papyros/. George Sample code ========== Here's a basic example; for more details go through the README and the included demo script. import papyros class FactorizationJob(papyros.Job): '''A job for computing the prime factors of an integer.''' def __call__(self, n): # <-- find the prime factors here --> # return factors # create a multithreded master with three slave threads from papyros.multithreaded import MultiThreadedMaster master = MultiThreadedMaster(3) # factorize concurrently ten random numbers import random for _ in xrange(10): master.addJob(FactorizationJob(random.randrange(1e6,1e7))) # fetch each job as soon as it finishes for job in iter(master.popProcessedJob, None): factors = job.result print '%d prime factors for %d: %s' % (len(factors), job.args[0], factors)

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Python-announce-list June 2007