Mailman 3 July 2007 - Python-announce-list

Python Ireland 8th August 2007 Meeting
by Michael Twomey 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

Hi, The Python Ireland group will be having our next meeting soon: Wednesday, 8th August at 7:30pm Location: Google European Headquarters Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4 We'll be giving the following talks: * Highlights from Europython 2007 - Michael Twomey * Demonware's Matchmaking+ backend - Sean Blanchfield * Unit testing - Sean O'Donnell These will be followed by some friendly chat in the nearest pub. There is space for 25 people, in order to attend you must put your name down on the wiki page: http://wiki.python.ie/moin.cgi/PythonMeetup/August2007 For more info and directions see the wiki page: http://wiki.python.ie/moin.cgi/PythonMeetup/August2007 cheers, Michael Python Ireland - http://python.ie/

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Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jul 16)
by Gabriel Genellina 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

QOTW: "That's a property of open source projects. Features nobody really needs are not implemented." - Gregor Horvath http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/1fcefd79c7aa4832 "I'm working in a Java shop, with eclipse - one of the most intimate IDE-lanaguage-relationships imaginable. I get all the auto-completion, refactoring and whatnot-suppopport. And I'd swap it for python + emacs every minute." Diez B. Roggisch How to properly add dynamic methods to classes and instances: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/cc04b8… Enumerating efficiently the power set of a given set is not as easy as first thought: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d9211c… A classic question revisited twice: Does Python pass parameters by reference or by value?, and a clear explanation by Ben Finney: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/457321… http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/56e7d6… Still looking for a way to cleanly reraise an exception after modifying its message? Proves to be a hard task, this thread started a couple weeks ago: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/ae351d… A subtle problem with disappearing processes when using os.wait and subprocess.Popen simultaneously: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/d8a302… For someone coming from electronics and close to the hardware, it's hard to grasp some OOP concepts - but why should one care? (Plus some anecdotes from some '60s newbies...) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/916e1f… Bools, their "misbehavior" as ints, and what will happen in Python 3000: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/e0e078… ======================================================================== 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: SciPy 2007 Conference Updates
by Travis Vaught 15 Jul '07

15 Jul '07

Greetings, We're excited to have *Ivan Krstić*, the director of security architecture for the One Laptop Per Child project as our Keynote Speaker this year. The planning for the SciPy 2007 Conference is moving along. Please see below for some important updates. Schedule Available ------------------ The full schedule of talks has been posted here: http://www.scipy.org/SciPy2007/ConferenceSchedule Early Registration Extended --------------------------- If you haven't yet registered for the conference, the early registration deadline has been extended to Wednesday, July 18th, 2007. For more information on the conference see: http://www.scipy.org/SciPy2007 Student Sponsorship ------------------- Enthought, Inc. (http://www.enthought.com) is sponsoring the registration fees for up to 5 college or graduate students to attend the conference. To apply, please send a short description of what you are studying and why you'd like to attend to info(a)enthought.com. Please include telephone contact information. BOFs & Sprints -------------- If you're planning to attend and are interested in selecting BOF or Sprint Session topics, please weigh in at: BOFs: http://www.scipy.org/SciPy2007/BoFs Sprints: http://www.scipy.org/SciPy2007/Sprints We're looking forward to a great conference this year! Best, Travis

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Fifth Python Game Programming Challenge in September
by richard＠pyweek.org 15 Jul '07

15 Jul '07

The 5th Python game programming challenge (PyWeek) has been scheduled for the first week of September: Start: 00:00UTC Sunday 2nd September Finish: 00:00UTC Sunday 9th September REGISTRATION IS NOT YET OPEN Registration will open at the start of August. Visit the PyWeek website for more information: http://pyweek.org/ THE PYWEEK CHALLENGE: - Invites all Python programmers to write a game in one week from scratch either as an individual or in a team, - Is intended to be challenging and fun, - Will hopefully increase the public body of python game tools, code and expertise, - Will let a lot of people actually finish a game, and - May inspire new projects (with ready made teams!) Entries must be developed during the challenge, and must incorporate some theme decided at the start of the challenge. The rules for the challenge are at: http://media.pyweek.org/static/rules.html Richard -- Visit the PyWeek website: http://www.pyweek.org/

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ANN: SkipoleMonitor 0.4 released
by Bernie 13 Jul '07

13 Jul '07

SkipoleMonitor is available at http://code.google.com/p/skipole-monitor/ Version 0.4 now released. What is SkipoleMonitor? ================= SkipoleMonitor is a free network monitor for Windows and Linux. On running the program, a GUI window appears, and hosts can be added, which Skipole Monitor will regularly ping, showing the results via a built-in Web server. Hosts can be grouped, so the Web server will show group symbols that the viewer can open to inspect the hosts, or further sub-groups, within.As hosts (and groups of hosts) change status, SkipoleMonitor can be set to send email and syslog alerts. Written in Python, and uses the wxPython library, it has been tested on Windows and Linux. License : GPL ================= Bernard Czenkusz bernie at skipole.co.uk

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PyTables (Hierarchical Datasets) 2.0 released
by Ivan Vilata i Balaguer 13 Jul '07

13 Jul '07

========================== Announcing PyTables 2.0 ========================== PyTables is a library for managing hierarchical datasets and designed to efficiently cope with extremely large amounts of data with support for full 64-bit file addressing. PyTables runs on top of the HDF5 library and NumPy package for achieving maximum throughput and convenient use. After more than one year of continuous development and about five months of alpha, beta and release candidates, we are very happy to announce that the PyTables 2.0 (final) is here. We are pretty confident that 2.0 is ready to be used in production scenarios, bringing higher performance, better portability (specially in 64-bit environments) and more stability than the 1.x series. You can download a source package of the version 2.0 with generated PDF and HTML docs and binaries for Windows from http://www.pytables.org/download/stable/ For an on-line version of the manual, visit: http://www.pytables.org/docs/manual-2.0 In case you want to know more in detail what has changed in this version, have a look at ``RELEASE_NOTES.txt``. Find the HTML version for this document at: http://www.pytables.org/moin/ReleaseNotes/Release_2.0 If you are a user of PyTables 1.x, probably it is worth for you to look at ``MIGRATING_TO_2.x.txt`` file where you will find directions on how to migrate your existing PyTables 1.x apps to the 2.0 version. You can find an HTML version of this document at http://www.pytables.org/moin/ReleaseNotes/Migrating_To_2.x Keep reading for an overview of the most prominent improvements in PyTables 2.0 series. New features of PyTables 2.0 ============================ - A complete refactoring of many, many modules in PyTables. With this, the different parts of the code are much better integrated and code redundancy is kept under a minimum. A lot of new optimizations have been included as well, making working with it a smoother experience than ever before. - NumPy is finally at the core! That means that PyTables no longer needs numarray in order to operate, although it continues to be supported (as well as Numeric). This also means that you should be able to run PyTables in scenarios combining Python 2.5 and 64-bit platforms (these are a source of problems with numarray/Numeric because they don't support this combination as of this writing). - Most of the operations in PyTables have experimented noticeable speed-ups (sometimes up to 2x, like in regular Python table selections). This is a consequence of both using NumPy internally and a considerable effort in terms of refactorization and optimization of the new code. - Combined conditions are finally supported for in-kernel selections. So, now it is possible to perform complex selections like:: result = [ row['var3'] for row in table.where('(var2 < 20) | (var1 == "sas")') ] or:: complex_cond = '((%s <= col5) & (col2 <= %s)) ' \ '| (sqrt(col1 + 3.1*col2 + col3*col4) > 3)' result = [ row['var3'] for row in table.where(complex_cond % (inf, sup)) ] and run them at full C-speed (or perhaps more, due to the cache-tuned computing kernel of Numexpr, which has been integrated into PyTables). - Now, it is possible to get fields of the ``Row`` iterator by specifying their position, or even ranges of positions (extended slicing is supported). For example, you can do:: result = [ row[4] for row in table # fetch field #4 if row[1] < 20 ] result = [ row[:] for row in table # fetch all fields if row['var2'] < 20 ] result = [ row[1::2] for row in # fetch odd fields table.iterrows(2, 3000, 3) ] in addition to the classical:: result = [row['var3'] for row in table.where('var2 < 20')] - ``Row`` has received a new method called ``fetch_all_fields()`` in order to easily retrieve all the fields of a row in situations like:: [row.fetch_all_fields() for row in table.where('column1 < 0.3')] The difference between ``row[:]`` and ``row.fetch_all_fields()`` is that the former will return all the fields as a tuple, while the latter will return the fields in a NumPy void type and should be faster. Choose whatever fits better to your needs. - Now, all data that is read from disk is converted, if necessary, to the native byteorder of the hosting machine (before, this only happened with ``Table`` objects). This should help to accelerate applications that have to do computations with data generated in platforms with a byteorder different than the user machine. - The modification of values in ``*Array`` objects (through __setitem__) now doesn't make a copy of the value in the case that the shape of the value passed is the same as the slice to be overwritten. This results in considerable memory savings when you are modifying disk objects with big array values. - All leaf constructors (except for ``Array``) have received a new ``chunkshape`` argument that lets the user explicitly select the chunksizes for the underlying HDF5 datasets (only for advanced users). - All leaf constructors have received a new parameter called ``byteorder`` that lets the user specify the byteorder of their data *on disk*. This effectively allows to create datasets in other byteorders than the native platform. - Native HDF5 datasets with ``H5T_ARRAY`` datatypes are fully supported for reading now. - The test suites for the different packages are installed now, so you don't need a copy of the PyTables sources to run the tests. Besides, you can run the test suite from the Python console by using:: >>> tables.tests() Resources ========= Go to the PyTables web site for more details: http://www.pytables.org About the HDF5 library: http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/ About NumPy: http://numpy.scipy.org/ To know more about the company behind the development of PyTables, see: http://www.carabos.com/ Acknowledgments =============== Thanks to many users who provided feature improvements, patches, bug reports, support and suggestions. See the ``THANKS`` file in the distribution package for a (incomplete) list of contributors. Many thanks also to SourceForge who have helped to make and distribute this package! And last, but not least thanks a lot to the HDF5 and NumPy (and numarray!) makers. Without them PyTables simply would not exist. Share your experience ===================== Let us know of any bugs, suggestions, gripes, kudos, etc. you may have. ---- **Enjoy data!** -- The PyTables Team

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PyTables Pro (hierarchical datasets & indexing) 2.0 released
by Francesc Altet 13 Jul '07

13 Jul '07

=========================== Announcing PyTables Pro 2.0 =========================== PyTables Pro is a library for managing hierarchical datasets and designed to efficiently cope with extremely large amounts of data with support for full 64-bit file addressing. PyTables Pro runs on top of the HDF5 library and NumPy package for achieving maximum throughput and convenient use. The main difference between PyTables Pro and regular PyTables is that the Pro version includes OPSI, a new indexing technology, allowing to perform data lookups in tables exceeding 10 gigarows (10**10 rows) in less than 1 tenth of a second. After more than two years of continuous development and about five months of exhaustive testing and benchmarking, we are very happy to announce that PyTables Pro 2.0 (final) is here. Wearing more than 15000 tests and having passed the complete test suite in the most common platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux 32-bit and Linux 64-bit), we are pretty confident that PyTables Pro 2.0 is ready to be used in production scenarios, bringing maximum stability and top performance to those users who need it. For more info about PyTables Pro, see: http://www.carabos.com/products/pytables-pro As already said, PyTables Pro includes, as its most distinguishing feature, the powerful OPSI technology that allows to index very large amounts of data very rapidly while allowing first-class query response times. Its operational details as well as exhaustive benchmarks are explained with full detail in the OPSI white paper: http://www.carabos.com/docs/OPSI-indexes.pdf You can buy PyTables Pro at the Carabos shop: http://www.carabos.com/buy Coinciding with the publication of PyTables Pro we are introducing an innovative liberation process that will allow to ultimate release the PyTables Pro 2.x series as open source. You may want to know that, by buying a PyTables Pro license, you are contributing to this process. For details, see: http://www.carabos.com/liberation Migration Notes =============== If you are a user of PyTables 1.x, probably it is worth for you to look at ``MIGRATING_TO_2.x.txt`` file where you will find directions on how to migrate your existing PyTables 1.x apps to the 2.x versions. You can find an HTML version of this document at: http://www.pytables.org/moin/ReleaseNotes/Migrating_To_2.x Resources ========= Go to the PyTables Pro web page for more details: http://www.carabos.com/products/pytables-pro To know more about the company behind the development of PyTables Pro, see: http://www.carabos.com/ Go to the PyTables web site, its free counterpart: http://www.pytables.org About the HDF5 library: http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/ About NumPy: http://numpy.scipy.org/ ---- **Enjoy data!** -- The PyTables Team

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itools 0.16.2 released
by "J. David Ibáñez" 12 Jul '07

12 Jul '07

itools is a Python library, it groups a number of packages into a single meta-package for easier development and deployment: itools.catalog itools.i18n itools.tmx itools.cms itools.ical itools.uri itools.csv itools.odf itools.vfs itools.datatypes itools.pdf itools.web itools.gettext itools.rest itools.workflow itools.handlers itools.rss itools.xhtml itools.html itools.schemas itools.xliff itools.http itools.stl itools.xml The big news in this release is the License upgrade; now itools is available under the terms and conditions of the GPL version 3. Check the LICENSE.txt file. Also, a bunch of bugs have been fixed. Some of them have triggered small backwards incompatible changes; check the UPGRADE-0.16.2 file for the details. The package that has changed the most is "itools.stl": - Now STL returns by default the stream of events, not the serialized byte string. The new parameter "mode" replaces the boolean parameter "html", it has four modes: 'events' (default), 'xml', 'xhtml' and 'html'. - Now it is possible to insert a sequence of XML events into "${...}" expressions. - New public function "set_prefix" that rewrites the relative URLs of the given XML events. Its prototype is "stl(events, prefix)". - The main function "stl" accepts a generator or a "Parser" instance for the "events" parameter (not only a list). It also accepts a byte string for the "prefix" parameter (not only a "Path" instance). - Fix when "stl:repeat" and "stl:if" expressions are together in the same element. Other changes worth to mention are: - Reorganize the RELEASE and UPDATE files. The old ones are kept on the "doc" folder. - [itools.catalog] Fix "catalog.search()", without parameters it returns all indexed documents. - [itools.cms] Various minor fixes for the user interface (Wiki, web pages view, search form, folder's browse view, login form, user's edit account form and CSS). - [itools.handlers] Fix "has_handler(path)" for special paths, like "has_handler('.')". - [itools.i18n] Rewrite the accept module. Much simpler, now language negotiation behaves as defined by RFC2616. And "accept" objects are correctly serialized. - [itools.pdf] Various RML fixes. - [itools.web] The new method "context.get_accept_language" replaces "context.request.accept_language" - [itools.xhtml] Escape the text nodes when serializing to HTML. Credits: - Hervé Cauwelier worked on itools.cms; - J. David Ibáñez fixed bugs; - Henry Obein fixed bugs; - Sylvain Taverne helped fixing bugs; Resources --------- Download http://download.ikaaro.org/itools/itools-0.16.2.tar.gz Home http://www.ikaaro.org/itools Mailing list http://mail.ikaaro.org/mailman/listinfo/itools Bug Tracker http://bugs.ikaaro.org/ -- J. David Ibáñez Itaapy <http://www.itaapy.com> Tel +33 (0)1 42 23 67 45 9 rue Darwin, 75018 Paris Fax +33 (0)1 53 28 27 88

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bbfreeze 0.95.2
by Ralf Schmitt 12 Jul '07

12 Jul '07

Hi all, I've just uploaded bbfreeze 0.95.2 to python's cheeseshop. bbfreeze creates standalone executables from python scripts. It's similar in functionality to py2exe or cx_Freeze. This release fixes issues with python installation, where the zlib module is called zlibmodule.so (e.g. fedora core 7). If you previously got "zipimport.ZipImportError: can't decompress data; zlib not available" when trying to run the frozen executables, try version 0.95.2. *NEW* support for egg files: bbfreeze scans zipped egg files and now includes whole egg files/directories in the distribution. Programs using setuptools' pkg_resources module will now work. It offers the following features: easy installation bbfreeze can be installed with setuptools' easy_install command. zip/egg file import tracking bbfreeze tracks imports from zip files. multiple script freezing bbfreeze can freeze multiple scripts at once. python interpreter included bbfreeze will create an extra executable named 'py', which might be used like the python executable itself. bbfreeze works on windows and UNIX-like operating systems. It currently does not work on OS X. bbfreeze has been tested with python 2.4 and 2.5. bbfreeze will not work with python versions prior to 2.3 as it uses the zipimport feature introduced with python 2.3. Links -------- cheese shop entry: http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/ bbfreeze/<http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/bbfreeze/> homepage: http://systemexit.de/bbfreeze/ mercurial repository: http://systemexit.de/repo/bbfreeze Regards, - Ralf

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ANN: Omaha Python Users Group Meeting, July 12 2007 @ 7pm
by dundeemt 12 Jul '07

12 Jul '07

The second Thursday of the month is quickly approaching. What: Omaha Python Users Group Meeting When: July 12, 2007 - 7pm Why: Topics: + Lightning Talks + discuss/vote on a change in venue + more... Refreshments: + Pizza and Pop will be served. Please make sure and mail the list with toppings and flavor requests for the meeting. Where: Reboot The User 13416 A Street Omaha, NE 68144 map: http://tinyurl.com/2lzv55 More Information on the group is available @ http://www.OmahaPython.org/

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