Mailman 3 November 2008 - Python-announce-list

Elisa Media Center 0.5.18 Release
by Olivier Tilloy 17 Nov '08

17 Nov '08

Dear Python users, The Elisa team is happy to announce the release of Elisa Media Center 0.5.18, code-named "Just My Imagination". Elisa is a cross-platform and open-source Media Center written in Python. It uses GStreamer [1] for media playback and pigment [2] to create an appealing and intuitive user interface. The release cycle for this version was exceptionally two weeks instead of one to fit a lot of important changes (some of which are visible, some not but nonetheless important). This release brings its usual lot of bug fixes and exciting new features, a complete list of which is available at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/elisa/+milestone/0.5.18 Installers and sources can be downloaded from http://elisa.fluendo.com/download/ Bug reports and feature requests are welcome at https://bugs.launchpad.net/elisa/+filebug Have a media-centered evening, The Elisa team [1] http://www.gstreamer.net/ [2] https://code.fluendo.com/pigment/trac Elisa 0.5.18 "Just My Imagination" ================================== This is Elisa 0.5.18, eighteenth release of the 0.5 branch. New features since 0.5.17: - Plugin management inside Elisa: inspect you plugin collection, look for new plugins, update the installed plugins, enable/disable plugins on the fly - A unified launcher for Windows and Linux - Drag'n'drop media files in Elisa's window to play them Bugs fixed since 0.5.17: - 296725: launcher not working if distutils option --single-version-externally-managed used during installation of tarballs - 297117: Spawned processes not able to find gstreamer - 247225: better mouse and keyboard support in poblesec popup - 253062: List selector still fully visible behind modal popups - 289968: 10 second autocommit doesn't trigger unless you first also have 50 files - 295078: dbus rescan does not delete files - 296420: Cropped search results totals - 296728: add yesfm albums action missing - 296733: flickr login delays startup - 244314: Folder settings not updated on change - 275979: player: when buffering, the "Buffering..." text is blurry - 252914: Selector in popups misalignment cropping the buttons label - 257335: on-the-fly widget styles updates Download You can find source releases of Elisa on the download page: http://elisa.fluendo.com/download Elisa Homepage More details can be found on the project's website: http://elisa.fluendo.com Support and Bugs We use Launchpad for bug reports and feature requests: https://bugs.launchpad.net/elisa/+filebug Developers All code is in a Bazaar branch and can be checked out from there. It is hosted on Launchpad: https://code.launchpad.net/elisa Contributors to this release: - Alessandro Decina - Benjamin Kampmann - David McLeod - Florian Boucault - Guido Amoruso - Guillaume Emont - Jesús Corrius - Lionel Martin - Olivier Tilloy - Philippe Normand

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Announcing a feature update (v1.5) of YaMA, the meeting assistant
by Atul 17 Nov '08

17 Nov '08

Hi, Yet Another Meeting Assistant (YaMA), will help you with the Agenda, Meeting Invitations, Minutes of a Meeting as well as Action Items. If you are the assigned minute taker at any meeting, this tool is for you. Checkout http://yama.sourceforge.net/ YaMA is written in Python and Tkinter, is open source software released under GPLv2, and is hosted by SourceForge (www.sourceforge.net) Whats New in version 1.5 : 1. Evaluate suitability of Action Items for Export 2. Ability to specify custom meeting type 3. Ability to Parse Actions from previous Minutes 4. Display TimeZone Thanks and Regards, -- Atul

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Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Nov 17)
by Gabriel Genellina 17 Nov '08

17 Nov '08

QOTW: "I stopped paying much attention to this thread a while ago, but you've got to admire the persistence of somebody who soldiers on even though Aahz, Fredrik Lund, and Steve Holden are all on the other side of the argument..." - Grant Edwards http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/91db52ef3a5b98b7 Duck-typing and type assertions: how much to check for type validity: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/6c71ab21ba5eeb49/ Why do generators have separate next() and send methods? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/e179dcd356c78d78/ Explicit self is here to stay: http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2008/10/why-explicit-self-has-to-stay.html Pros and cons of using "private" parameters to store function state across calls: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/d4c4adb365ab9f41/ How to obtain a reference to the "current" module: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/685d3459fed28a53/ A regular expression to match all Unicode punctuation characters: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/e6d9d7b7ea39df86/ sqlite3 and MySQLdb cursors behave differently in certain cases: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/8ca7a8bb834ff65e/ Unrelated types are not comparable by default in Python 3 - so a list conta= ining a few None elements cannot be sorted. [plus: the intended usage of lists, tuples, and a hypothetical `frozenlist` type]: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/84e648f03f33210b/ An inspiringly unusual use of Python: http://pythonide.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-make-money-with-free-software.… The way editors handle indentation -triggered by speech recognition- should be improved: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/3da481c2956bf0b7/ Handling errors by means of exceptions: best practice: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/91b79ddbbd309030/ Inverting a dictionary - that is, building its inverse mapping from value to list of keys: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/b6a31d9497f21c62/ Candidate to *Longest and Most Boring Thread of the Year* - started more than a month ago, currently discussing "The official definition of call-by-value", and "What't the value of an object": http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/6163956596a8c082/ ======================================================================== 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 Just beginning with Python? This page is a great place to start: http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/Programmers The Python Papers aims to publish "the efforts of Python enthusiats": http://pythonpapers.org/ The Python Magazine is a technical monthly devoted to Python: http://pythonmagazine.com 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/group/comp.lang.python.announce/topics Python411 indexes "podcasts ... to help people learn Python ..." Updates appear more-than-weekly: http://www.awaretek.com/python/index.html 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/donations/ The Summary of Python Tracker Issues is an automatically generated report summarizing new bugs, closed ones, and patch submissions. http://search.gmane.org/?author=status%40bugs.python.org&group=gmane.comp.p… 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://code.activestate.com/recipes/langs/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, see: http://www.python.org/channews.rdf 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/ 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 Dr.Dobb's Portal is another source of Python news and articles: http://www.ddj.com/TechSearch/searchResults.jhtml?queryText=python and Python articles regularly appear at IBM DeveloperWorks: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/search/searchResults.jsp?searchSite=dW&se… Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here: http://search.gmane.org/?query=python+URL+weekly+news+links&group=gmane.com… http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=Python-URL!+group%3Acomp.lang.pyth… http://lwn.net/Search/DoSearch?words=python-url&ctype3=yes&cat_25=yes 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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py2exe 0.6.9 released
by Jimmy Retzlaff 16 Nov '08

16 Nov '08

py2exe 0.6.9 released ===================== py2exe is a Python distutils extension which converts Python scripts into executable Windows programs, able to run without requiring a Python installation. Console and Windows (GUI) applications, Windows NT services, exe and dll COM servers are supported. Changes in 0.6.9: * Binaries for Python 2.6 and Python 2.7. * Fixed a modulefinder crash on certain relative imports. * Changed the py2exe\samples\singlefile\gui\test_wx.py sample to use the wx package instead of the old wxPython package. * Copy the manifest, if any, from the 'template' into the targets to ensure embedded assembly references, as required for python 2.6 based apps, are copied. * Allow each target to specify Vista User Access Control flags. For example, specifying 'uac_execution_info="requireAdministrator"' would force elevation for the final executable. Changes in 0.6.8: * Support for relative imports. * Fix MemoryLoadLibrary to handle loading function addresses by ordinal numbers. Patch and test by Matthias Miller. * Using the options compressed=1, bundle_files=3, and zipfile=None at the same time now works; patch from Alexey Borzenkov. * Allow renaming of single-executable files; patch from Alexey Borzenkov. * Embedding icon resources into the image now works correctly even for ico files containing multiple images. * pyd files from different packages with the same filename no longer conflict. Patch from Grant Edwards. * There are new samples for the 'typelibs' support, including the new option of pre-generating a typelib and specifying the file as an input to py2exe. * The test suite is now included in the source distribution. Changes in 0.6.6: * Better support for Python 2.5. * Experimental support for 64-bit builds of Python on win64. * Better ISAPI support. * New samples for ISAPI and COM servers. * Support for new "command-line styles" when building Windows services. Changes in 0.6.5: * Fixed modulefinder / mf related bugs introduced in 0.6.4. This will be most evident when working with things like win32com.shell and xml.xpath. * Files no longer keep read-only attributes when they are copied as this was causing problems with the copying of some MS DLLs. Changes in 0.6.4: * New skip-archive option which copies the Python bytecode files directly into the dist directory and subdirectories - no archive is used. * An experimental new custom-boot-script option which allows a boot script to be specified (e.g., --custom-boot-script=cbs.py) which can do things like installing a customized stdout blackhole. See py2exe's boot_common.py for examples of what can be done. The custom boot script is executed during startup of the executable immediately after boot_common.py is executed. * Thomas Heller's performance improvements for finding needed modules. * Mark Hammond's fix for thread-state errors when a py2exe created executable tries to use a py2exe created COM DLL. Changes in 0.6.3: * First release assembled by py2exe's new maintainer, Jimmy Retzlaff. Code changes in this release are from Thomas Heller and Gordon Scott. * The dll-excludes option is now available on the command line. It was only possible to specify that in the options argument to the setup function before. The dll-excludes option can now be used to filter out dlls like msvcr71.dll or even w9xpopen.exe. * Fix from Gordon Scott: py2exe crashed copying extension modules in packages. Changes in 0.6.2: * Several important bugfixes: - bundled extensions in packages did not work correctly, this made the wxPython single-file sample fail with newer wxPython versions. - occasionally dlls/pyds were loaded twice, with very strange effects. - the source distribution was not complete. - it is now possible to build a debug version of py2exe. Changes in 0.6.1: * py2exe can now bundle binary extensions and dlls into the library-archive or the executable itself. This allows to finally build real single-file executables. The bundled dlls and pyds are loaded at runtime by some special code that emulates the Windows LoadLibrary function - they are never unpacked to the file system. This part of the code is distributed under the MPL 1.1, so this license is now pulled in by py2exe. * By default py2exe now includes the codecs module and the encodings package. * Several other fixes. Homepage: <http://www.py2exe.org> Download from the usual location: <http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=15583> Enjoy, Jimmy

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pyspread 0.0.10 released
by mmanns＠gmx.net 15 Nov '08

15 Nov '08

Pyspread 0.0.10 has finally been released. About: ------ Pyspread is a 3D spreadsheet application. Each cell accepts a Python expression and returns an accessible object. Python modules are usable from the spreadsheet table without external scripts. Changes: -------- + Code completely re-structured + Unit tests for main grid functionality + Speed-up by caching of cell results + Change of spread method syntax + Various bug fixes

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ANN: ActivePython 2.6.0.0 is now available
by Trent Mick 15 Nov '08

15 Nov '08

I'm happy to announce that ActivePython 2.6.0.0 is now available for download from: http://www.activestate.com/Products/activepython/ ActivePython 2.6.0.0 is based on Python 2.6.0. What is ActivePython? --------------------- ActivePython is ActiveState's binary distribution of Python. Builds for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, HP-UX and AIX are made freely available. ActivePython includes the Python core and the many core extensions: zlib and bzip2 for data compression, the SQLite (sqlite3) database libraries, OpenSSL bindings for HTTPS support, the Tix GUI widgets for Tkinter, ElementTree for XML processing, ctypes (on supported platforms) for low-level library access, and others. The Windows distribution ships with PyWin32 -- a suite of Windows tools developed by Mark Hammond, including bindings to the Win32 API and Windows COM. See this page for full details: http://docs.activestate.com/activepython/2.6/whatsincluded.html As well, ActivePython ships with a wealth of documentation for both new and experienced Python programmers. In addition to the core Python docs, ActivePython includes the full "What's New in Python" series, "Dive into Python", the Python FAQs & HOWTOs, and the Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs). An online version of the docs can be found here: http://docs.activestate.com/activepython/2.6/welcome.html We would welcome any and all feedback to: activepython-feedback(a)activestate.com Please file bugs against ActivePython at: http://bugs.activestate.com/query.cgi?product=ActivePython On what platforms does ActivePython run? ---------------------------------------- ActivePython includes installers for the following platforms: - Windows/x86 - Mac OS X - Linux/x86 - Solaris/SPARC - Solaris/SPARC 64-bit - Solaris/x86 - Linux/x86_64 ("x86_64" is also known as "AMD64") - HP-UX/PA-RISC - AIX/PowerPC Extra Bits ---------- ActivePython releases also include the following: - ActivePython26.chm: An MS compiled help collection of the full ActivePython documentation set. Linux users of applications such as xCHM might find this useful. This package is installed by default on Windows. Extra bits are available from: http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePython/etc/ Apologies for the delay. We were crazy-busy getting the Komodo 5.0 release out. Check it out: http://www.activestate.com/products/komodo/ Thanks, and enjoy! Trent p.s. We hope to have ActivePython 3.0 builds out fairly soon. -- Trent Mick Python Tech Lead trentm at activestate.com

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xlutils 1.1.0 released!
by Chris Withers 14 Nov '08

14 Nov '08

Hi All, I'm pleased to announce a new release of xlutils. This is a small collection of utilities that make use of both xlrd and xlwt to process Microsoft Excel files. The list of utilities included in this release are: xlutils.display Utility functions for displaying information about xlrd-related objects in a user-friendly and safe fashion. xlutils.filter A mini framework for splitting and filtering Excel files into new Excel files. xlutils.margins Tools for finding how much of an Excel file contains useful data. xlutils.save Tools for serializing xlrd.Book objects back to Excel files. xlutils.styles Tools for working with formatting information expressed in styles. To find out more, please read here: http://www.simplistix.co.uk/software/python/xlutils In case you're not aware, xlrd and xlwt are two excellent pure-python libraries for reading and writing Excel files. They run on any platform and, likely, any implementation of Python without the need for horrific things like binding to Excel via COM and so needing a Windows machine. If you use any of xlrd, xlwt or xlutils, the following google group will be of use: http://groups.google.com.au/group/python-excel Hope some of this is of interest, I'd love to hear from anyone who ends up using it! cheers, Chris -- Simplistix - Content Management, Zope & Python Consulting - http://www.simplistix.co.uk

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Hatta 1.0.0 wiki engine released
by Radomir Dopieralski 13 Nov '08

13 Nov '08

I'm proud to announce the first stable release of Hatta wiki engine. http://hatta.sheep.art.pl/ What is Hatta? -------------- Hatta is a small wiki engine designed to run locally or via WSGI inside a directory in a Mercurial repository. All the pages are normal text or binary (for images and such) files, also editable from outside of the wiki -- the page history is taken from the repository. Who is it for? -------------- It's mostly for small development teams to use for documentation of the project right in the repository. It's mostly a plain, traditional wiki, without fancy features to distract from doing real work. Features -------- * single python script file * no installation necessary, just run it in your repostory * fast indexed search and backlinks * lives inside a repository, so can be cloned, merged, etc. * customizable by creating wiki pages with styles, logo, menu, etc. Enjoy! -- Radomir Dopieralski

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ANN: eGenix mxODBC Connect - Python Database Interface 0.9.3 (beta)
by eGenix Team: M.-A. Lemburg 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

________________________________________________________________________ ANNOUNCING eGenix.com mxODBC Connect Python Database Interface Version 0.9.3 (beta) Our new client-server product for connecting Python applications to relational databases - from all major platforms This announcement is also available on our web-site for online reading: http://www.egenix.com/company/news/eGenix-mxODBC-Connect-0.9.3-beta.html ________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION The mxODBC Connect Database Interface for Python allows users to easily connect Python applications to all major databases on the market today in a highly portable and convenient way. Unlike our mxODBC Python extension, mxODBC Connect is designed as client-server application, so you no longer need to find production quality ODBC drivers for all the platforms you target with your Python application. Instead you use an easy to install Python client library which connects directly to the mxODBC Connect database server over the network. This makes mxODBC Connect the ideal basis for writing cross-platform database programs and utilities in Python, especially if you run applications that need to communicate with databases such as MS SQL Server and MS Access, Oracle Database, IBM DB2 and Informix, Sybase ASE and Sybase Anywhere, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SAP MaxDB and many more, that run on Windows or Linux machines. By removing the need to install and configure ODBC drivers on the client side, mxODBC Connect greatly simplifies setup and configuration of database driven client applications, while at the same time making the network communication between client and database server more efficient and more secure. For more information, please have a look at the product page: http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxODBCConnect/ ________________________________________________________________________ NEWS mxODBC Connect 0.9.3 is the third public beta release of our new mxODBC Connect product. With this release we have improved the performance of mxODBC Connect significantly and achieved an up to 6 times better performance for a typical multi-tier application that runs on Linux and connects to a MS SQL Server database running on a Windows host, compared to the same application using mxODBC and the FreeTDS ODBC driver. mxODBC Connect 0.9.3 now comes with added optional compression of all network traffic and fixes two bugs found in the 0.9.2 beta release: a missing Windows DLL in the Windows installer and a problem with fail-over using SSL-enabled connections. We expect this to be last beta release before the 1.0.0 final release. *SPECIAL OFFER* If you would like to participate in the beta as tester, please see our beta program page: http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxODBCConnect/beta.html In order to make participation in the beta program more interesting for our users, we will be giving out *20% discount coupons* to all participants who report back bugs in the product. ________________________________________________________________________ DOWNLOADS The download archives as well as instructions for installation and configuration of the product can be found on the product page: http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxODBCConnect/ _______________________________________________________________________ SUPPORT Commercial support for this product is available from eGenix.com. Please see http://www.egenix.com/services/support/ for details about our support offerings. Enjoy, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com Professional Python Services directly from the Source (#1, Nov 12 2008) >>> Python/Zope Consulting and Support ... http://www.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC.Zope.Database.Adapter ... http://zope.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ... http://python.egenix.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ :::: Try mxODBC.Zope.DA for Windows,Linux,Solaris,MacOSX for free ! :::: eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH Pastor-Loeh-Str.48 D-40764 Langenfeld, Germany. CEO Dipl.-Math. Marc-Andre Lemburg Registered at Amtsgericht Duesseldorf: HRB 46611

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ANN: RPyC 3.00-final released!
by sebulba 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

RPyC (Remote Python Call) is a transparent and symmetrical python library for remote procedure calls, clustering and distributed- computing. RPyC makes use of object-proxying, a technique that employs python's dynamic nature, to overcome the physical boundaries between processes and computers, so that remote objects can be manipulated as if they were local. == Homepage == http://rpyc.wikidot.com/ == Features == * Transparent access to remote objects; program remotely as if working locally * Symmetric protocol, where both the client and server can serve requests (which allows, for instance, to use callbacks) * Synchronous and asynchronous invocation * Platform-agnostic: 32/64 bit, little/big endian, Windows/Linux/ Solaris/Mac… access objects across different architectures. * Capability based security model * Integration with TLS/SSL and inetd == Use cases == * Excels in testing environments * Control multiple hardware or software platforms from a centralized point * Access remote physical (hardware) resources transparently * Distribute workload among multiple machines with ease * Implement remote services (like SOAP or RMI) quickly and concisely (without the overhead and limitations of these technologies)

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