Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Aug 13)

[Quinn Dunkan]

Quote of the week:
              1) Customers cause problems.
	      2) Marketing is trying to create more customers.
	      Therefore:
	      3) Marketing is evil.  (Grand Edwards in comp.lang.python)                

Language use
    A find-the-permutations question turns into another c.l.py
    optimization war:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=18e6d8363f51b0bc,31

    An apparent argument between Alex Martelli and Grant Edwards
    on callbacks leads to productive descriptions of the uses of
    lambda and currying
	http://groups.google.com/groups?th=80b65a6b5646b8fa

    Python lets you use '' or "" for strings.  Some people take
    advantage of this by using different quotes in different
    situations:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=f896d358e3f6db17,12

    Thomas Bellman provides an excellent explanation of the 
    difference between tuples and lists.
	http://groups.google.com/groups?th=734a85d08d175637

    If the __main__ module is 'a.py', 'import __main__, a' will
    execute the same module twice, which is unusual since python
    generally avoids doing that.  Is this a wart?  And how is it
    related to circular imports?
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=2a5a0ff6b04b0ecd,14

Useful language
    David Smith wants to copy an instance without invoking __init__
    on the new instance.  Alex Martelli shows how you can do that by
    creating a dummy class, instantiating it, and reassigning its
    __class__ attribute:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=8d22a064dd4568b8,30&start=2
    ... but Guido notes that this idiom will no longer be possible in
    future versions, due to type/class unification:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=8d22a064dd4568b8,30&start=9

    Later, Guido reveals that he would like to make python less dynamic
    (only dropping "less useful" dynamic features, of course) to make it
    more amenable to compiler optimization:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?start=10&th=8d22a064dd4568b8,30&rnum=18&selm=cpzo969i4k.fsf%40cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com

    Iñigo Serna releases lfm 0.5, a midnight commander clone in Python:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=594eab21f71df4c8,1

    M.-A. Lemburg's latest mx extension is mxTidy, which "helps you to
    cleanup coding errors in HTML and XML":
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b336d90307e1da99,1

    ReportLab is a python module to create PDFs:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b2560cae682b1c1f,8&start=7

Language evolution
    Guido envisions someday unifying python's numeric model, or at least
    moving to something more mathematically-oriented instead of
    machine-oriented.  Of course, there are many ways to express the
    relationship between numeric types, and the mathematically minded
    happily debate all of them:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=6d6ad23e6ecaa33f,14


========================================================================

Everything 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
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Michael Hudson continues Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition
    of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every
    other week.
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect 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/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
        http://www.cetus-links.de/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    Python To-Do List anticipates some of Python's future direction
        http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/todo.py

    Python Journal is at work on its second issue
        http://www.pythonjournal.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    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.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


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