Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Apr 29)

Tue Apr 29 14:04:28 EDT 2003

QOTW:  "But I like to [polish] the code while it does not yet exist, or
make hundreds of new options DURING the programming. That's why many of
my programs never see the daylight :)" -- Dino Levy

"For a long time, the industry labored under the illusion that if we
could all agree on One Big API then we'd have interoperability.
Examples have included Posix, X11, OLE/COM/DCOM, CORBA, DCE, OpenDoc,
and  the list goes on; and it's never, ever, ever worked (with the
single exception of the "sockets" library for IP networking)."  -- 
Tim Bray  http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/03/24/XMLisOK

Discussion:
    Techniques for making *small* stand-alone versions of Python
    programs.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=3dac0b6a85d8c13a>

    Jack Diederich exhibits two real-life uses for metaclasses:
    registering classes with a factory, and named prototypes.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=296a0181247593f3>

    Jeff Epler describes some common uses of C++ references, and shows
    how the same problems are usually solved in Python.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=5c54ac4ec68aeafa#link6>

    Tim Peters comments on reverse-engineering a mysterious 48-bit
    floating-point number format, illustrating the complexity of the
    subject.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=6a220801e92e14e#link8>

    In the middle of a tongue-in-cheek discussion of overloadable
    short-circuiting operators, a speculative notion for implementing
    microthreads (inter alia) by turning all functions into generators.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1051284157.17376.python-list%40python.org>

Announcements:
    Python 2.3b1: The first beta release of Python 2.3.
        <http://www.python.org/2.3/>

    Matplotlib 0.1: Matplotlib's goal is to make publication-quality
    plotting easy in Python, with a syntax familiar to Matlab users.
        <http://nitace.bsd.uchicago.edu:8080/matplotlib>

    mxODBC Zope Database Adapter 1.0.4: Allows you to easily connect
    your Zope installation to just about any database backend on the
    market today.
        <http://www.egenix.com/>

    Pyro 3.2: Pyro is an advanced and powerful Distributed Object
    Technology system written entirely in Python, that is designed to
    be very easy to use.
        <http://pyro.sourceforge.net/>

    Sybase DB-API module 0.36: The Sybase module provides a Python
    interface to the Sybase relational database system.  It supports
    all of the Python Database API, version 2.0 with extensions.
        <http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/>

    Twisted 1.0.4: Twisted is an event-driven framework for building
    networked clients and servers.  It contains a powerful and simple
    networking core, a full-featured suite of interoperable protocols,
    among them a powerful web server and applications framework.
        <http://www.twistedmatrix.com/>

========================================================================
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  
    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.

    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

    Brett Cannon continues the marvelous tradition established by 
    Andrew Kuchling and Michael Hudson of 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/

    The Python Business Forum "further[s] the interests of companies
    that base their business on ... Python."
	http://www.python-in-business.org

    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.org/oo_python.html

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

    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://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html

    The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
    editor at pythonjournal.com and editor at pythonjournal.cognizor.com
    welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
    of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

    *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.python.*

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

Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
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