Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jun 30)

[Irmen de Jong]

QOTW:  "Giving full access rights to a secretary or new programmer ought
to insure an occasional random file deletion."  -- Raymond Hettinger

"I always use join, but that's probably because that method is more likely
to run code that I once wrote.  Never trust code written by a man who
uses defines to create his own C syntax."   -- Fredrik Lundh


Discussion
----------
     Peter Hansen is right in complimenting Sorin Marti on his excellent
     problem description, and helps with reading binary data from a file.
         <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3EFB0E26.9A069A9C%40engcorp.com>

     Fredrik Lundh shows how easy it is to write macro-like extensions
     for your Python application.
         <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=mailman.1056722085.11922.python-list@python.org>

     Tim Delaney provides a mutable string class that can be used to
     concatenate strings efficiently and easily, instead of using
     myPage+="more html..." or "\n".join(strings).
         <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=mailman.1056587587.3703.python-list@python.org>

     Bengt Richter gives a possible explanation of the (historic?) distiction
     between carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF), and how this bears on
     problems with "shebang" scripts.
         <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=bdcl1d$v43$0@216.39.172.122>

     Alan Kennedy explains why compiling to C code is not always guaranteed to
     speed things up, and why PyPy (Python written in Python!) could help
     in the performance department.
         <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3EF9CBD8.F3AFF856@hotmail.com>

     Raymond Hettinger explains the purpose of some of the recent iteration
     constructs (itertools), and why things are this way.
         <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=PmwJa.6109$N%6.5701@nwrdny02.gnilink.net>

     Edvard Majakari shares interesting opinions on Unit Testing and
     test-driven development.
         <http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=87of0pno5s.fsf@titan.staselog.com>
	

Announcements
-------------
     PyRex 0.8, a language for writing Python extension modules.
         <http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python/Pyrex/>

     M2Crypto 0.11, a crypto and SSL toolkit for Python.
         <http://www.post1.com/home/ngps/m2>

     PythonCAD 8th release, a CAD package written in Python.
         <http://www.pythoncad.org/>

     DocUtils 0.3, a system for processing plaintext documentation
     (reStructuredText markup).
         <http://docutils.sourceforge.net/>

     Scratchy 0.4, an Apache log parser and HTML report generator.
         <http://scratchy.sourceforge.net/>

     ClientForm 0.0.10 and 0.1.3a, a Python module for handling
     HTML forms on the client.
         <http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/ClientForm/>

     SCons 0.90, a software construction tool (build tool, or make tool).
         <http://www.scons.org/>

     Twisted 1.0.6, an event-driven networking framework for server
     and client applications.
         <http://www.twistedmatrix.com/>
     David Mertz, our own Lulu,  presents Twisted to a wider audience.
	 <http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-twist1.html>

     TTFQuery 0.2.4, builds on the FontTools module to allow you
     to query TTF font-files for metadata and glyph outlines.
         <http://sourceforge.net/projects/ttfquery/>


========================================================================
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:
  http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/         
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant)
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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