Python Tutorials

[Ron Stephens]

Nick Vargish <nav at adams.patriot.net> wrote in message 

> rstephens at vectron.com (Ron Stephens) writes:
> My suggestion is to not use explicit size settings at all. Most
> people's browsers have settings that let them specify a default font
> size that's comfortable for them. If you want to make a bit of text
> larger for emphasis, you can use a relative sizing argument, which
> would look like <font size="+1">.

Nick, several people have pointed this out to me in private emails. I
accept the advice, I have even purchased an up-to-date HTML book to
learn about style sheets etc.

The problem began when I made my first web pages, back around five
years ago. I just wanted to post some poetry, short stories and essays
I was writing at the time, and didn't spend much time at all learning
HTML; I just used the first tricks I found, which unfortunately
included <font> tags and other hard-coded layout tags and such.

When I started a Python page, I just used the same bad habits. After a
while Hans Nowak, author of mygale.py, the web spider I use, began
sharing my site, and I had the gall to ask him to use the same look
and feel as I did :-)) He was too polite to say much, he just
indicated that he wanted to make his site look like it was done by a
programmer ;-))): anyway,  so now, I know I must upgrade the look and
feel.

I am also studying and considering using Hans Nowak's Kaa weblogging
tool. Also, Hans has a great Kaa based blog at
http://www.zephyrfalcon.org/weblog/

Next, I am also planning to do CGI versions of my "Choose your GUI
Toolkit" and Choose your Programming Language" type of scripts. Then,
instead of using my biased and unlearned inputs for the "scores" or
"rankings" of each option for the various criteria, I can ask visitors
to the site to enter *their* scores for each option, each criteria,
and save the data and average it, using the average for the online
scripts. So, that way, each GUI toolkit will be ranked for each
criteria by 'the community' and when a user inputs their weights, for
each criteria, they might get useful information back; anyway, it
should be fun ;-))

Turning these scripts into CGI programs using HTML input forms is
trivial, but for some reason I am having a little difficulty getting
CGI working on my site, I might have to change web hosts; but really I
just need to spend a little time on it first. My travel schedule for
my day job is extremely taxing these days.

I am also looking forward eagerly to David Mertz' new book, "Text
Processing with Python" which is due out real soon now and can be read
about and ordered at Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321112547/qid=1051795696/sr=2-1/002-1894568-9456858?v=glance&s=books.

In short, I love Python; it is a great hobby; I know that my site is
ugly, and furthermore that it is pretentious of me to even have a web
site dedicated to Python, given my relative lack of knowledge about
programming in general and Python is particular. Still, it gives me
joy,; and if even one other person finds anything there useful, I will
feel rewarded.

Ron Stephens