Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Sep 1)

Mon Sep 1 05:28:17 EDT 2003

QOTW:  "All that rigid type safety and data hiding is like wearing army
boots on the beach: nothing can bite your toes, but golly don't it feel
good to just toss 'em and run barefoot."  -- David Pinn

QOTW: "... this is Usenet. No matter what you write, somebody is going to
interpret it as a proposal to cook and eat babies." -- Grant Edwards

QOTW: "I assume you mean instance.getthing() because writing
self.getthing() has unclear connotations." -- Michael Peuser

Discussion
----------
    Tim Peters explains the virtues of  having the documentation in CHM
    files instead of HTML.  Future Windows installers will ship with
    CHM but the HTML will still be available:
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1062285905.31279.python-list@python.org>

    Alex Martelli explains how format numbers with thousand separators:
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8oH3b.15528%24d66.362183@news2.tin.it>

    Gregory Trubetskoy muses whether SpamBayes could work as a children's content
    filter.  Paul Patternson already tried it with some success:
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=86b54b6d2ef425ba>

    Mike Fletcher provides links to excellent presentations on
    metaclasses by Dr Mertz, Alex Martelli, and Michele Simionato:
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=27G3b.8368%24aG6.267050@news1.tin.it>

    Istvan's Albert's effort wrap Perl's approximate string matching
    triggers a thread revealing a number of existing solutions in Python:
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=1c68b7033d7fe239>

    Jeff Epler questions authority and defies the powers-that-be by
    implementing the rejected PEP for Generator Comprehensions:
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=7b7d6f43f032b4d0>

    Stan Graves gives timeless advice to a young, aspiring computer scientist:
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3d6c6fc3.0308261246.32db39d5@posting.google.com>

    Every week people come up with ideas for changing the language.
    This week was no exception:

        * Allow dictionary addition with the + operator

        * Time machine exception handling (offered humorously by yours truly)

Releases
--------
    PyXR 0.9.3, generates cross referenced HTML pages from python source files
        <http://www.cathoderaymission.net/~logistix/python/pyxr.html>

    Slimp3 0.1, interface to the SLIMP3 MP3 player
        <http://www.andreas-jung.com/SLIMP3/slimp3.tar.gz>

    SC-Track Roundup 0.6.1, an issue tracking system
        <http://roundup.sourceforge.net/>

    MyHDL 0.3, Python as a hardware description & verification language
        <http://jandecaluwe.com/Tools/MyHDL/Overview.html>

    numarray-0.7, an array processing package modelled after Numeric
        <http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/>

    KirbyBase 1.4, plain-text, flat-file database management system
        <http://www.netpromi.com/files/KirbyBase-1.4.zip>

    Munkware 0.1, transactional and persistent queueing mechanism
        <http://sourceforge.net/projects/munkware>

    Wing IDE 1.1.10 commercial integrated development environment for Python
        <http://wingide.com/wingide/demo>

    cx_Freeze 2.2, utilities for freezing Python scripts
        <http://starship.python.net/crew/atuining>

========================================================================
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
    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.
E-mail to <Python-URL at phaseit.net> should get through.

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-- The Python-URL! Team--

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