From aahz@pythoncraft.com Thu Apr 1 00:45:30 2004 From: aahz@pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 19:45:30 -0500 Subject: BayPIGgies: April 8, 7:30pm Message-ID: The next meeting of BayPIGgies will be Thurs March 11 at 7:30pm. This meeting will have two sessions: A Practical Perspective on Python Performance Jimmy Retzlaff Jimmy will discuss a number of lessons learned regarding performance in a relatively large client-server Python application. Concepts including when, what, and how to optimize will be discussed. Technologies including extension modules, Pyrex (http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python/Pyrex/), and Psyco (http://psyco.sourceforge.net/) will be briefly compared. The talk will conclude with some thoughts about the potential performance benefits of dynamic typing over static typing. Toying With Python - Highlighting "Keywords" in a Body of HTML Text Danny Yoo Danny will demonstrate several approaches to solving a "simple" text processing problem including several wrong turns along the way to show what not to do. Both correctness and performance will be important in this problem. The tutorial should briefly cover: brute-force searching, dictionaries, regular expressions, and if we have time, maybe even something like the Aho-Corasick automaton. BayPIGgies meetings are in Stanford, California. For more information and directions, see http://www.baypiggies.net/ Advance notice: The May 13 meeting will have a PyCon trip report from Guido van Rossum and Aahz. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "usenet imitates usenet" --Darkhawk From richardjones@optushome.com.au Thu Apr 1 00:40:50 2004 From: richardjones@optushome.com.au (Richard Jones) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 10:40:50 +1000 Subject: SC-Track Roundup 0.6.8 - an issue tracking system Message-ID: I'm pleased to announce Roundup 0.6.8, a maintenance release which fixes some bugs: - existing trackers (ie. live ones) may be used as templates for new trackers - the TEMPLATE-INFO.txt name entry has the tracker's dir name appended (so the demo tracker's template name is "classic-demo") - handle bad multilink input at item creation time better (sf bug 917834) - make sure email signature starts on a newline (sf bug 919759) - add line to rego email to help URL detection (sf bug 906247) - look harder for text/plain in email - fixed fallback excel writer in rcsv so it has a delimiter - fixed setup.py's use of listTemplates (!) - make rdbms serialise() less trusting - handle Boolean values in history HTML display If you're upgrading from an older version of Roundup you *must* follow the "Software Upgrade" guidelines given in the maintenance documentation. Note that the Zope interface still doesn't work - it is fixed in the 0.7 development codebase. Roundup requires python 2.1.3 or later for correct operation. Python 2.3.1 or later is strongly recommended. To give Roundup a try, just download (see below), unpack and run:: python demo.py Source and documentation is available at the website: http://roundup.sourceforge.net/ Release Info (via download page): http://sourceforge.net/projects/roundup Mailing lists - the place to ask questions: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=31577 About Roundup ============= Roundup is a simple-to-use and -install issue-tracking system with command-line, web and e-mail interfaces. It is based on the winning design from Ka-Ping Yee in the Software Carpentry "Track" design competition. Note: Ping is not responsible for this project. The contact for this project is richard@users.sourceforge.net. Roundup manages a number of issues (with flexible properties such as "description", "priority", and so on) and provides the ability to: (a) submit new issues, (b) find and edit existing issues, and (c) discuss issues with other participants. The system will facilitate communication among the participants by managing discussions and notifying interested parties when issues are edited. One of the major design goals for Roundup that it be simple to get going. Roundup is therefore usable "out of the box" with any python 2.1+ installation. It doesn't even need to be "installed" to be operational, though a disutils-based install script is provided. It comes with two issue tracker templates (a classic bug/feature tracker and a minimal skeleton) and six database back-ends (anydbm, bsddb, bsddb3, sqlite, metakit and mysql). From amk@amk.ca Thu Apr 1 01:08:07 2004 From: amk@amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 20:08:07 -0500 Subject: List for PyCon submission software Message-ID: This year the software for submitting proposals to PyCon was written extremely hurriedly, and often new features were added just before (or just after) a conference deadline. I'd like to do better next time by having the software be more polished before the proposal submission madness begins. To that end, a Wiki page for recording ideas for the conference software is at http://www.amk.ca/ng-arch/ConferenceSWIdeas Please add any suggestions you might have; suggestions from PyCon proposal authors will be especially valuable. I've also set up a mailing list named 'conf' for people who want to help test alphas and betas of software; you can join at http://www.amk.ca/mailman/listinfo/conf . My plan is to hack on the conference software fairly intensively for the next month or two, with mailing list readers trying out the current snapshot and offering comments/triggering bugs. Then I'll move on to other projects, at least until the CFP for PyCon 2005 goes out and new feature requests begin arriving. --amk From JimJJewett@yahoo.com Thu Apr 1 05:34:10 2004 From: JimJJewett@yahoo.com (Jim Jewett) Date: 31 Mar 2004 21:34:10 -0800 Subject: easylog alpha Message-ID: The standard library's logging package is very powerful, but it doesn't scale *down* well. easylog is an attempt to better serve one-liner and midweight usage. easylog is available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/easylog/ under the Python Software Foundation license. easylog relies on an underlying logging package, so it will benefit from future improvements to the core logging package. (Unfortunately, treating another module as a black box to inherit from left some of the internals ... ugly.) I would particularly appreciate feedback on what should be cleaned up before it leaves alpha/beta status. -jJ From richie@entrian.com Thu Apr 1 07:10:57 2004 From: richie@entrian.com (Richie Hindle) Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 08:10:57 +0100 Subject: ANNOUNCE: 'goto' for Python Message-ID: Entrian Solutions is pleased to announce version 1.0 of the 'goto' module. This adds the 'goto' and 'comefrom' keywords to Python 2.3, adding flexibility to Python's control flow mechanisms and allowing Python programmers to use many common control flow idioms that were previously denied to them. 'goto' example: breaking out from a deeply nested loop: from goto import goto, label for i in range(1, 10): for j in range(1, 20): for k in range(1, 30): print i, j, k if k == 3: goto .end label .end print "Finished\n" 'comefrom' example: letting cleanup code take control after an error. from goto import comefrom, label def bigFunction(): setUp() if not doFirstTask(): label .failed if not doSecondTask(): label .failed if not doThirdTask(): label .failed comefrom .failed cleanUp() Computed 'goto's are also supported - see the documentation for details. Computed 'comefrom's are planned for a future release. Documentation and further examples: http://entrian.com/goto/index.html Downloads: http://entrian.com/goto/download.html The 'goto' module is released under the Python Software Foundation license, and requires Python 2.3 or later. Please note that this version does not work at the interactive Python prompt - code importing 'goto' must be in a .py file. This restriction will hopefully be lifted in a future release. -- Richie Hindle richie@entrian.com From jacob@cd.chalmers.se Thu Apr 1 09:55:46 2004 From: jacob@cd.chalmers.se (Jacob Hallen) Date: 1 Apr 2004 09:55:46 GMT Subject: Tapestry uncovered Message-ID: A magnificent discovery was made today, as a medeival tapstry foretelling the coming of Europython this summer was uncovered. "It is amazing in its precision" says Jacob Hallén, one of the organisers of the event. "And all the work that must have gone into it." A digitised image of the tapestry has been made. It can be viewed at http://www.europython.org/conferences/epc2004/news/Tapestry -- From alberanid@libero.it Thu Apr 1 18:16:13 2004 From: alberanid@libero.it (Davide Alberani) Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 18:16:13 GMT Subject: IMDbPY 1.0 Message-ID: IMDbPY 1.0 is available here: http://imdbpy.sourceforge.net/ IMDbPY is a Python package useful to retrieve and manage the data of the IMDb movie database. IMDbPY aims to provide an easy way to access the IMDb's database using a Python script. Platform-independent and written in pure Python, it's theoretically independent from the data source (since IMDb provides two or three different interfaces to their database). IMDbPY is mainly intended for programmers and developers who want to build their Python programs using the IMDbPY package, but some example scripts - useful for simple users - are included. So far the only data source supported is the IMDb web server, and the search is restricted to movie titles. On the same page, you can find videodb_imdbpy 0.2, a set of Python scripts to populate/update/insert data in the VideoDB database (a PHP/mysql db written by Andreas Gohr, useful to manage your personal movie collection). -- Davide Alberani http://digilander.libero.it/alberanid/ From robin@alldunn.com Fri Apr 2 16:35:37 2004 From: robin@alldunn.com (Robin Dunn) Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 08:35:37 -0800 Subject: Announce: wxPython 2.5.1.5 Message-ID: Announcing ---------- I'm pleased to announce the 2.5.1.5 release of wxPython, now available for download at http://wxpython.org/download.php or http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10718&package_id=10559&release_id=228061 What is wxPython? ----------------- wxPython is a GUI toolkit for the Python programming language. It allows Python programmers to create programs with a robust, highly functional graphical user interface, simply and easily. It is implemented as a Python extension module that wraps the popular wxWidgets cross platform GUI library, which is written in C++. wxPython is a cross-platform toolkit. This means that the same program will usually run on multiple platforms without modifications. Currently supported platforms are 32-bit Microsoft Windows, most Linux or other Unix-like systems, and Macintosh OS X. Changes in 2.5.1.5 ------------------ The changes in this version are too numerous to list here, please see the following websites for more details. If you are upgrading from 2.4.x then please do read the MigrationGuide fully before as there are some backwards incompatible changes. http://wxpython.org/recentchanges.php http://wxpython.org/migrationguide.php -- Robin Dunn Software Craftsman http://wxPython.org Java give you jitters? Relax with wxPython! From premshree_python@yahoo.co.in Fri Apr 2 19:32:00 2004 From: premshree_python@yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Premshree=20Pillai?=) Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 20:32:00 +0100 (BST) Subject: makeExe.bat - An explanation Message-ID: Hello, An explanation of makeExe.bat (http://premshree.resource-locator.com/j/post.php?id=152) has been appended to (http://www.devx.com/opensource/Article/20247/0/page/3) "Create Python Executables Automatically" (http://www.devx.com/opensource/Article/20247/). -Premshree Pillai ===== -Premshree [http://www.qiksearch.com/] ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Insurance Special: Be informed on the best policies, services, tools and more. Go to: http://in.insurance.yahoo.com/licspecial/index.html From peter@engcorp.com Sat Apr 3 03:51:18 2004 From: peter@engcorp.com (Peter Hansen) Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 22:51:18 -0500 Subject: PyGTA (Toronto Python users group) next meeting: Tuesday April 27th Message-ID: As noted in the updated wiki page http://www.engcorp.com/pygta/wiki/NextMeeting, the next meeting of PyGTA (the Toronto-area Python users group) will be held at this time and place, courtesy of our friends at Givex. Site: Givex offices (www.givex.com) Room: Suite 400 Address: 366 Adelaide St. West, just east of Spadina Date: Tuesday April 27 Time: 7-9 PM (A Yahoo!Maps link is on the wiki page.) This month we will be witness to a demonstration of the all-Python collaborative workflow management platform from AB Strakt of Sweden. Jacob Hall=E9n, CTO and chairman, and Laura Creighton, company co-founder (and former Torontonian), will be showing how their product can allow partners to configure working systems for customers with only days of effort. The system is suitable for a wide range of markets where managing workflow and documents is critical, including accounting, law firms, medical practices, procurement, and so on. One or more of Mike Fletcher, Chris Garland and I (Peter) will also be around to tell you about PyCon 2004, which was a grand success with over 350 people attending! Hoping to see you there, -Peter Hansen and Ian Garmaise, meeting organizers P.S. If you are quite sure you'll be attending, please email me at peter@engcorp.com in advance so we can ensure there's adequate seating. I don't know how the March meeting went, but February's was pretty packed= ... P.P.S.: Also posted to comp.lang.python.announce since we haven't been using that channel to announce lately, preferring our mailing list. I guess doing this every six months or is a good idea... From vincent_delft@yahoo.com Sat Apr 3 10:11:31 2004 From: vincent_delft@yahoo.com (vincent_delft@yahoo.com) Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 12:11:31 +0200 Subject: WindPySend: a GUIAPI for windows machines Message-ID: WindPySend is a DLL that allows you to simulate keyboard input and Mouse mouvement on your Windows 98/NT/2000 machine. I've just add a windows installer for Python-2.3. Visit: http://users.swing.be/wintclsend/windpysend/index.html Thanks From paddy3118@netscape.net Sat Apr 3 11:08:36 2004 From: paddy3118@netscape.net (Paddy McCarthy) Date: 3 Apr 2004 03:08:36 -0800 Subject: [ANN] csv2txt.py csv file convertion script Message-ID: csv2text is a program I wrote to illustrate a point I made on comp.lang.python about not just creating great Python modules, or Python programs, but of doing both at the same time. This program makes the CSV module of Python more accessible by creating a program 'filter' that guesses and parses a csv file type on standard input and generates different formats on standard output. At the moment, output types are CSV, HTML (as an HTML table), and a text format that is written to be easily parsed by tools such as TCL or AWK that may not have such a powerful CSV reader module handy. The text format has conversions to allow AWK to handle CSV files with fields that contain embedded newlines (XL can generate that type of CSV file). Homepage: http://www.paddyx.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/csv2txt/README.html Cheers, Paddy. From detlev@die-offenbachs.de Sat Apr 3 12:57:28 2004 From: detlev@die-offenbachs.de (Detlev Offenbach) Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 14:57:28 +0200 Subject: ANN: eric3 3.4 released Message-ID: Hi, I have just uploaded the new release of eric3 (version 3.4). This release features the following enhancements compared to version 3.3.1. - It comes with it's own source documentation generator. - Support for Quixote PTL files. - Capability to generate various UML-like diagrams from the source code. - Interface to the cyclops cycles finder (a copy of cyclops is included). - Import/Export of keyboard shortcuts. - A QRegExp and a Python regexp wizard. a bunch of smaller usability enhancements, lots of bug fixes and internal changes. It is available via http://www.die-offenbachs.de/detlev/eric3.html. Upgrade notice: Starting with this release only XML project files are supported. Please make sure to save existing project in the XML format before installing the new release. Alternatively you may download a conevrsion tool from the contributions page. What is it? ----------- Eric 3.4 (or short eric3) is a Python IDE written using PyQt and QScintilla. It has integrated project management capabilities, it gives you an unlimited number of editors, an integrated Python shell, an integrated debugger and much more. Please see for yourself by visiting the a.m. page (it contains a picture of Eric our mascot as well). Please report bugs, feature wishes or code contributions to eric-bugs@die-offenbachs.de Help wanted!! ------------- I really need some support in the area of more translations and user documentation. Any volunteers out there? Just let me know. Regards,Detlev -- Detlev Offenbach detlev@die-offenbachs.de From js@jeannot.org Sat Apr 3 17:02:17 2004 From: js@jeannot.org (Jean-Sebastien Roy) Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 19:02:17 +0200 Subject: TNC 1.2: a non-linear, bounds constrained optimizer Message-ID: I would like to announce the release of TNC v 1.2. TNC is a non-linear, bound constrained optimizer written in C with a Python interface. You can get it at: http://www.jeannot.org/~js/code/tnc-1.2.tgz The latest version is always available at: http://www.jeannot.org/~js/code/index.en.html An example and a few test cases are provided. Thanks, Jean-Sebastien Example use: import tnc # A function to minimize # Must return a tuple with the function value and the gradient # (as a list) or None to abort the minimization def function(x): f = x[0]**2+abs(x[1])**3 g = [2*x[0], 3*abs(x[1])*x[1]] return f, g # Optimizer call rc, nf, x = tnc.minimize(function, x = [-7, 3], low = [-10, 1], up = [10, 10]) print "After", nf, "function evaluations, TNC returned:", tnc.RCSTRINGS[rc] print "x =", x print "exact value = [0, 1]" From johan@gnome.org Sat Apr 3 17:24:47 2004 From: johan@gnome.org (Johan Dahlin) Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 19:24:47 +0200 Subject: ANNOUNCE: Gnome-Python 2.0.2 Message-ID: Gnome-Python 2.0.2 is now available at: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-python/2.0/ Gnome-Python provides bindings for the Gnome 2.x development platform libraries. It builds on top of PyGTK, and includes bindings for the following GNOME libraries: * the GConf configuration database * the Bonobo component system * the Gnome-VFS file access library * support for writing panel applets and Nautilus views * the GtkHTML2 widget. * the Gnome-Print print libraries. Gnome-Python requires PyGTK, PyORBit, Python >= 2.2 and the Gnome 2.x development platform to build. PyGtk, Python and Gnome is usually included in your distribution, if not: PyGTK can be found on http://www.pygtk.org/ Python can be found on http://www.python.org Gnome libraries can be found on http://www.gnome.org Changes since 2.0.1: The only change since 2.0.1 is a small build fix that makes it possible to build the vfs bindings again. (bug 138556) Questions about Gnome-Python can be directed to the PyGTK list: http://www.daa.com.au/mailman/listinfo/pygtk Bug reports should be filed at the Gnome bug tracker: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=gnome-python -- Johan Dahlin From shalabh@cafepy.com Sun Apr 4 00:23:00 2004 From: shalabh@cafepy.com (Shalabh Chaturvedi) Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 16:23:00 -0800 Subject: Two articles on new-style objects Message-ID: I would like to announce that two articles explaining in detail the working of new-style (v2.2 and up) objects have been released as final versions. 1. Python Types and Objects http://www.cafepy.com/articles/python_types_and_objects/ Explains different Python new-style objects, starting with and , and going all the way to user defined classes and instances. The system described is sometimes called the Python type system, or the object model. 2. Python Attributes and Methods http://www.cafepy.com/articles/python_attributes_and_methods/ Explains the mechanics of attribute access, how functions become methods, descriptors, properties, MRO and the like for new-style Python objects. Any and all feedback is appreciated, and can be sent to shalabh@cafepy.com. -- Shalabh Chaturvedi From kgmuller@users.sourceforge.net Sun Apr 4 07:54:07 2004 From: kgmuller@users.sourceforge.net (Klaus Muller) Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 08:54:07 +0200 Subject: ANN: SimPy 1.4.1 discrete event simulation package Message-ID: It is our pleasure to announce the release of SimPy 1.4.1, a maintenance=20 release of SimPy 1.4. It can be downloaded via the SimPy homepage http://simpy.sourceforge.net. What is new? ------------ This release makes no changes to the SimPy API. It repairs two bugs and=20 improves on the unit test coverage: Resource -------- - To repair a bug with monitoring the activeQ of a Resource instance, method _release in class Resource has been changed in modules Simulation.py, SimulationRT.py, SimulationTrace.py and SimulationStep.py testSimpy.py ------------ - This unit test module has been enhanced with a unit test for monitored Resources. cellphone.py ------------ - This example had a programming error and has been corrected. File names ---------- - All file names in the source distributions have been made =93Unix-friendly=94 by changing file names containing blanks. What is SimPy? -------------- SimPy is a process-based discrete-event simulation language package implemented in Python and released under the GNU GPL. It provides the modeller with building blocks for simulation models. These include processes, for active components like customers, messages, and vehicles, and resources, for passive components that form limited capacity congestion points like servers, checkout counters, and tunnels. It also provides monitor variables to aid in gathering statistics. SimPy has a Tkinter-based GUI and a plotting package. SimPy comes with extensive reference and tutorial documentation. SimPy is in use in universities, research institutes and industry. Klaus Muller (kgmuller at users.sourceforge.net) Tony Vignaux (vignaux at users.sourceforge.net) From paul@prescod.net Sun Apr 4 18:58:40 2004 From: paul@prescod.net (Paul Prescod) Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 10:58:40 -0700 Subject: Vancouver Python/Zope Meeting on Tuesday Message-ID: 7:00, Tuesday April 6th at ActiveState (6:45 for presenters) Proposed Topics: * report from Pycon * what will be the main features of Python 2.4? * upcoming meetings. * planning for a two-day workshop at the beginning of August. * food and drinks at a local pub Paul Prescod From fuzzyman@voidspace.org.uk Mon Apr 5 11:03:54 2004 From: fuzzyman@voidspace.org.uk (Fuzzyman) Date: 5 Apr 2004 03:03:54 -0700 Subject: Python Utils - dataenc.py NEW Message-ID: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantibots/pythonutils.html A python resource page with various python modules available. **NEW** dataenc.py This is a set of functions that provide a binary to ASCII encoding (based on a user definable TABLE) and binary interleaving which can be used for combining files or time/datestamping data. The purpose of this is that an encrypted password can be timestamped and then included as ASCII in a hidden form field - in the HTML output of a CGI. This gives a convenient way of providing a 'user login' with a CGI - but the password (or it's SHA hash) that is hidden in the HTML is 'time stamped' so that even if is extracted from the HTML it can't be used once it has expired. Conceivably, the binary interweave functions could be used for combining, 'watermarking' or timestamping any data. The binary to ascii function is no 'better' than the binascii module - but the mapping is user definable. It can be used for storing *any* binary data as ascii - e.g. an SHA hash in a ConfigObj ! Other Modules on this Page : ConfigObj 2 - simple config file parser that behaves like a dictionary. listparser - parses strings into lists (including nested lists) dateutils - a set of functions for handling and working out dates csv_s - a very simple module for reading/writing/comparing CSV files. Nanagram - not really a module, a Tkinter desktop application for finding anagrams. Make silly anagrams of your friends names ! Great fun. Also available as a CGI for including on your own website. Guestbook - again, not really a module. The Voidspace Python Guestbook. Uses HTML templates for simple integration into your own site. ConfigObj 2 ConfigObj is a lightweight and easy to use config file parser. It allows you and your users to write simple text config files - and for you to easily load, parse, change and save them. In practise, you hand ConfigObj a filename and it parses the values from keywords in the file. For adding, retreiving or changing values/keywords it then behaves liek a normal python dictionary. You can then write the edited data back to file if you need to with a simple configobj.write() command. You can give it a list of keywords to parse - or simply have it find all the keywords in the file. Comments inline with keywords are preserved. listparser Not only this, but each value can either be a single value *or* a list of values. This now includes lists of lists !! In other words each element of a list, can itself be a list. This is implemented using listparser - a simple module with functions for reading lists from a string and also turning lists back into strings. A useful way of storing data in a readable format. This module is available seperately if you want but included in the configobj2 zip. Dateutils This is a set of functions for dealing with dates - written for a little tool called 'Victory Days'. They are particularly useful for dealing with appointments - e.g. the second Tuesday in March etc... The functions will tell you what day of the week a date is, work out the 'Julian day number' of a date is, correctly add numbers of days (weeks, months etc) to a date and tell you the number of days between a date, format a datestring etc. Full correction for leap years and much more. csv_s A very simple module for reading/writing/comparing CSVs. For use where you have a version of python prior to 2.3 or don't need hte compelxity of the CSV module. Also a couple of other goodies that maybe of interest - particularly for new programmers. For a comprehensive set of python links see - YAPLP (yet anothe python links page) : http://www.voidspace.org.uk/coollinks/python_links.shtml Regards, Fuzzyman fuzzyman AT voidspace DOT org DOT uk From cjw@sympatico.ca Mon Apr 5 19:50:41 2004 From: cjw@sympatico.ca (Colin J. Williams) Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 14:50:41 -0400 Subject: Announcement - PyMatrix Message-ID: PyMatrix is a package, based on numarray, which provides matrix arithmetic for the Python user. This is version 0.0.0b Pre-Alpha release. Thanks to those who commented on the initial release in November 2003. The package is available for download from: http://www3.sympatico.ca/cjw/PyMatrix. I would appreciate comments on the current functionality and suggestions as to other capabilities which could usefully be integrated into the package. Prerequisite: numarray 0.9, which is available from: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1369 The package has been developed under Windows. Reports of usage under Linux would be of particular interest. Colin W. From JimJJewett@yahoo.com Tue Apr 6 01:36:21 2004 From: JimJJewett@yahoo.com (Jim Jewett) Date: 5 Apr 2004 17:36:21 -0700 Subject: ANN: easylog Message-ID: The standard library logging package is very powerful, but does not scale *down* well. Any configuration -- even just saving messages to a file rather than the console -- requires a fair amount of setup or glue code. easylog wraps the standard library, to minimize the amount of logging-specific code in your own script or application. >>> from easylog import critical, error, warning, debug, info >>> debug("getFoo requesting %d %s", 42, "answers") >>> error("getFoo says %d of those %s are lousy!", 19, "answers") ERROR:easylog.easylog:getFoo says 19 of those answers are lousy! Both messages are captured in the logfile, but only the error is shown onscreen. If you want to change the logfile name/which messages are captured/the output format, etc, you can do that with a single call. Alpha version 0.2.0 is available under the Python Software Foundation License at http://sourceforge.net/projects/easylog/ Please send comments to JimJJewett@yahoo.com.

easylog 0.2.0 works with the standard logging package to minimize logging-specific code in your application.. (05-04-04) From porten@froglogic.com Tue Apr 6 11:07:37 2004 From: porten@froglogic.com (Harri Porten) Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 12:07:37 +0200 Subject: ANN: Automated GUI Test Tool Squish 1.1 released Message-ID: Hamburg, Germany - 2004-04-05 froglogic today announced the availability of Squish 1.1, the new version of the automated GUI testing framework for Qt applications. The main new features of Squish 1.1 are: - Python support: Squish has been designed to support multiple scripting languages from day one. In Squish 1.0, support for Tcl was implemented. In Squish 1.1, test scripts can also be written and recorded in the very popular Python scripting language. - Squish Spy: This new tool allows Squish to hook up to a running application to inspect its objects properties and methods by either clicking on objects in the application or by navigating the object tree view. The already existing hook-up mechanism of Squish is used, meaning the Squish Spy is also non-intrusive and doesn't require any modifications to the application to work. - Test script debugger: Instead of just executing a test case, it can be executed in the debugger now as well. This way break points can be set, and the user can step through test scripts. This opens up many possibilities for the future like allowing to execute a test until a break point and recording from there. - Automatic insertion of test verification points: The combination of the Squish Spy and the debugger are the foundation of this new feature. By halting the test script at a specified point and choosing objects and properties in the running application, it is possible to insert test verification points into the test script via the Squish IDE without having to write the code manually. "I am impressed with Squish. After I saw it, I set the other options aside and recommended that my client buy Squish. I especially like the fact that Squish uses existing scripting languages, rather than requiring the user to learn a proprietary language. The folks at froglogic are knowledgeable both about Qt and the state of the art in test automation, a rare combination. They provided excellent support, even from many time zones away. I'm looking forward to finding more opportunities to use Squish!" said Danny R. Faught, Proprietor of Tejas Software Consulting. Other smaller improvements of Squish 1.1 include: - Basic ActiveX support: It is possible to send key and mouse events to ActiveX components embedded in Qt applications via ActiveQt. - Better control over the squishserver - Additional event compression heuristics have been implemented - Usability improvements in the Squish IDE - Support for 64 bit and FreeBSD platforms - All test result logs contain file and line number information - Better error messages Squish customers and evaluators can now find Squish 1.1 packages in their download area. For more information about Squish, visit http://www.froglogic.com/squish. If you are interested in evaluating Squish, please contact us at squish@froglogic.com. About froglogic froglogic Porten & Stadlbauer GbR is a software company offering Qt consultancy services and Qt-based development tools. froglogic was founded by two former Trolltech senior engineers, Reginald Stadlbauer and Harri Porten, who now use their experience and skills to serve the Qt 3rd party market. froglogic is based in Hamburg, Germany. More about froglogic at www.froglogic.com. Contact contact@froglogic.com http://www.froglogic.com +49 (0)40 39 99 11 64 About Tejas Software Consulting Tejas Software Consulting is Danny R. Faught's independent consulting practice. Danny focuses on test automation, test team bootstrapping, and communication. He is a Technical Advisor and Contributing Editor for StickyMinds.com, the maintainer for testingfaqs.org, and the publisher of Open Testware Reviews. Danny has eleven years of software testing experience. Contact Danny R. Faught faught@tejasconsulting.com http://tejasconsulting.com +1-817-294-3998 From amigaREMOVE@monkeyhouse.eclipse.co.uk Tue Apr 6 21:27:17 2004 From: amigaREMOVE@monkeyhouse.eclipse.co.uk (Tim Ocock) Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 21:27:17 +0100 Subject: ANNOUNCE: AmigaPython 2.3.3 alpha resurrected and released Message-ID: Hi, The Python port to AmigaOS has been brought up to date by me, and is available freely from: http://www.monkeyhouse.eclipse.co.uk/amiga/python/ From premshree_python@yahoo.co.in Wed Apr 7 07:34:28 2004 From: premshree_python@yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Premshree=20Pillai?=) Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 07:34:28 +0100 (BST) Subject: pyAlbum.py - Python Album Generator Message-ID: Hello people, I recently updated one of my Python scripts -- pyAlbum.py This is a simple, command-line based, lightweight Python script to create an image album. Of course, there are plenty of image album creation tools -- a lot of them are very good. But, I wanted something very simple, something that doesn't scare the user with too many options. The final album should be clean -- something like what Zope's Image object offers. Here are some of the features of the script: + Thumbnail creation (using a scaling factor that the user enters) + Image creation for the HTML of individual images (again using a scaling factor that the user enters) + The album Index file includes dimensions and file size of each image + The script generates a single CSS -- this makes changing the style very simple + The script runs on the command-line, and does not require any server-side processing Other requirements: + Python Imaging Library (http://www.pythonware.com/products/daily) So, the idea of the script is -- Keep It As Simple As Possible You can see a sample of an album created using this script at http://www.premshree.resource-locator.com/python/pyAlbum/sample/index.htm Oh, and the script itself is available at http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/271246 I hope it's useful. Sincerely, Premshree Pillai ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Insurance Special: Be informed on the best policies, services, tools and more. Go to: http://in.insurance.yahoo.com/licspecial/index.html From me@anthonyeden.com Thu Apr 8 00:38:17 2004 From: me@anthonyeden.com (Anthony Eden) Date: 7 Apr 2004 16:38:17 -0700 Subject: ANN: Pyb 0.2 Released Message-ID: Over the weekend I put together an a new build tool written in Python and based on Ant. This new tool is called Pyb. Documentation and download is available at http://pyb.sf.net . Pyb, although written in Python, already has tasks for building Java projects (such as javac, java, javadoc, jar and war) in addition to tasks specific to Python (setup, epydocs, and python execution). There are also some common tasks for zip, gzip, tar, bz2, copy and delete). Build scripts are written in Python rather than XML or some other format. This gives you access to the full power of Python if necessary. Questions and comments can be directed to the the pyb developer mailing list which can be found on the Pyb SourceForge site at http://www.sf.net/projects/pyb . Sincerely, Anthony Eden From cygnus@cprogrammer.org Thu Apr 8 15:48:26 2004 From: cygnus@cprogrammer.org (Jonathan Daugherty) Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 10:48:26 -0400 Subject: Hydra Backup System 0.1 Message-ID: This is the first official release of the Hydra backup system, a multi-threaded backup client and server written in Python. Hydra uses Pyro, a pure-Python RPC API. Hydra archives directories and stores them on FTP repositories. Hydra 0.1 is licensed under the GPL and can be downloaded at http://freshmeat.net/projects/hydrabackup Contact cygnus@cprogrammer.org for more information.

Hydra Backup Server 0.1 - a client / server backup system in Python. (08-04-04) From andy@colt-telecom.nl Thu Apr 8 16:47:38 2004 From: andy@colt-telecom.nl (Andy Robinson) Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:47:38 +0100 Subject: Python-UK and Open Source Forum - One Week to Go! Message-ID: The UK Python Conference is just one week away! Come and join us all in Oxford on 16-17th April: http://www.accu/org/conference/python.html This follows on from the ACCU Open Source Forum on 14th-15th, at which key Python and Zope people and projects will be rubbing shoulders with IBM, Hewlett Packard, SuSE, MySQL and a host of industry experts. http://www.accu/org/conference/opensource.html Be there! Andy Robinson, ReportLab Europe Ltd. From me@anthonyeden.com Fri Apr 9 16:18:25 2004 From: me@anthonyeden.com (Anthony Eden) Date: 9 Apr 2004 08:18:25 -0700 Subject: ANN: Pyb 0.4 Released Message-ID: Pyb 0.4 is now available. Pyb is an ant-like build tool written in Python. Unlike Ant, which uses XML, Pyb build scripts are written in Python thus giving you access to all of the features of Python in your build scripts. Pyb includes tasks for building Java projects, Python and Jython projects as well as common build-related tasks. More information on Pyb can be found at http://pyb.sf.net/ Recent changes include: Started adding unit tests. Dependencies are now specified as a list of target names passed to the Target constructor. Added -d command line argument to enable debugging. Added jythonc task. Added platform-specific path building path to epydocs. Additional small presentational changes. From mlh@furu.idi.ntnu.no Fri Apr 9 20:05:37 2004 From: mlh@furu.idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland) Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 19:05:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: ANN: Atox 0.3 released Message-ID: What is it? =========== Atox is a framework for automated markup. With it one can quite easily write custom scripts for converting plain text into XML in any way one wishes. Atox is normally used as a command-line script, using a simple XML language to specify the desired transformation from text to markup, but it is also possible to build custom parsers using the Atox library. The name (short for ASCII-to-XML) is inspired by such UNIX tools and system functions as atops and atoi. What can it do? =============== The examples in the distribution demonstrate how you can use Atox to: - Mark up a (relatively simple) technical document (the Atox manual) - Mark up code blocks only through indentation; - Nest lists through indentation - Discern between different indentation "shapes" (e.g. a block quote versus a description list item); - Transform simple LaTeX into XML; - Add XML "syntax highlighting" to Python code; - Mark up screenplays or stageplays, largely based on indentation; - Mark up simple fictional prose; - Mark up simple tables. What's new in 0.3? ================== Some examples were added to the demo directory, highlighting the new features: The 'ax:indented' tag This tag allows you to match an indent and a dedent easily, even if there is a lot of indentation between the two. The 'ax:try' tag You can indicate that a portion of the format is to be parsed with backtracking by wrapping it in a 'try' tag. This can be very useful for the places were a single-token lookahead just won't cut it. The 'ax:glue' attribute This replaces the experimental 'glued' attribute. The 'glue' attribute can contain a regular expression that much then match the skipped text before a glued element. Using an empty string makes it equivalent to 'glued="yes"'. Where can I get it? =================== Atox is hosted at SourceForge (http://atox.sf.net) and the current release (0.3) is available for download via its project page (http://sf.net/projects/atox). The Small Print =============== Atox is released under the MIT license. It comes with no warranty of any kind. Also, even though the current version works well, and the project is currently (as per early 2004) being actively developed, there is no guarantee of continued support. What you see is what you get. -- Magnus Lie Hetland "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay http://hetland.org to live in the land of the free." -- C. M. Burns From jacob@cd.chalmers.se Sat Apr 10 01:21:10 2004 From: jacob@cd.chalmers.se (Jacob Hallen) Date: 10 Apr 2004 00:21:10 GMT Subject: Europython update: Registration open Message-ID: Europython Update ================= - Registration is now open. We apologise for the delay, but we have had some technical problems. - Due to this, we have decided to keep the submission of abstracts for the refereed track open for one more day. Last submission time is now on Sunday 11 April at 23.59 CET. - We have a limited number of beds available in very affordable accomodation near the conference venue. Book early before it runs out. - We are still receiving submissions for regular talks and tutorials. Closing date is 15 April. - There is now a wiki at the Europython website for sprint organising. Start planning! About the conference ==================== EuroPython 2004 will be held 7-9 June in Göteborg, Sweden. The EuroPython conference will have tracks for Science, Business, Education, Applications, Frameworks, Zope and the Python language itself. Lightning talks, Open Space and BOF sessions are also planned. There will be tutorials as well, both for newcomers to Python and Python users interested in special subjects. In the days before and after the conference, programming sprints will be arranged. Important dates =============== Refereed paper proposals: until 11 April. Submission of talks: 1 March - 15 April. Early Bird registration: 9 April - 1 May. Accomodation booking: 9 April - 1 May (or until space runs out) More information at http://www.europython.org. -- From updates@lists.votenader.org Sat Apr 10 10:53:52 2004 From: updates@lists.votenader.org (updates@lists.votenader.org) Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 09:53:52 GMT Subject: Statement on Spam and VoteNader.org Message-ID: <20589c56.3612afba@host-69-48-73-244.roc.choiceone.net> Spam from VoteNader.org? (Or naderexplore04.org) You may have received spam email recently that appears to come from our campaign, or be about our campaign -- perhaps the "From" and or "Reply-to" addresses look like they are coming from VoteNader.org. Or perhaps you have received a message that appears to come from an individual (if the address is real, the real owner probably did not send this email either) with suppressed recipients. Or maybe you received an email that appeared to come from yourself promoting our site. These messages are NOT from Nader for President 2004, and these email tactics are NOT condoned by our campaign in any way. UPDATE: Some of the latest forged emails have been made to appear to be coming from naderexplore04.org. Again, we are not responsible for this unfortunate abuse of email, and there is little in the technical sense that we can do to prevent this as it has nothing to do with our actual infrastructure. We are collecting information. NOTE: The emails with malicious code (viruses, worms, etc.) often have attachments. Our campaign will NEVER send attachments in our announcement emails to you. Please be sure that you have anti-virus software and have the latest updates available for your anti-virus software. Our hosting service has alerted us to say that Nader for President 2004 appears to be the target of what is called a "Joe Job." Such an event is where a spammer forges email to make it appear to have come from some other domain (such as ours -- or yourself). This is hard to prevent on our end and part of the insecure nature of the email protocol in general. Members of our actual email list must request to receive email from us (either through Ralph's signup sheets or subscribing during our exploratory phase, or now on our campaign site). When one signs up for email they must reply to a confirmation message before they receive our list announcements. Our public announcement emails come from "campaign@votenader.org," contain a "Paid for by Nader for President 2004" statement at the bottom, and have "updates@lists.votenader.org" in the "To:" header. Unfortunately, some of these indicators can be forged as well. Most of the Spam that we have received complaints about appear to be forged from email addresses not associated with votenader.org (often forged to appear to be coming from government email addresses), and have our website code embedded in the body of the email with hidden tags that contain random words that work to subvert anti-spam software. If you are on our lists, you can ALWAYS unsubscribe at ANY time by following the instructions included at the end of our announcements. You can also use our unsubscribe page using the email address you signed up with. If you are receiving this SPAM, we extend our apologies. We will pursue the spammers to the full extent of the law. For more information, please review these resources: How Do I Determine the Source of an Email? http://www.aota.net/Email_Spam_Prevention_and_Mgmt/emailsource.php4 Why Does This Spam Look Like I Sent It? http://www.aota.net/Email_Spam_Prevention_and_Mgmt/spamfrom.php4 Coping with a Joe Job http://www.sitepoint.com/article/sabotage-coping-joe-job/2 Please contact abuse@votenader.org with any questions. We have received many samples of the spam and are working to identify the source, if possible. Volunteer -------------- http://www.votenader.org/get_involved/index.php Ballot Access ---------- http://www.votenader.org/ballot_access/index.php Register to Vote ------- http://www.rockthevote.com/rtv_register.php Contribute ------------- http://www.votenader.org/contribute/index.php Contact Us ------------- http://www.votenader.org/contact/index.php -- .more integral part of the world revolution, hastening the day when imperialism, Zionism .meet their doom." These Maoist terrorist organizations are financing their activities by trafficking in controlled substances. According to December 13, 2000, testimony by Frank Cilluffo, to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) " is heavily involved in the European drug trade, especially in Germany and France. French law enforcement estimates that the PKK smuggles 80 percent of the heroin in Paris." Cilluffo is Deputy Director, Global Organized Crime Program Counterterrorism Task Force at Washington, D.C.'s Center for Strategic and International Studies. This same testimony reveals the Nepal Communist Party, ".turned to drug trafficking for funding. Nepal serves as a hub for hashish trafficking in Asia." The CIA Fact Book lists Nepal as a major source for heroin from Southeast Asia to the West. The South Asia Terrorism Portal wrote of the Nepal Communist Party: "The Maoists (Nepal) draw inspiration from the 'Revolutionary International Movement', among whose affiliate is the American Revolutionary Communist Party that provides them their ideological sustenance. Observers have noticed striking similarities in the policies and guerilla tactics adopted by the Maoists and those of the Shining Path of Peru.. Maoist violence has already cost Nepal several hundred lives and destruction of property worth millions of rupees. In 1996, the year the insurgency commenced, 82 people were killed. This figure included insurgents, security forces, personnel and civilians. During the next year, total killings came down by half - 38 people died. The following year, in 1998, after the Maoists intensified their program of violence, 408 people were killed - nearly an elevenfold increase in the number of deaths over the previous year. Ever since, the death toll has been on the rise. By late 2000 the death toll has risen to over 2,100. As of A From rogerb@rogerbinns.com Sun Apr 11 05:09:20 2004 From: rogerb@rogerbinns.com (Roger Binns) Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 21:09:20 -0700 Subject: ANN: dotamatic poster and "art" creator Message-ID: dotamatic is a program that allows you to print out images across many sheets of paper, using a variety of styles for the pixels. It was inspired by The Rasterbator http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/ http://dotamatic.sourceforge.net It all started due to a thread on comp.lang.python: http://tinyurl.com/36gwg It is also a demonstration of distributing a program written in Python and wxPython that can be installed without the end users being aware of that, or of needing to have Python or any accessories installed (provided for Windows, Linux and Mac). It also demonstrates printing and online help. Roger From usenet@datahansa.com Mon Apr 12 08:37:10 2004 From: usenet@datahansa.com (Oleg Paraschenko) Date: 12 Apr 2004 00:37:10 -0700 Subject: TeXML, the XML vocabulary for TeX Message-ID: Hello colleagues, I'd like to introduce you TeXML, the XML vocabulary for TeX: http://getfo.org/texml/ http://getfo.sourceforge.net/texml/ A processor (written in Python) translates TeXML source into TeX. | Example of TeXML to TeX translation | | TeXML: | | | 12pt | letter | | | TeX: | | \documentclass[12pt]{letter} One of the main benefits of TeXML usage is automatic translation of the TeX special symbols. | Example of translation of special TeX symbols | | TeXML: | | \section{No break} | | TeX: | | $\backslash$section\{No~break\} The TeXML processor supports different output encodings and escapes out-of-encoding chars | Example of translation of non-ASCII characters | | TeXML: | | ТеХ | | TeX in ASCII encoding: | | \cyrchar\CYRT \cyrchar\cyre \cyrchar\CYRH | | TeX in Russian encoding | | TeX If you automatically generate TeX files, there are some benefits to generating TeXML instead of TeX: * you avoid painful handling of TeX special characters, * you don't have to bother about encodings, * you can write error-free code more easily. To expand on the last point, if for example, you want to generate | {\bf bold} One of the approaches is to generate "{", then "\bf " (with trailing space) and then "}". It is easy to miss the space or to forget a brace or write an incorrect symbol. But when you use TeXML, it takes care of it for you: | bold I hope you will find TeXML useful. Your comments are welcome. Regards, Oleg From premshree_python@yahoo.co.in Mon Apr 12 10:38:16 2004 From: premshree_python@yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Premshree=20Pillai?=) Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 10:38:16 +0100 (BST) Subject: pyAlbum.py: EXIF support added Message-ID: Hello, I've now added an optional EXIF support to pyAlbum.py (http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/271246) A sample album is available at http://premshree.seacrow.com/temp/pics/2004-04-11/index.htm -Premshree Pillai ===== -Premshree [http://www.qiksearch.com/] ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your partner online. http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony/ From csad7@yahoo.com Mon Apr 12 17:02:41 2004 From: csad7@yahoo.com (chris) Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 18:02:41 +0200 Subject: ANN: cssutils v0.51 Released Message-ID: what is it ---------- A Python package to parse and build CSS Cascading Style Sheets. Partly implement the DOM Level 2 CSS interfaces. Additional some cssutils only convenience and (hopefully) more pythonic methods are integrated. Thanks to Cory Dodt for helpful suggestions and some code patches and to David Mertz for his book "Text Processing in Python" and the included statemachine.py which is used for cssutils kind request Cssutils are far from being perfect or even complete, if you find bugs or have suggestions or problems please contact me. changes in this release ----------------------- there have been quite a few changes since the last release, for full details please see the changes.txt. But I think the API will be more stable from now on. NEW - implemented at least partly almost all DOM Level 2 CSS interfaces now - complete rewrite of CSSParser including logging CSSParser writes all error messages to a log now. you can provide your own log. CSSParser might be configured just to log errors or to raise xml.dom.DOMExceptions when finding any bug - most classes shifted to other submodules. please use the stable main modules cssutils.cssparser for parsing cssutils.cssbuilder for building only - added unittests for most classes - made a distribution package complete with setup.py API CHANGES - attribute style of class StyleRule made private (_style) - REMOVED StyleRule.clearStyleDeclaration() - REMOVED class Selector, integrated into rules now - DEPRECATED StyleDeclaration.addProperty - DEPRECATED cssrule.SimpleAtRule and empty now use subclasses of CSSRule (CharsetRule, ImportRule, FontFaceRule or PageRule) instead - cssmediarule.MediaRule init parameter "medias" renamed to "media" - Comment attribute "comment" renamed to "text" - StyleSheet.getRules() returns a RuleList now license ------- cssutils is published under the LGPL. download -------- download cssutils v0.51 - 040412 from http://cthedot.de/cssutils/ Needs Python 2.3. Uses xml.dom.DOMException and subclasses so may need PyXML. Tested with Python 2.3.3 on Windows XP with PyXML 0.8.3 installed. examples -------- parse a CSSStyleSheet Normally a CSS parser should ignore errors in a CSS stylesheet. So the default instantiation of CSSParser (parameter raiseExceptions=False) does not raise any exceptions but writes all errors in a parsed CSS to a log file now. You might provide your own log with parameter log=YOURLOG. This example does not use the log but would stop on the first error. from cssutils.cssparser import CSSParser p = CSSParser(raiseExceptions=True) try: css = p.parseString('body { color :red }') # or p.parse('filename.css') except xml.dom.DOMException, e: print e css.pprint() # prettyprinter s.b. outputs body { color: red; } build a new CSSStyleSheet Not all interfaces of DOM Level 2 CSS are implemented yet. But they will be provided in future versions of the cssbuilder module. The following is a simple example how to build a CSSStyleSheet object. from cssutils.cssbuilder import * # init CSSStylesheet css = StyleSheet() # build a rule r = StyleRule() r.addSelector('body') r.addSelector('b') # a second one d = StyleDeclaration() d.setProperty('color', 'red') # old addProperty is DEPRECATED r.setStyleDeclaration(d) # build @media Rule mr = MediaRule(' print, tv ') d = StyleDeclaration() d.setProperty('color', '#000') r = StyleRule('body', d) mr.addRule(r) # compose stylesheet css.addComment('basic styles') css.addComment('styles for print or tv') css.addRule(mr) css.insertRule(r, 1) # output css.pprint(2) outputs /* basic styles */ body, b { color: red; } /* styles for print or tv */ @media print, tv { body { color: #000; } } thanks christof hoeke http://cthedot.de

cssutils 0.51 - a CSS Cascading Style Sheets library for Python (12-Apr-04) From updates@lists.votenader.org Tue Apr 13 22:07:34 2004 From: updates@lists.votenader.org (updates@lists.votenader.org) Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:07:34 GMT Subject: Hey, Corporate America! Show Taxpayers Some Appreciation! Message-ID: Hey, Corporate America! Show Taxpayers Some Appreciation! By Ralph Nader If you work for a corporation, ask your own employer to support Taxpayer Appreciation Day. (We’ve included contact information at the end of the article.) Take Action Now! April 15 is just around the corner. Please let us know what action you’ve taken and what type of response you receive at taxday@votenader.org I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that April 15th of each year be designated Taxpayer Appreciation Day, a day when corporations receiving taxpayer subsidies, bailouts, and other forms of corporate welfare can express their thanks to the citizens who provide them. Though it may not be evident, quite a few industries -- and the profits they generate -- can be traced back to taxpayer-financed programs whose fruits have been given away to (mostly) larger businesses. Taxpayer dollars have often funded discoveries made by NASA, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. In many instances the rights to those discoveries were later given away to companies that brag about them as though they were the fruits of their own investments. Taxpayer dollars have played a major role in the growth of the aviation and aerospace, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications industries -- to name only a few. Though corporate America insists it must file yearly income taxes just like everyone else, it is responsible for a sharply decreasing portion of federal tax dollars -- despite record profits. Despite record profits, corporate tax contributions to the federal budget have been steadily declining for fifty years and now stand at a mere 7.4% of the federal government income because of the loopholes they driven into our tax laws. The average citizen pays more than four to five times that in federal income tax revenues (with the single exception of payroll taxes). Clearly corporations that believe they are self-reliant are often, in fact, dependent on taxpayer funds to maintain their financial viability. The least they could do is thank us. Which is why we need something like Taxpayer Appreciation Day. Consider the following: General Electric bought RCA (which owned NBC) in the mid-1980s with funds it was able to save by using an outrageous tax loophole passed by Congress in 1981. That loophole allowed GE to pay no federal taxes on three years of profits, totaling more than $6 billion dollars. It also gave them a $125 million refund! That gave GE the money to buy RCA. GE should arrange a media extravaganzas on NBC to say "Thank you, taxpayers.” Pharmaceutical companies constantly ballyhoo their discoveries in advertisements. What they don't tell us is that many of the important nonredundant therapeutic drugs -- including most anticancer drugs -- were developed, in whole or in part, with taxpayer money and then given to them by the NIH and the Defense Department. Bristol-Meyers Squibb, for example, controls the rights to Taxol, an anticancer drug developed all the way through human clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health with $31 million of taxpayer moneys. Pharmaceutical companies spend billions on advertisements each year. Perhaps they should consider a big "Thank You, Taxpayers" ad campaign every April 15, if only to remind them where their drug research and development subsidies come from. Mining companies often receive vast sweetheart deals from taxpayers. Under the 1872 Mining Act hard rock mining companies are allowed to purchase mining rights to public land for only $5 an acre, no matter how valuable the minerals on (or in) that land might be. A Canadian company recently mined $9 billion in gold on federal land in Nevada after using the Mining Act to purchase the mining rights to it for about $30,000. Mining companies owe the taxpayers their gratitude. Television broadcasters were given free license to use public airwaves (worth around $70 billion) by a supine Congress in 1997. They too should thank us. What about all those professional sports corporations that play and profit in taxpayer-funded stadiums and arenas? The owners and players should thank the fans/taxpayers who -- in spite of their largess -- still must pay through the nose for tickets. For years McDonalds received taxpayer subsidies to promote its products overseas as part of a foreign market access program. Now McDonalds is a ubiquitous brand name worldwide, but has it ever thanked the taxpayers who underwrote its efforts? Then there are the HMOs, hospitals, and defense contractors that have had their legal fees reimbursed by the taxpayers when our government prosecutes them for fraud or cost overruns. Those companies have great public relations firms that can help them show us their gratitude. Corporate America has taken too much from us for too long. It's time it shows us a little bit of appreciation. Corporate Contacts: General Electric (NBC): David Frail Financial Communications 1--203-373-3387 david.frail@corporate.ge.com Bristol-Meyers Squibb: Peter R. Dolan, CEO 345 Park Avenue New York, New York, USA 10154-0037 1-212-546-4000 peter.dolan@bms.com Viacom (CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, BET, Paramount Pictures, Viacom Outdoor, Infinity, UPN, Spike TV, TV Land, CMT: Country Music Television, Comedy Central, Showtime, Blockbuster, and Simon & Schuster): Sumner M. Redstone , Chairman and CEO 1515 Broadway New York, NY 10036 1-212-258-6000 (refused to provide email addresses) Walt Disney Co. (ABC): David Eisner, CEO 500 S. Buena Vista Street Burbank, CA 91521 ABC, Inc. 1-818-460-7477 netaudr@abc.com McDonalds USA: Jim Cantalupo, Chairman and CEO McDonald’s Plaza Oak Brook, IL 60523 1-800-244-6227 Email on-line form. Halliburton (Kellogg Brown & Root): David J. Lesar, Chairman, President & CEO 5 Houston Center 1401 McKinney, Suite 2400 Houston, TX 77010 1-713-759-2600 communityrelations@halliburton.com In addition to these, pursue your favorite and let us know what they say! -- address their October 6, 2002 rally in Central Park. Stewart was indicted for passing messages on behalf of her terrorist client Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. One of the members of NION's Advisory Board, Abdeen Jabara, is a member of the legal advisory board for the American Muslim Council. He is a past president of the Arab-American Ant-Discrimination Committee, a board member of William Kunstler's Center for Constitutional Rights, and a co-counsel with Lynne Stewart for Sheik Rahman, the terrorist convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The American Muslim Council is one of the current members of Al-Arian's NCPPF (the same group to which IFCO's Bernstein belongs). Leaders of the AMC have been quoted as praising Hamas and Hezbollah. Jabara's AMC advisory board colleagues include Fakhri Al-Barzinji. Al-Barzinji is involved in Mar-Jac Poultry, which was raided last year by the FBI for links to Sami Al-Arian. Bashir Ahmad is another of Jabara's AMC advisory board colleagues. Ahmad is a member of the SAMAD Group (a financial operation) and Justice Taqi Usmani works for the SAMAD Group. Taqi Usmani is a suspected major player in the From altis@semi-retired.com Tue Apr 13 17:45:41 2004 From: altis@semi-retired.com (Kevin Altis) Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:45:41 -0700 Subject: ANN: PythonCard 0.7.3.1 Message-ID: PythonCard is a GUI construction kit for building cross-platform=20 desktop applications on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Release 0.7.3.1 includes over 40 sample applications and tools to help=20= users build applications in Python, including codeEditor, findfiles,=20 and resourceEditor (layout editor). A list of changes since release=20 0.7.2 is at the end of this message. This is the last planned "prototype" release of PythonCard. We've=20 started cleaning up the framework code and finalizing the API for a 1.0=20= release sometime in early summer. There will be at least two more=20 releases before then, so if you would like to get involved in the=20 PythonCard project, now is a great time to join the mailing list. All the information you need about PythonCard can be found on the=20 project web page at: http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/ The installation instructions and walkthroughs are available on the=20 main documentation page: http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/documentation.html You can download the latest release at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D19015 For a list of most of the samples that have been built with PythonCard=20= and screenshots of them in action go to: http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/samples/samples.html The kind people at SourceForge host the project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pythoncard/ If you want to get involved the main contact point is the Mailing list: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pythoncard-users PythonCard requires Python 2.2.1 or later and wxPython 2.4.1.2 or later. Additional Notes: Remember to backup or just delete your old PythonCardPrototype=20 directory before installing a new version, so that the old files aren't=20= still in the package directory. If you installed a previous version of=20= PythonCard on Windows using the binary installer, then you should be=20 able to remove the old package via the Add/Remove Programs Control=20 Panel. The distutils installer will put the framework, components, docs,=20 samples, and tools in Lib\site-packages or your Python directory=20 (typically C:\Python22 or C:\Python23). Of course, on Linux and Mac OS=20= X that path will be slightly different and have forward slashes. Windows users should get a PythonCard menu in the Start->Programs menu=20= with links to the documentation, samples, codeEditor, findfiles, and=20 resourceEditor. The tools and most of the samples will now keep their config and data=20 file info in the "pythoncard_config" directory created by the=20 framework. On Unix, the directory will be ~/pythoncard_config. On=20 Windows, the directory varies as described in the following post: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/PythonCard/1496793 So, if you run a PythonCard app with any of the runtime tools and=20 select "Save Configuration" from the "Debug" menu, the window positions=20= and sizes of your runtime windows (Shell, Message Watcher, etc.) will=20 be saved in "pythoncard_config/pythoncard_config.txt" not the=20 PythonCardPrototype directory. Likewise, when you change the text style=20= used by the codeEditor via the "Styles..." menu item under the "Format"=20= menu, the modification will be saved in=20 "pythoncard_config/stc-styles.rc.cfg" ka --- Kevin Altis altis@semi-retired.com http://altis.pycs.net/ Release 0.7.3.1 2004-04-09 added _getId back to widget.py menu.py workaround for FindMenuItem and GTK exception updated MANIFEST.in and setup.py for PyPI/distutils added testevents sample for debugging cross-platform event order Release 0.7.3 2004-04-03 changed py2exe scripts for version 0.5 syntax dropped support of PyCrust in wxPython 2.4.0.7 and earlier added check to avoid unneeded widget initialization added TextArea workaround for GetValue on the Mac McPC and RanchBiz added to moreapplications.html added lowercase skip alias for Skip to dispatch.py switched to mixedCase style names for BitmapCanvas added new-style class properties to Background and CustomDialog classes: position, size, etc. added leading underscore to addEventListener and notifyEventListeners methods changed _getAttributeNames to use inspect module updated Windows installation docs for Python 2.3 and wxPython 2.4.2.4 added explicit Stop() for timers when app is closed added donations.html fixed default Mac menubar handling converted legacy class name comparisons to __class__.__name__ removed RightTextField component, use TextField with 'alignment':'right' attribute instead many modifications to support wxPython 2.5 and higher in general, just look for code starting with if wx.wxVERSION > (2, 5): to see the version specific changes also modified spacers for sizers to use tuples instead of separate w, h args some items are marked with a "wxPython 2.5 change" comment all changes are being done so that release 0.7.3 will work with wxPython 2.4.x or wxPython 2.5.x or higher future releases may drop support for wxPython 2.4.x EXIF.py updated to remove Python 2.3 warnings added support for Python 2.3 .chm file on Windows =00 From premshree_python@yahoo.co.in Wed Apr 14 10:22:35 2004 From: premshree_python@yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Premshree=20Pillai?=) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 10:22:35 +0100 (BST) Subject: pyAlbum.py is now PyAC Message-ID: Hello, pyAlbum.py is now called PyAC - Python Album Creator. The project has been moved to SourceForge. It's at http://pyac.sourceforge.net If you have created an album using pyAlbum.py (NOT pyAlbum) or PyAC, and are interested in having your album's link placed at the development website, drop a line to pyalbum[AT]rediffmail[DOT]com -Premshree Pillai ===== -Premshree [http://www.qiksearch.com/] ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your partner online. http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony/ From dwinter@icpeurope.net Wed Apr 14 12:34:08 2004 From: dwinter@icpeurope.net (Doug Winter) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 12:34:08 +0100 Subject: ANNOUNCE: Aiakos 0.2 beta Message-ID: Aiakos is an innovative distributed authentication system, based on Zope and Plone. Much of the heavy lifting is done using the LDAPUserFolder product by Jens Vagelpohl. Aiakos allows you to provide a central sign-on system for a network of websites. All login and registration activity takes place on the central Aiakos server. Participating sites receive encrypted authentication packages from the authentication server, with which they can authenticate users. Client libraries are provided for Microsoft Windows (as COM objects) and as a Zope Product for Plone 1. The central user database is stored on an LDAP server, and participating sites are provided with access to the LDAP server for complex user-related activity - however, most sites will never need this. In addition a distributed event logging system is included, that allows interesting events to be recorded on participating sites, and then collected by a central server. Aiakos is released under the GNU General Public License. Aiakos is beta software, but is in very active testing. See the Aiakos website for more information: http://aiakos.sourceforge.net Doug Winter ICP Europe -- 020 79610341 / 07879 423002 / dwinter@icpeurope.net 3 Waterhouse Square, Holborn Bars, 142 Holborn, London EC1N 2NX www.businesseurope.com www.icpeurope.net www.venturedome.com 1024D/1AB26B8C C88E DC6D A578 DEFB C493 A44D 0156 0479 1AB2 6B8C From dwinter@icpeurope.net Wed Apr 14 12:34:14 2004 From: dwinter@icpeurope.net (Doug Winter) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 12:34:14 +0100 Subject: ANNOUNCE: HamCannon 0.1 beta Message-ID: HamCannon is a Zope/Plone Product for managing outbound email marketing. HamCannon is for sending ham, not spam - it has much support for helping users unsubscribe and none for hiding from them. Please don't use HamCannon to send spam. HamCannon provides all of the tools required to produce personalised email newsletters or other email marketing, with: * subscription management * open tracking, bounce tracking and link tracking * complete statistical reporting * complete personalisation, limited only by your data Newsletters are composed using Zope Page Templates, which are provided with list and user objects, containing all information necessary for rendering themselves for that user. Links are automatically converted to tracked versions, and an opentracking image is inserted after the body tag. Images are downloaded and bundled into the email, to allow them to work offline. HamCannon is in active use, but beta testers are required to help produce a package with complete and useful documentation. Also, HamCannon has only been tested with Plone 1.0.5. Plone 2.0 testers would be appreciated. HamCannon is released under the GNU General Public License. See the website: http://www.hamcannon.com Or the Sourceforge Project for files: http://www.sf.net/projects/hamcannon Doug Winter ICP Europe -- 020 79610341 / 07879 423002 / dwinter@icpeurope.net 3 Waterhouse Square, Holborn Bars, 142 Holborn, London EC1N 2NX www.businesseurope.com www.icpeurope.net www.venturedome.com 1024D/1AB26B8C C88E DC6D A578 DEFB C493 A44D 0156 0479 1AB2 6B8C From calfdog@yahoo.com Wed Apr 14 15:48:59 2004 From: calfdog@yahoo.com (calfdog@yahoo.com) Date: 14 Apr 2004 07:48:59 -0700 Subject: ATTN: Pamie 1.0a released Message-ID: This is an alpha release of Pamie. There have been a lot of requests by people in the SQA field for an application like this in Python. So with my very limited knowledge of development I threw Pamie together. PAMIE is Free! I just ask that if you use it, you share the knowledge to make it better. There are no Docs but it should be easy enough to figure out from the example included. It runs right from PythonWin IDE. You use the IDE for all your scripting. ============================================================================= What is Pamie? http://pamie.sourceforge.net/ Pamie allows you to write python scripts in order to drive Internet Explorer. Pamie is a lite python port of SAMIE written in Perl by Henry Wasserman. This is a "free" open source tool written for QA Engineers or Developers as a means to simulate users exploring a web site. Example: Shopper going to a product page, adding items to a cart and making a purchase or perhaps a user registering using an online registration/enrollment form. Pamie is in the begining stages but is still quite useable. Functions available for pam.py verison 1.0a: ClickButton - Simulates a user clicking a button ClickFrameLink - Simulates a user clicking link within a frame ClickFormButton - Simulates a user clicking a form (submit) button ClickImage - Simulates a user clicking an image ClickLink - Simulates a user clicking a link GetFrameNames - Get the names of the frames for that page SetCheckBox - Simulates a user setting a checkbox to "True" or "False"' SetRadioButton - Simulates a user setting a radio button to "True" or "False"' SetFramesEditBox - Simulates a user entering text into a textbox within a frame SetListBox - Simulates a user selecting a listbox item SetTextBox - - Simulates a user entering text into a textbox For more information Contact: rmarchetti@users.sourceforge.net This is no support for pop-ups at this time. From jacob@cd.chalmers.se Wed Apr 14 16:22:40 2004 From: jacob@cd.chalmers.se (Jacob Hallen) Date: 14 Apr 2004 15:22:40 GMT Subject: Europython update Message-ID: Europython news update ====================== - Due to our earlier delays, we have decided to push the deadline for submitting talks until the 26th of April. While we have a nice set of proposals in several tracks, there are some that neeed a boost. Submit your talk today! - Early Bird registration is open, as is registration for cheap accomodation. Deadline for both of these is 1 May 2004. This deadline will not move. - Our keynote speakers will be Guido van Rossum and Mark Shuttleworth. If you don't know who Mark Shuttleworth is, find out at http://www.markshuttleworth.com/. If you don't know who Guido van Rossum is, you really need to come to Europython to find out. About Europython ================ Europython is a community Python and Zope conference that is now in its third year. It will be held in Göteborg, Sweden from 7 June 2004 until 9 June 2004. There will be many tracks, tutorials, sprints, good food, good weather and lots of fun. Göteborg offers lots of fun things to do, so it is a good opportunity to bring your family. Find out more at http://www.europython.org -- From =?koi8-r?Q?=22?=Dmitry Borisov=?koi8-r?Q?=22=20?= Wed Apr 14 21:11:14 2004 From: =?koi8-r?Q?=22?=Dmitry Borisov=?koi8-r?Q?=22=20?= (=?koi8-r?Q?=22?=Dmitry Borisov=?koi8-r?Q?=22=20?=) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 00:11:14 +0400 Subject: ANN: PyMedia 1.2.0 Message-ID: Hi, Just wanted to let you know that PyMedia 1.2.0 is out. PyMedia is a media library for Python based on libavcodec and libavformat. It includes following features: 1. Audio decoding/encoding. 2. Video decoding/encoding. 3. Direct access to sound device with ability to pause/stop get position 4. Direct access to cdda tracks for easy grabbing and encoding Audio CDs 5. Simple interface and portability( Windows/Linux ) Just check the http://pymedia.sourceforge.net and download latest version( 1.2.0 ). You may find some really handy scripts in examples directory. These are: Video player( vplayer.py ), requires pydfb( http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=86491&package_id=107482 ) or pygame 1.6 patched with Overlay support( http://66.159.221.186/pygame-1.6-overlay.patch.gz ) Audio player( aplayer.py ) CDDA grabber( read_cdda_track.py ) Video recoder( encode_video.py, recode_video.py ) Audio recoder( recode_audio.py ) Thank you, Dmitry/ From mlh@furu.idi.ntnu.no Wed Apr 14 21:42:32 2004 From: mlh@furu.idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 20:42:32 +0000 (UTC) Subject: ANN: Atox 0.4 released Message-ID: What is it? =========== Atox is a framework for automated markup. With it one can quite easily write custom scripts for converting plain text into XML in any way one wishes. Atox is normally used as a command-line script, using a simple XML language to specify the desired transformation from text to markup, but it is also possible to build custom parsers using the Atox library. The name (short for ASCII-to-XML) is inspired by such UNIX tools and system functions as atops and atoi. What can it do? =============== The examples in the distribution demonstrate how you can use Atox to: - Mark up a (relatively simple) technical document (the Atox manual); - Mark up code blocks only through indentation; - Nest lists through indentation - Discern between different indentation "shapes" (e.g. a block quote versus a description list item); - Transform simple LaTeX into XML; - Add XML "syntax highlighting" to Python code; - Mark up screenplays or stageplays, largely based on indentation; - Mark up simple fictional prose; - Mark up simple tables. What's new in 0.4? ================== These are the changes I've made: - Made the error handling slightly more user-friendly. - Added some basic improvements to the command-line interface (the '-e', '-f' and '-o' switches, as well the ability to use multiple input files or standard input). Note that the new calling convention is incompatible with the previous version, in that the format file is no longer supplied as an argument. - Normalized newline-handling. - Added the utility tags 'ax:block', 'ax:sob' (start-of-block) and 'ax:eob' (end-of-block). - Fixed an important bug in the indentation code, which affected 'ax:indented'. - Made empty sequences legal. - Added support for config files. Where can I get it? =================== Atox is hosted at SourceForge (http://atox.sf.net) and the current release (0.4) is available for download via its project page (http://sf.net/projects/atox). The Small Print =============== Atox is released under the MIT license. It comes with no warranty of any kind. Also, even though the current version works well, and the project is currently (as per early 2004) being actively developed, there is no guarantee of continued support. What you see is what you get. -- Magnus Lie Hetland "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay http://hetland.org to live in the land of the free." -- C. M. Burns From rogerb@rogerbinns.com Thu Apr 15 02:37:48 2004 From: rogerb@rogerbinns.com (Roger Binns) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:37:48 -0700 Subject: ANN: dotamatic poster and "art" creator Message-ID: dotamatic is a program that allows you to print out images across many sheets of paper, using a variety of styles for the pixels. It was inspired by The Rasterbator http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/ http://dotamatic.sourceforge.net It all started due to a thread on comp.lang.python: http://tinyurl.com/36gwg It is also a demonstration of distributing a program written in Python and wxPython that can be installed without the end users being aware of that, or of needing to have Python or any accessories installed (provided for Windows, Linux and Mac). It also demonstrates printing and online help. Roger From tom.sheffler@sbcglobal.net Fri Apr 16 05:03:44 2004 From: tom.sheffler@sbcglobal.net (tom.sheffler@sbcglobal.net) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 04:03:44 GMT Subject: ANNOUNCE: Python module for PLI apps in Verilog using VPI Message-ID: There have been a number of attempts of linking Python and Verilog. APVM embeds the Python interpreter in Verilog using the VPI interface. It also presents an object-oriented interface to storing instance data and registering simulation callbacks. This package has a few other features that help simplify writing PLI applications and has been shown to work with Icarus, NC, Modelsim and VCS. This initial release (0.10) has a short paper describing its design philosophy and is distributed with a number of useful and illustrative examples. The release is hosted at Source Forge at http://apvm.sourceforge.net -T From jim@zope.com Fri Apr 16 15:56:54 2004 From: jim@zope.com (Jim Fulton) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 10:56:54 -0400 Subject: New mailing list to discuss zope interfaces Message-ID: I've created a new mailing list at: http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/interface-dev to discuss Zope interfaces. Zope interfaces provide a means of: - Documenting and specifying object behavior - Defining component connections To find out more about Zope interfaces, see the Zope Interface Wiki at: http://zope.org/Wikis/Interfaces Jim -- Jim Fulton mailto:jim@zope.com Python Powered! CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org From alberanid@libero.it Sat Apr 17 16:36:23 2004 From: alberanid@libero.it (Davide Alberani) Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2004 15:36:23 GMT Subject: IMDbPY 1.1 released Message-ID: IMDbPY 1.1 is available here: http://imdbpy.sourceforge.net/ IMDbPY is a Python package useful to retrieve and manage the data of the IMDb movie database. In this release, support for information about people was added, some bugs were fixed and the new IMDb search system is used. IMDbPY aims to provide an easy way to access the IMDb's database using a Python script. Platform-independent and written in pure Python, it's theoretically independent from the data source (since IMDb provides two or three different interfaces to their database). IMDbPY is mainly intended for programmers and developers who want to build their Python programs using the IMDbPY package, but some example scripts - useful for simple users - are included. So far the only data source supported is the IMDb web server. -- To contact me: http://digilander.libero.it/alberanid/ From jeremy@alum.mit.edu Sat Apr 17 19:02:10 2004 From: jeremy@alum.mit.edu (Jeremy Hylton) Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2004 14:02:10 -0400 Subject: ZODB 3.3 alpha 3 released Message-ID: I'm pleased to announce the release of ZODB2 3.3 alpha 3. This release includes support for new-style persistent classes and multi-version concurrency control. It's an alpha release, so we could use feedback on the new features and helping testing them. The 3.3a3 release requires Python 2.3. It contains the code that is slated to be in Zope 2.8. This version of ZODB supports Zope 2 and Zope 3. You can download a source tarball or Windows installer from http://zope.org/Products/ZODB3.3 This release contains a lot of changes and improvements since the previous alpha releases. The transaction API and implementation have been overhauled and the persistence API has seen some changes to accommodate Zope 3. New features include persistent weak references, an add() method for ZODB connections, and explicit transaction manager objects. The news file lists the changes in more detail: http://zope.org/Products/ZODB3.3/NEWS.html The new features in 3.3 represent major changes to ZODB. Support for new-style classes means that ZODB programmers can use the new class features introduced in Python 2.2, like properties and descriptors. It also means that ZODB no longer uses ExtensionClass, which caused many subtle incompatibilities with other classes. The multi-version concurrency control feature represents the end of read conflicts. If a transaction encounters a conflict, it reads older revisions of the object rather than raising a ReadConflictError. This feature allows read-only transactions to see a consistent view of the database without need to handle read conflicts and restart the transaction. I'd also like to include a personal note: This is the last ZODB release that I will be actively involved in. I will be starting a new job next month at Google in New York City. I've enjoyed working with everyone in the ZODB and Zope communities; I'll be looking forward to the ZODB 3.3 final release along with you. Enjoy! -- Jeremy Hylton From brett@python.org Sun Apr 18 04:29:08 2004 From: brett@python.org (Brett C.) Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2004 20:29:08 -0700 Subject: python-dev Summary for 2004-03-16 through 2004-03-31 Message-ID: python-dev Summary for 2004-03-16 through 2004-03-31 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This is a summary of traffic on the `python-dev mailing list`_ from March 16, 2004 through March 31, 2004. It is intended to inform the wider Python community of on-going developments on the list. To comment on anything mentioned here, just post to `comp.lang.python`_ (or email python-list@python.org which is a gateway to the newsgroup) with a subject line mentioning what you are discussing. All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on something. And if all of this really interests you then get involved and join `python-dev`_! This is the thirty-eighth summary written by Brett Cannon (who managed to actually convince someone to employ him for the summer). To contact me, please send email to brett at python.org ; I do not have the time to keep up on comp.lang.python and thus do not always catch follow-ups posted there. All summaries are archived at http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ . Please note that this summary is written using reStructuredText_ which can be found at http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html . Any unfamiliar punctuation is probably markup for reST_ (otherwise it is probably regular expression syntax or a typo =); you can safely ignore it, although I suggest learning reST; it's simple and is accepted for `PEP markup`_ and gives some perks for the HTML output. Also, because of the wonders of programs that like to reformat text, I cannot guarantee you will be able to run the text version of this summary through Docutils_ as-is unless it is from the `original text file`_. .. _PEP Markup: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0012.html The in-development version of the documentation for Python can be found at http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/ and should be used when looking up any documentation on new code; otherwise use the current documentation as found at http://docs.python.org/ . PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals) are located at http://www.python.org/peps/ . To view files in the Python CVS online, go to http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/ . Reported bugs and suggested patches can be found at the SourceForge_ project page. The `Python Software Foundation`_ is the non-profit organization that holds the intellectual property for Python. It also tries to forward the development and use of Python. But the PSF_ cannot do this without donations. You can make a donation at http://python.org/psf/donations.html . Every penny helps so even a small donation (you can donate through PayPal or by check) helps. .. _python-dev: http://www.python.org/dev/ .. _SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470 .. _python-dev mailing list: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev .. _comp.lang.python: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.python .. _Docutils: http://docutils.sf.net/ .. _reST: .. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html .. _PSF: .. _Python Software Foundation: http://python.org/psf/ .. contents:: .. _last summary: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2004-03-16_2004-03-31.html .. _original text file: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2004-03-16_2004-03-31.ht ===================== Summary Announcements ===================== Well, I am no longer looking for a summer job! One of my professors was gracious enough to offer me a research position with him for the summer working on Internet2 stuff so the summer job request is now gone... until next summer. =) PyCon_ happened during the timespan this summary covers. Unlike last year when emails to python-dev actually went down, there was a good amount of traffic at the conference. A good portion of this was due to the sprint on Python's core that took place. A bunch of core developers showed up for the whole weekend and used part of that time to answer emails. Great for python-dev but made my life a little difficult. =) But the sprint overall was a definite gain with various tweaks done, improvements to the profiler, and a bunch of bugs and patches closed (actually had the number of open patches and bugs have a net loss of 7 and 10 from that week, respectively; that has not happened in a while). The release schedule (and thus what is definitely planned and what can go in if it gets finished in time) was set while at PyCon. Read the summary entitled `Python 2.4 release schedule`_ below for details and links. .. _PyCon: http://www.pycon.org/ ========= Summaries ========= ---------------------------- "I want to be like Raymond!" ---------------------------- So, you want to speed up Python like Raymond Hettinger has? Well, he posted an email listing various optimizations he has on his list to try out. That specific email can be found at http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-March/043276.html This also brought back the debate of whether pure Python modules should be recoded in C for performance. See previous threads for a longer discussion on the subject. Contributing threads: - `Joys of Optimization `__ - `todo (was: Joys of Optimization) `__ -------------- Decimal update -------------- `PEP 327`_ was revised to make certain issues more explicit and to discuss possible function naming (summarized below). This lead to a discussion about how to name various things. Although there are historical violations of the coding standard, the names should follow `PEP 7`_ and `PEP 8`_. The testing suite is also finished along with the PEP essentially being finished. .. _PEP 327: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0327.html Contributing threads: - `Changes to PEP 327: Decimal data type `__ - `PEP 327: Decimal data type `__ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow the coding standard, people -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discussing naming conventions came up while discussing PEP 327. The basic conclusion is that older modules don't follow the coding standards laid out in `PEP 7`_ and `PEP 8`_, but that does not mean new code should be allowed to break the rules. .. _PEP 7: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0007.html .. _PEP 8: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html Contributing threads: - `Changes to PEP 327: Decimal data type `__ - `(class) module names clarification `__ - `(old) module names `__ ---------------------------------------------------- "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" ---------------------------------------------------- The idea of redefining how 'is' operates when comparing immutable types came up. It was suggested that when two immutable objects of the same type were being compared that it should be an equivalence test instead of an identity test. For instance:: >>> x = 99 >>> y = 99 >>> x is y True while:: >>> x = 100 >>> y = 100 >>> x is y False is false. The point was made, though, that unless you are comparing to None that 'is' should not be used for comparing immutables and instead the equality operator ('==') should be used instead. There is backwards-compatibility issues with changing this. Guido pronounced that 'is' ain't changing. Contributing threads: - `A proposal has surfaced on comp.lang.python to redefine "is" `__ - `redefining is `__ - `(not) redefining is `__ --------------------------------- Getting PyChecker into the stdlib --------------------------------- The idea of adding PyChecker_ to the stdlib came up once again. Support seems to be there but the developers of PyChecker did not speak up. PyChecker 2 is under development and that changes how PyChecker does things significantly (analyzes bytecode directly) which might be why they were mum on the topic. .. _PyChecker: http://pychecker.sf.net/ ------------------------------- Simplifying logging.basicConfig ------------------------------- Simplifying basicConfig in the logging package to making logging to a file simpler was proposed. One person suggested more examples in the documentation ala unittest. Another person disagreed. No change has been made at this point nor any specific statement as to whether any will be. Contributing threads: - `Some changes to logging `__ -------------------------- A new committer amongst us -------------------------- Phillip J. Eby gained CVS commit privileges to help with development of Distutils. But Phillip has been active on python-dev for a while so I am sure he can be put to work on some other things as well. =) Contributing threads: - `new Python CVS committer `__ ---------------- Working on HP-UX ---------------- Cameron Laird is still interested in working on the port of Python on HP-UX. If you are interested in helping out please contact him. Contributing threads: - `Portability: update and oblique apology `__ ------------------------------------------- Binding variables for generator expressions ------------------------------------------- What would you expect in this situation using generator expressions?:: gen_exps = [] for cnt in range(10): gen_exps.append(x**2 for x in range(cnt)) If you thought that gen_exps would contain 10 generators that each return a list longer than the one previous then you like capture binding for generator expressions (capturing the values of all free variables used in the generator expression at definition time). If you though there would be 10 generators that all had the power of 2 from 0 to 9 then you like late binding (using the value of the free variables in the generator expression at execution time of the generator). Guido brought this up in his keynote for PyCon_ and said that he preferred late binding. The reasoning is that there are no surprises in terms of corner cases and having more obvious values for the free variables. The point about performance of generator expressions was also brought up using the now-standard ``sum(x**2 for range(1000))`` example. Using a list comprehension was actually slightly faster (less than 10%) then the generator expression. This is partially thanks to Raymond's tweaking of list comprehensions by adding the LIST_APPEND opcode. The rest is due to generator expressions creating an actual generator and thus having to create eval frames and playing with them. But it was pointed out that if the number passed into 'range' is raised then generator expressions quickly end up winning because the execution fits in the cache better, especially if xrange is used. Contributing threads: - `An issue recently brought up in patch #872326 `__ - `Possible resolution of generator expression variable... `__ - `genexps slow? `__ -------------------------------------------------- More than you ever wanted to know about decorators -------------------------------------------------- Decorators were the topic for the latter half of March. Initially the discussion focused on where to put the list of decorators (if Guido's patch as found at http://www.python.org/sf/926860 is any indication he has a preference with the decorators coming on the line above the function/method definition) should go. With C# having a similar functionality as what is being proposed roughly following C#'s syntax was considered a good thing, albeit tweaked so that the decorator list goes on its own line (reason being the LL(1) parser is too dumb to handle it coming before the 'def' on the same line and it alleviates the issue of having a long decorator list that would a full line anyway. With the winning syntax, though, there is the issue of preexisting code and the work at interpreter prompt. The former is a problem for code that happens to have a list that is not assigned to anything before a function definition; why anyone would have a list defined that is not assigned is beyond me. As for the latter issue, that is a slight problem. To get around it you can stick the definition in an 'if' statement:: if True: [decorate, this] def marthastewart(): pass Slight pain, but it has been generally accepted that placing decorators on their own line is just so much easier to deal with aesthetically this minor inconvenience has been viewed as acceptable. After PyCon Guido talked to some people who suggested having another way of tacking on metadata separate from using descriptors, partially since C#'s version of decorators is mostly for metadata. But tacking on attributes to a function can be done using the proposed decorators by defining some auxiliary function that takes in named arguments that specify the name of the attribute and the value to set it and returns a callable that will take in a function and assign the attributes. This also brought up the discussion of setting function attributes from within a function since decorators will most likely be used to set metadata. The idea of having attributes set for the function if a name starts with '.' was brought up but Guido said he wanted to save that syntax for within a 'with' block. The other suggestion was to do ``func.attribute`` where "func" is the name of the function is being defined, but Guido gave that a -1000 vote so that ain't about to happen. Contributing threads: - `order of decorator application? `__ - `PEP 318 - posting draft `__ - `PEP 318 `__ - `method decorators (PEP 318) `__ - `PEP 318 and syntax coloring `__ - `decorators (not transformations) `__ - `PEP318 metaclass approach `__ - `method decorators `__ - `Yet Another Decorator Syntax Suggestion (YADSS) `__ - `PEP 318: Singleton decorator `__ - `PEP 318: Preserve function signatures `__ - `PEP 318: Security use case `__ - `PEP 318: Decorators last before colon `__ - `PEP 318: Set attribs with .name = value `__ - `Re: Python-Dev Digest, Vol 8, Issue 91 `__ --------------------------- Python 2.4 release schedule --------------------------- If you read `PEP 320`_ you will notice an alpha is currently planned in July with a possible release in September if the alphas and betas go well. To see what is planned for this release read the PEP. Looks like some really cool new additions to Python (under the hood, stdlib, and to syntax) might make this release. .. _PEP 320: http://python.org/peps/pep-0320.html Contributing threads: - `Timing for Py2.4 `__ ------------------------------------------ Cutting down on string creation at startup ------------------------------------------ Martin v. Loewis discovered that Python in CVS created about 12,000 strings while Python 2.2 created 8,000 strings. Martin subsequently changed 'marshal' so as to share strings that are the same instead of having to constantly create strings, discover they have been interned, and then destroy the second copy. Contributing threads: - `Python startup time: String objects `__ ---------------------------------- f_tstate going the way of the dodo ---------------------------------- In case you don't catch the meaning of the title, f_tstate is going to be removed. Contributing threads: - `Last chance! `__ --------------------------------------------------------------- Tentative fix for OpenVMS and its dislike of UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES --------------------------------------------------------------- See http://www.python.org/sf/903339 for the proposed patch. Contributing threads: - ` OpenVMS file system and UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES `__ ---------------------------------------------- The hell that is floating point representation ---------------------------------------------- The discussion came up over the output of ``repr(1.1)``, which is '1.1000000000000001' (although, apparently, a few years back this was not the case). The objection was risen that this can surprise people since repr is what 'marshal' uses for writing .pyc files. But the counter-argument was that this forces people to deal with the issues inherent in binary floating point. Plus it makes the value consistent across platforms if you pass around a .pyc file since the value the programmer used is explicitly stated. The status quo is staying put. It was also pointed out that decimal floating point has similar issues as binary floating point, but at least you get to specify the accuracy at the cost of speed. Contributing threads: - `Expert floats `__ - `repr(1.1) `__ ---------------------------------------- Relative imports getting a bunch of dots ---------------------------------------- For `PEP 328`_ (which deals with relative imports of modules), Guido pronounced that he prefers the multiple dots to delineate going up a level in the directory hierarchy for handling relative imports. The other big issue with this PEP is backwards-compatibility. Since this will introduce relative paths, by default all imports that don't have at least a leading dot for where something is being imported will be considered absolute. This means that if you want to import something in the same directory as the module you are importing into you will have to specify that it is a relative import unless your current directory is in sys.path . The PEP explains the issues rather well. .. _PEP 328: htttp://www.python.org/peps/pep-0328.html Contributing threads: - `PEP 328 -- relative and multi-line import `__ From richardjones@optushome.com.au Sun Apr 18 08:06:41 2004 From: richardjones@optushome.com.au (Richard Jones) Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 17:06:41 +1000 Subject: SC-Track Roundup 0.6.9 - an issue tracking system Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I'm pleased to announce Roundup 0.6.9, a maintenance release which fixes some bugs: - - paging in classhelp popup was broken - - socket timeout error logging can fail - - hyperlink designators in message display (sf bug 931828) - - don't match retired items in RDBMS stringFind If you're upgrading from an older version of Roundup you *must* follow the "Software Upgrade" guidelines given in the maintenance documentation. Note that the Zope interface still doesn't work - it is fixed in the 0.7 development codebase. Roundup requires python 2.1.3 or later for correct operation. Python 2.3.1 or later is strongly recommended. To give Roundup a try, just download (see below), unpack and run:: python demo.py Source and documentation is available at the website: http://roundup.sourceforge.net/ Release Info (via download page): http://sourceforge.net/projects/roundup Mailing lists - the place to ask questions: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=31577 About Roundup ============= Roundup is a simple-to-use and -install issue-tracking system with command-line, web and e-mail interfaces. It is based on the winning design from Ka-Ping Yee in the Software Carpentry "Track" design competition. Note: Ping is not responsible for this project. The contact for this project is richard@users.sourceforge.net. Roundup manages a number of issues (with flexible properties such as "description", "priority", and so on) and provides the ability to: (a) submit new issues, (b) find and edit existing issues, and (c) discuss issues with other participants. The system will facilitate communication among the participants by managing discussions and notifying interested parties when issues are edited. One of the major design goals for Roundup that it be simple to get going. Roundup is therefore usable "out of the box" with any python 2.1+ installation. It doesn't even need to be "installed" to be operational, though a disutils-based install script is provided. It comes with two issue tracker templates (a classic bug/feature tracker and a minimal skeleton) and six database back-ends (anydbm, bsddb, bsddb3, sqlite, metakit and mysql). -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAgikBrGisBEHG6TARAhADAJwLHYIhUtvs3bL4ZeVOPzj4XuyuLwCfapmw 9L87lK9TshflCw006T2lRe8= =3jOD -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From csad7@t-online.de Sun Apr 18 17:18:26 2004 From: csad7@t-online.de (c.) Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 18:18:26 +0200 Subject: ANN: cssutils v0.53 Message-ID: what is it ---------- A Python package to parse and build CSS Cascading Style Sheets. Partly implement the DOM Level 2 CSS interfaces. Additional some cssutils only convenience and (hopefully) more pythonic methods are integrated. Thanks to Cory Dodt for helpful suggestions and some code patches and to David Mertz for his book ”Text Processing in Python“ and the included statemachine.py which is used for cssutils Cssutils are far from being perfect or even complete, if you find bugs or have suggestions or problems please contact me. changes in this release ----------------------- new cssunknownrule.UnknownRule (moved out of module cssrule) parser now creates Unknown At-Rules in the resulting StyleSheet. they are no longer just dumped and reported in the parser log. license ------- cssutils is published under the LGPL. download -------- download cssutils v0.53 - 040418 from http://cthedot.de/cssutils/ Needs Python 2.3. Uses xml.dom.DOMException and subclasses so may need PyXML. Tested with Python 2.3.3 on Windows XP with PyXML 0.8.3 installed. examples -------- parse a CSSStyleSheet Normally a CSS parser should ignore errors in a CSS stylesheet. So the default instantiation of CSSParser (parameter raiseExceptions=False) does not raise any exceptions but writes all errors in a parsed CSS to a log file now. You might provide your own log with parameter log=YOURLOG. This example does not use the log but would stop on the first error. from cssutils.cssparser import CSSParser p = CSSParser(raiseExceptions=True) try: css = p.parseString('body { color :red }') # or p.parse('filename.css') except xml.dom.DOMException, e: print e css.pprint() # prettyprinter s.b. outputs body { color: red; } build a new CSSStyleSheet Not all interfaces of DOM Level 2 CSS are implemented yet. But they will be provided in future versions of the cssbuilder module. The following is a simple example how to build a CSSStyleSheet object. from cssutils.cssbuilder import * # init CSSStylesheet css = StyleSheet() # build a rule r = StyleRule() r.addSelector('body') r.addSelector('b') # a second one d = StyleDeclaration() d.setProperty('color', 'red') # old addProperty is DEPRECATED r.setStyleDeclaration(d) # build @media Rule mr = MediaRule(' print, tv ') d = StyleDeclaration() d.setProperty('color', '#000') r = StyleRule('body', d) mr.addRule(r) # compose stylesheet css.addComment('basic styles') css.addComment('styles for print or tv') css.addRule(mr) css.insertRule(r, 1) # output css.pprint(2) outputs /* basic styles */ body, b { color: red; } /* styles for print or tv */ @media print, tv { body { color: #000; } } christof hoeke http://cthedot.de

cssutils 0.53 - a CSS Cascading Style Sheets library for Python (18-Apr-04) From campaigns@votenader.org Mon Apr 19 21:28:28 2004 From: campaigns@votenader.org (Bill Cole) Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:28:28 GMT Subject: Call for an Impeachment Inquiry of Bush and Cheney Message-ID: Call for an Impeachment Inquiry of Bush and Cheney, Get Congress to Take Action Sign our online Petition and read below for more information: http://www.votenader.org/get_involved/impeach.php HEY DUDE WHERE'S MY BUDDY!!!??? COME BACK HOME MICHAEL!!! Ok Michael, you've had your realpolitik fling with ex-General Wesley Clark. Your endorsed Presidential candidate in the Democratic Primaries has withdrawn. It is time for you to come home, to join your buddies and resume your only genuine role which is that of defiance and resistance. Compliance and assistance with the Democrats does not accord with your past, your character, your bold writings and, most memorably, your long corrosive assaults on the Party that betrayed the working classes and plunged our country into corporate globalization. Remember, Michael, you're the flinty man from Flint, Michigan. You've never forgotten your roots. The heady Hollywood, Manhattan scene with the celebrities and Academy Awards have never gotten to your head but rather have gotten into your deserving pockets. How we all recall your standing before one billion people in Los Angeles at the televised Academy Awards in 2003 and, breaking the customary cant of the awardees, throwing the gauntlet down to George W. Bush and his "fictitious" war mongering. Now the War has become a quagmire, with both Republicans and Democrats complicit (check the votes in Congress). The Draft may be on the way. So what are you doing going on the Al Franken Show very nearly breaking down when Al Gore (he of the pro NAFTA/GATT, anti-worker, regime-change, Iraq-bombing, lethal sanctions on half a million children Administration) called and thought you were apologizing. You have nothing to apologize for, Michael. Gore has a lot to apologize for-blowing the election he won in Florida and the country as a whole and for blowing, with Bill Clinton, the many opportunities the rich-booming Nineties and the collapse of the Soviet Union gave this country to turn a peace dividend into a pro-worker, pro-environment, pro-consumer and anti-poverty resurgence. Come back and join our Presidential campaign, Michael. Talk to those "Reagan Democrats"-those 35% of union members who still vote Republican and against their own interests-as only you can. Michael, if you go pumping for the Democratic Party this year, just what are you going to say to the unemployed steelworkers near Sparrows Point in Maryland? To the megathousands of laid off textile and furniture workers in North and South Carolina? To the abandoned auto workers waiting and waiting near their empty factories that went to repressive countries? To the millions of blue-collar workers, who fought our wars, only to learn that the two parties won't fight for their company pensions and health insurance? Are you going to tell them how the Democratic Party pushed through the WTO, let their pensions erode or disappear, were too busy collecting checks from the corporate bosses to pay attention to the corporate crime wave that looted and drained trillions of dollars from millions of workers, their retirement and small investments? Will you tell them that the cowardly Democrats, who couldn't win the fewer elections they are now not losing without the labor vote, won't even mount a determined drive to repeal the notorious, union-blocking Taft Hartley Act? How can you be free to be what you are, or to depress Bush's vote, to jolt into consciousness the moribund Democratic Party? Hey Dude, join your real buddies! The ones you may be thinking about just don't fit either your message, your vision, or our website VoteNader.org. Come back home Michael. The workers and the youth of America are looking for you. Best regards, Ralph Nader P.S. Will you put this invitation on your website and see how your fans react to Michael Moore returning to the Nader 2004 presidential campaign? Patti Smith will reserve a big singing spot, for you, on the stage for the customary finale, PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER. Wednesday April 14, 2004 Join the Call for an Impeachment Inquiry of Bush and Cheney Help us Get Congress to Take Action You can help the call for an impeachment inquiry of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Sign our online Petition. http://www.votenader.org/get_involved/impeach.php George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached for two reasons: They led the United States into an illegal, unconstitutional war in Iraq. They misled the Congress and the American people with five falsehoods that led to war. All it takes is one Member of the House of Representatives to call for an Impeachment Inquiry to start the process to investigate the two grounds. If the House then votes by a simple majority for Articles of Impeachment, the Senate would then undertake a trial of the President and Vice President. They would only be convicted, and impeached, if two-thirds of the Senate agrees. -- Party of Peru (Shining Path/Sender Luminoso) and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) are are closely associated with RIM. (The PKK is no longer a formal member of RIM; however, it was one of RIM's founders. The Shining Path is still a member.) Other groups that comprise the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement are the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist, the Union of Iranian Communists (Sarbedaran)and the Nepal Communist Party. The RIM via its publication A WORLD TO WIN declared its belief in the Palestinian intifada. The February 28, 2002, edition stated "the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement once again reaffirms its unwavering support .and calls on all revolutionary and progressive people to step up their actions on (the Palestinians') behalf." Another edition advised Palestinians to "link up with .the parties and organizations that make up the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. With the weapon of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and its military strategy, people's war, the Palestinian people's fight will surely become .more integral part of the world revolution, hastening the day when imperialism, Zionism .meet their doom." These Maoist terrorist organizations are financing their activities by trafficking in controlled substances. According to December 13, 2000, testimony by Frank Cilluffo, to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) " is heavily involved in the European drug trade, especially in Germany and France. French law enforcement estimates that the PKK smuggles 80 percent of the heroin in Paris." Cilluffo is Deputy Director, Global Organized Crime Program Counterterrorism Task Force at Washington, D.C.'s Center for Strategic and International Studies. This same testimony reveals the Nepal Communist Party, ".turned to drug trafficking for funding. Nepal serves as a hub for hashish trafficking in Asia." The CIA Fact Book lists Nepal as a major source for heroin from From pythonguy@Hotpop.com Tue Apr 20 11:37:39 2004 From: pythonguy@Hotpop.com (Anand Pillai) Date: 20 Apr 2004 03:37:39 -0700 Subject: ANN: HarvestMan 1.3.4 Message-ID: HarvestMan is a world-wide-web crawler (offline browser/robot) program written completely in Python. WWW: http://harvestman.freezope.org Version 1.3.4 a minor bug-fix version is ready.It fixes a bug in setting up of network for users behind proxies/firewalls. Get it from http://harvestman.freezope.org/files/HarvestMan-1.4.zip Thank You ! -ABP From faassen@infrae.com Tue Apr 20 12:48:03 2004 From: faassen@infrae.com (Martijn Faassen) Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:48:03 +0200 Subject: EuroPython talks deadline approaching fast Message-ID: Hi there, There is less than a week's time left to submit a talk for EuroPython! If you want to give a talk, you have until next week monday (26th of april) to submit talks. Please look here: http://www.europython.org/conferences/epc2004/info/ for an overview of the tracks available and please submit your talk. A talk submission just needs a short summary about what your talk is going to be about. Note that speakers get a reduced fee for conference admission! Note also that the early bird registration deadline is not far away either (may 1). More about EuroPython: http://www.europython.org Regards, Martijn From len-1@telus.net Wed Apr 21 01:43:03 2004 From: len-1@telus.net (Lenard Lindstrom) Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 00:43:03 GMT Subject: ANN: C-Python 2.3.3 Patch to Enable Python Function Subclassing - X1.0 Message-ID: A C-Python 2.3.3 Patch to Enable Python Function Subclassing. Experimental Version 1.0 The source code patch and a recompiled python23.dll for win32 can be found at: http://www3.telus.net/len_l/Function_Subclassing.html md5 sums: 05e7af6f007c02d3100ca4e5794bd390 *FS-src-X1-0.tgz (size 64,102 bytes) 9288762a9d2d714db55dae9adc6d844b *FS-win32-bin-X1-0.zip (size 500,118 bytes) Requirements: ------------ For the source code patch the Python 2.3.3 final source code available at www.python.org and a compatible C compiler. For the win32 binary the Windows version of Python 2.3.3 . Introduction ------------ This is an experimental patch which contains modified python interpreter source code files that permit function subclassing. The python def statement is also extended to simplify creation of subclass instances. Eg.: from types import FunctionType class FunctionSubType(FunctionType): def __call__(self, *args, **kwds): print 'Hello' return super(FunctionSubType, self).__call__(*args, **kwds) def (FunctionSubType) fn(x): # optional '()' gives subclass return 2*x fn(12) # prints 'Hello' then returns 24 The optional class specifier works with any expression that evaluates to a callable accepting the same five arguments as types.FunctionType. The parenthesis are mandatory. The above syntax was chosen because it is easy to implement. Why Function subclassing? ----------------------- Function subclassing simplifies special method creation. Normally this is done using wrapper classes like staticmethod. The following is the subclass equivalent: from __future__ import division from types import FunctionType class staticfunction(FunctionType): def __get__(self, object, type): return self # Using it is simple: # I know this example would be better done with a class method, but # it is just a simple example. :-) class Vector2(object): def __init__(self, x, y): self.x = x self.y = y def (staticfunction) Normal2(x, y): # Special constructor length = (x**2 + y**2)**0.5 return Vector2(x/length, y/length) One can write a static method mixin: class StaticMixin(object): """Make a function a static method""" def __get__(self, object, type): return self class PosFunction(FunctionType): """Ensure all arguments are positive numbers""" def __call__(self, *args): for i in args: if i < 0: raise TypeError, "Requires positive number arguments" return super(PosFunction, self).__call__(*args) class StaticPosIntFunc(StaticMixin, FunctionType): pass ... class Vector(object): ... def (StaticPosIntFunc) Normal2(x, y): ... It is a matter of opinion whether or not this approach is more elegant than using wrapper classes. The best way to decide is to try it yourself. Enjoy. Lenard Lindstrom From travis@enthought.com Wed Apr 21 22:40:24 2004 From: travis@enthought.com (Travis N. Vaught) Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 16:40:24 -0500 Subject: ANN: SciPy 0.3 Released Message-ID: Greetings, SciPy 0.3 has been released and binaries are available from the scipy.org site. http://www.scipy.org Changes since the 0.1 version (0.1 enjoyed a wide release, there was a version 0.2 that had limited exposure) include the following: - general improvements: Added utility functions for constructing arrays by concatenation, intended mainly for command-line use. Added bmat constructor for easy creation of block matrices. Added mat constructor for constructing matrices (where * is matrix multiplication). Added many PIL utility functions so that if the PIL is installed, image loading, saving, and other operations are available. Added scipy.info, which handles dynamic docstrings and class help better than python's help command. - documentation: much improved - sparse: superLU upgraded to 3.0 - optimize: Added non-linear conjugate gradient algorithm. Improvements to BFGS algorithm and Wolfe-condition line-search. Added two CONSTRAINED optimization techniques. Added simulated annealing and brute-force optimization strategies and Powell's method. Added many very good 1-D root-finding routines. - stats: Added many statistical distributions. Many continuous and discrete random variables are available with a simple mechanism for adding new ones. Added several statistical tests. - special: Added MANY new special functions. |general_function| renamed to |vectorize| and moved to scipy_base. Improved the way domain errors are handled (user specified display of problems). More tests on special functions added. - fftpack: replaced with fftpack2--can optionally be configured to support djbfft - io: Reading of MATLAB .mat files (version 4 and 5) supported. Writing version 4 .mat files supported. Added very flexible and general_purpose text file reader. Added shelving save operation to save variables into an importable module. Routines for reading and writing fortran-records. - linalg: Linear algebra is greatly improved over SciPy 0.1. ATLAS is now optional (but encouraged). Most lapack functions have simplified interfaces (all lapack and blas available). Matrix exponentials and other matrix functions added. - signal: Added support for filter design and LTI system analysis. - xplt: Updated xplt to use newer pygist so that Windows platform is supported. Addition of several plotting types. - integrate: added another ODE integrator. Added romberg integration and several other integration approaches. The complete release notes can be found here: http://www.scipy.org/download/scipy_release_notes_0.3.html You'll also notice that scipy.org is now a spanking new Plone portal (http://www.plone.org -- keep up the good work, plone folks). This is the first binary release in a long time and we hope to increase the frequency to every 6 months or so. If you'd like to follow or join the community, you can subscribe to the mailing lists here: http://www.scipy.org/mailinglists/ Best Regards, Travis BTW SciPy is: ------------- SciPy is an open source library of scientific tools for Python. SciPy supplements the popular Numeric module, gathering a variety of high level science and engineering modules together as a single package. SciPy includes modules for graphics and plotting, optimization, integration, special functions, signal and image processing, genetic algorithms, ODE solvers, and others. From srackham@methods.co.nz Thu Apr 22 07:17:07 2004 From: srackham@methods.co.nz (Stuart Rackham) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 18:17:07 +1200 Subject: ANN: AsciiDoc 5.07 released Message-ID: AsciiDoc -------- AsciiDoc is an uncomplicated text document format for writing short documents, articles, books and UNIX man pages. AsciiDoc files can be translated to HTML (with or without stylesheets), DocBook (articles, books and refentry documents) and LinuxDoc using the asciidoc(1) command. AsciiDoc is highly configurable: both the AsciiDoc source file syntax and the backend output markups (which can be almost any type of SGML/XML markup) can be customized and extended by user. Requisites ---------- Python 2.1 or higher. Obtaining AsciiDoc ------------------ The latest AsciiDoc version, examples and online documentation can be found at the AsciiDoc website http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/ AsciiDoc is also hosted at the SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/asciidoc/ Best regards, --- Stuart Rackham From bvdp@uniserve.com Thu Apr 22 18:35:06 2004 From: bvdp@uniserve.com (Bob van der Poel) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 10:35:06 -0700 Subject: Musical MIDI Accompaniment 0.7 Message-ID: I'm pleased to announce the release of my program mma - Musical MIDI Accompaniment version: Beta 0.7 MMA is a accompaniment generator -- it creates midi tracks for a soloist to perform over from a user supplied file containing chords and MMA directives. MMA is very versatile and generates excellent tracks. It comes with an extensive user-extendable library with a variety of patterns for various popular rhythms, an extensive user manual, and several demo songs. MMA is a command line driven program. It creates MIDI files which need a sequencer or MIDI file play program. MMA is written in Python. You'll need version 2.2 of Python for MMA to function. MMA is supplied in 4 tar.gz archives. Included: mma-bin -- the main script and library files). mma-html -- documentation in HTML format. mma-ps -- documentation in Postscript format. mma-songs -- a collection of about 120 songs in MMA format. If you get the entire download package it is well under 1meg in size. MMA is currently in BETA. We are looking for lots of help in debugging the program, creating songs for distribution, and new and improved library files. Best of all, MMA is free. It is released under the terms of the GNU public license. It has been developed on a Linux platform, but should be usable on just about any system. MMA is available on my personal home page: http://mypage.uniserve.com/~bvdp/mma/mma.html If you have any questions or comments, please send them to: bvdp@uniserve.com Enjoy! Beta 0.7: new packaging, HTML docs, Solo/Melody tracks, dynamic track allocation, general cleanups and a few new commands. Also, make note of the NEW home site and my new email address! Comments appreciated! -- Bob van der Poel ** Wynndel, British Columbia, CANADA ** EMAIL: bvdp@uniserve.com WWW: http://mypage.uniserve.com/~bvdp From etaekema@earthlink.net Fri Apr 23 03:11:46 2004 From: etaekema@earthlink.net (Ed Taekema) Date: 22 Apr 2004 19:11:46 -0700 Subject: ANN: Use Jython to Write Ant Tasks Message-ID: This is an article I wrote that looks at how to add scripted behaviour to ant builds. It details the steps to write a custom Ant task in Jython, compile it and install it into Ant so it can be used as any other task in an ant build. The article also takes a quick look at an alternate implementation using Groovy. You can read it here: http://www.pycs.net/users/0000177/stories/11.html. Ed Taekema Toronto, Canada From faassen@infrae.com Fri Apr 23 16:34:08 2004 From: faassen@infrae.com (Martijn Faassen) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 17:34:08 +0200 Subject: EuroPython update april 23 Message-ID: EuroPython news update =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D EuroPython is the European Python and Zope Conference. This year in its third edition, we are holding the conference in the beautiful locale of G=F6teborg, Sweden. Hundreds of Python users and Zope users are expected. - If you still want to submit a talk, note that the talk submission deadline is approaching very rapidly. You have until monday the 26th of april to submit your talk proposal. As an extra incentive, note that speakers participate at a reduced fee. - The early bird registration deadline is also very near now; after may 1st the rate will go up by 60 euros from 160 to 220. We also still have (very) cheap accomodation available, but this is running out quickly. So please register now! - The conference program is really shaping up nicely! We'll have tracks on topics ranging from core python hacking to social skills, and of course Zope. There will be tutorials, BoFs, lightning talks and panel discussions. Many of us are arriving early and/or staying on after the conference for a couple of days for sprints or other activities. - Our keynote speakers will be Mark Shuttleworth and Guido van Rossum. Mark Shuttleworth was among other things what we think is the first Python programmer in space. He is also is the sponsor of the schooltool project to develop an open source school administration system in Python. More about about him can be found at http://www.markshuttleworth.com/ If you don't know who Guido van Rossum is, you really need to come to EuroPython to find out and meet him. More information can be found at http://www.europython.org. See you at EuroPython 2004! From fdrake@acm.org Fri Apr 23 22:41:30 2004 From: fdrake@acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 17:41:30 -0400 Subject: New mailing list for ZConfig users Message-ID: I've created a new mailing list for users of the ZConfig configuration library. (Yes, there was a request for such a beast!) The mailing list is run using Mailman at Zope.org; the subscription page is available at: http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zconfig/ ZConfig is a configuration library intended for general use. It supports a hierarchical schema-driven configuration model that allows a schema to specify data conversion routines written in Python. ZConfig's model is very different from the model support by the ConfigParser module found in Python's standard library, and is more suitable to configuration-intensive applications. ZConfig schema are written in an XML-based language and are able to "import" schema components provided by Python packages. Since components are able to bind to conversion functions provided by Python code in the package (or elsewhere), configuration objects can be arbitrarily complex, with values that have been verified against arbitrary constraints. This makes it easy for applications to separate configuration support from configuration loading even with configuration data being defined and consumed by a wide range of separate packages. The current version of ZConfig is version 2.2. More information about ZConfig can be found at the project page: http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/zconfig/ or in the wiki: http://dev.zope.org/Zope3/ZConfig ZConfig is covered by the Zope Public License, version 2.0. See the file LICENSE.txt in the distribution for the full license text. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From mlh@furu.idi.ntnu.no Fri Apr 23 23:58:12 2004 From: mlh@furu.idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 22:58:12 +0000 (UTC) Subject: ANN: Atox 0.5 released Message-ID: What is it? =========== Atox is a framework for automated markup. With it one can quite easily write custom scripts for converting plain text into XML in any way one wishes. Atox is normally used as a command-line script, using a simple XML language to specify the desired transformation from text to markup, but it is also possible to build custom parsers using the Atox library. The name (short for ASCII-to-XML) is inspired by such UNIX tools and system functions as atops and atoi. What can it do? =============== With Atox you can write quite general parser that create XML from plain text files, using a special-purpose format language somewhat reminiscent of XSLT. You can also include XSLT fragments in your format description, to use transformations in concert with the Atox markup process. The examples in the distribution demonstrate how you can use Atox to: - Mark up a (relatively simple) technical document (the Atox manual); - Mark up code blocks only through indentation; - Nest lists through indentation - Discern between different indentation "shapes" (e.g. a block quote versus a description list item); - Transform simple LaTeX into XML; - Add XML "syntax highlighting" to Python code; - Mark up screenplays or stageplays, largely based on indentation; - Mark up simple fictional prose; - Mark up simple tables. What's new in 0.5? ================== These are the changes I've made: - Fixed some bugs. - Added support for XSLT fragments in Atox format files. - Added support for non-greedy repetition. - Added several new options to the configuration system. Split input and output encoding and made UTF-8 the default output encoding. Where can I get it? =================== Atox is hosted at SourceForge (http://atox.sf.net) and the current release (0.5) is available for download via its project page (http://sf.net/projects/atox). The Small Print =============== Atox is released under the MIT license. It comes with no warranty of any kind. Also, even though the current version works well, and the project is currently (as per early 2004) being actively developed, there is no guarantee of continued support. What you see is what you get. -- Magnus Lie Hetland "Wake up!" - Rage Against The Machine http://hetland.org "Shut up!" - Linkin Park From tundra@tundraware.com Sat Apr 24 22:05:56 2004 From: tundra@tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk) Date: 24 Apr 2004 17:05:56 EDT Subject: [ANN]: 'tconfpy' 1.181 Released Message-ID: 'tconfpy' 1.181 is released and available at: http://www.tundraware.com/Software/tconfpy/ This is the first public release of the program. A FreeBSD port is also being submitted. 'tconfpy' is an advanced configuration file parser and validator for Python programs. By using 'tconfpy', Python programmers can provide their users with an external configuration file for setting program options, defining defaults, and so on. 'tconfpy' offloads the responsibility for parsing and validating a configuration file from the main application. The Python programmer need only deal with the results and any errors or warnings generated during the parsing process. 'tconfpy' recognizes a rich configuration language and provides a number of sophisticated programming features including: - The ability to breakup large configurations into smaller pieces via the '.include' directive. - Support for string substitution and concatenation throughout the configuration file via string variables. Variables may be locally declared, a reference to a symbol already in the symbol table, or a reference to an environment variable. - A complete set of conditional directives for selective processing of configuration options. Both existential ("If variable exists ...") and comparison ("if string equals/does not equal string ...") forms are provided, as is an '.else' directive. - The ability to instantiate program options prior to reading a configuration file and make them mandatory by declaring those options as Read-Only. - Optional type validation to ensure that a user enters a value appropriate for boolean, integer, floating point, string, or complex data. - Optional value validation to ensure that a configuration option is either within a specified range or one of an enumerated set of possible values. For configuration options which are string types, 'tconfpy', can optionally specify min/max string lengths and enumerate a set of legitimate regular expressions that the string must match. - The ability to define an arbitrary number of lexical namespaces. - The ability to use the various features of 'tconfpy' as a pre- processor for any other text (including source code for other programming languages and Python itself) via the '.literal' directive. - An optional debug capability which returns detailed information about each line parsed. - Includes a test driver program for learning how to program with 'tconfpy' and for debugging and testing your own configuration files. - Comes with over 30 pages of documentation including a Programmer's API Reference and a User's Guide to the 'tconfpy' configuration language. Documentation is provided in several formats including Unix 'man', Plain Text, html, pdf, and Postscript. 'tconfpy' is a Pure Python module and is platform-independent. It should work identically on any platform on which Python runs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk tundra@tundraware.com PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ From cnoviello@hotmail.com Sun Apr 25 17:16:24 2004 From: cnoviello@hotmail.com (Carmine Noviello) Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 16:16:24 GMT Subject: [ANN]PyCrash-0.4pre2 released Message-ID: Hi, a new version of PyCrash is released with new features and improvement.You can download it at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=98026&package_id=111026&release_id=233776 What's new in this release: * Added a new method to PyCrash class, forceDump(), that forces the creation of the crash dump, if an exception is raised. forceDump() can be very useful when an exception hasn't reached the top-level, but the user wants the same to make a dump of the application context. * Starting from this release, by default, PyCrash doesn't start exception tracing automatically. User must invoke the enable() method to start tracing, and can use the disable() method to stop tracing in every moment. * Now the getEncryptedCrashDump() method of utils.Encrypt.EncryptedPyCrash class is deprecated, and it will be no longer supported starting from PyCrash-0.4 release. Use instead the getCrashDump() method. * Added a new class HTMLPyCrash, in the pycrash.util module, which converts the crash dump in HTML format rather than XML. The generated HTML dump is based on CSS, so the developer can define custom CSS to arrange the output. There is also a new script in the util subdir, named pucrash2html.py, which converts PyCrash file in HTML format. You can see an example of the output generated by the HTML dumper here: http://pycrash.sourceforge.net/test-pycrash.html Enjoy! _______________________________________________________________________ About PyCrash Project: PyCrash is a Run-Time Exception Dumper which handles uncaught exceptions during the execution of Python programs and collects information about the program context. PyCrash can be very useful in report bug information, because the programmer can easily analyse the program execution context of the crashed application. Major information collected by PyCrash in the crash dump is: - Information about operating system, Python and Python Standard Library version and general information about the program that is crashed (e.g., program name and version, time at witch program started and ended, and so on) - Information about the uncaught exceptions, like the exception type, the context (namely method name) in which the exception occurred and the exception value - General information about variables state - Information about the stack of each thread, like the list of stack frames, the variables value in each stack frame, and so on - General information about source code, like variable and function position in source file that can be useful for the programmer to find quickly bugs in source tree The format of the crash dump file generated by PyCrash is XML, so the programmer can easily read this file to understand why the program is crashed. Now, is also available a GUI browser, named PyCrash Viewer, which allows developers to analyze quickly and easily PyCrash crash dump files in a graphical manner. * Starting from next version, we'll try to document all the PyCrash API More information can be found at: http://www.pycrash.org Thanks!

PyCrash 0.4pre2 - a crash handler for Python written applications. (25-04-04)

From cnoviello@hotmail.com Mon Apr 26 06:08:09 2004 From: cnoviello@hotmail.com (Carmine Noviello) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 05:08:09 GMT Subject: [ANN]PyCrash-0.4pre2 released Message-ID: Hi, a new version of PyCrash is released with new features and improvement.You can download it at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=98026&package_id=111026&release_id=233776 What's new in this release: * Added a new method to PyCrash class, forceDump(), that forces the creation of the crash dump, if an exception is raised. forceDump() can be very useful when an exception hasn't reached the top-level, but the user wants the same to make a dump of the application context. * Starting from this release, by default, PyCrash doesn't start exception tracing automatically. User must invoke the enable() method to start tracing, and can use the disable() method to stop tracing in every moment. * Now the getEncryptedCrashDump() method of utils.Encrypt.EncryptedPyCrash class is deprecated, and it will be no longer supported starting from PyCrash-0.4 release.Use instead the getCrashDump() method. * Added a new class HTMLPyCrash, in the pycrash.util module, which converts the crash dump in HTML format rather than XML. The generated HTML dump is based on CSS, so the developer can define custom CSS to arrange the output. There is also a new script in the util subdir, named pucrash2html.py, which converts PyCrash file in HTML format. You can see an example of the output generated by the HTML dumper here: http://pycrash.sourceforge.net/test-pycrash.html Enjoy! _______________________________________________________________________ About PyCrash Project: PyCrash is a Run-Time Exception Dumper which handles uncaught exceptions during the execution of Python programs and collects information about the program context. PyCrash can be very useful in report bug information, because the programmer can easily analyse the program execution context of the crashed application. Major information collected by PyCrash in the crash dump is: - Information about operating system, Python and Python Standard Library version and general information about the program that is crashed (e.g., program name and version, time at witch program started and ended, and so on) - Information about the uncaught exceptions, like the exception type, the context (namely method name) in which the exception occurred and the exception value - General information about variables state - Information about the stack of each thread, like the list of stack frames, the variables value in each stack frame, and so on - General information about source code, like variable and function position in source file that can be useful for the programmer to find quickly bugs in source tree The format of the crash dump file generated by PyCrash is XML, so the programmer can easily read this file to understand why the program is crashed. Now, is also available a GUI browser, named PyCrash Viewer, which allows developers to analyze quickly and easily PyCrash crash dump files in a graphical manner. * Starting from next version, we'll try to document all the PyCrash API More information can be found at: http://www.pycrash.org Thanks!

PyCrash 0.4pre2 - a crash handler for Python written applications. (25-04-04)

From faassen@infrae.com Mon Apr 26 12:51:06 2004 From: faassen@infrae.com (Martijn Faassen) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 13:51:06 +0200 Subject: EuroPython news april 26th Message-ID: Hi there, Back with your regular EuroPython reminder. EuroPython 2004 is to be=20 held in G=F6teborg, Sweden on June 7-9. For more information, see here: http://www.europython.org The talk submission deadline is TODAY, monday the 26th. If you want to=20 submit a talk and it's still today (the 26th of april :) when you're=20 reading this, then go ahead and head here quickly: http://www.europython.org/conferences/epc2004/info/ Hope to see you there! Regards, Martijn From pythonrocks@yahoo.com Mon Apr 26 18:57:09 2004 From: pythonrocks@yahoo.com (Victor Yongwei Yang) Date: 26 Apr 2004 10:57:09 -0700 Subject: [ANN] Use Jython to write DB2 UDB tools Message-ID: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/dm-0404yang/ This is an introductory article for using Jython to write QA tools, Performance Test tools as a aid to my daily life here at IBM. Personally, I 've expericenced nontrivial productivity gains by writing Jython code as super glue to java applications. And more importantly it is fun to use list, dictionary, list comprehension as well as lambda function with existing enterprise level Java libraries. cheers, Markham, Canada Victor From middleware04@eecg.toronto.edu Mon Apr 26 23:21:55 2004 From: middleware04@eecg.toronto.edu (Middleware 04) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 18:21:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Middleware'04 Call for Tutorials Message-ID: Call for Tutorials to be held in conjunction with Middleware 2004 ACM/IFIP/USENIX 5th International Middleware Conference =09=09 Toronto, Ontario, Canada =09=09 October 18th - 22nd, 2004 =09 http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/middleware2004/ Overview Requirements for faster development cycles, decreased development efforts, greater software reuse, and better end-to-end control over system resources are motivating the creation and use of middleware systems and middleware-based architectures. Middleware is systems software that resides between the applications and the underlying operating systems, network protocol stacks, and hardware. Its primary role is to functionally bridge the gap between application programs and the lower-level hardware and software infrastructure in order to coordinate how application components are connected and how they interoperate. Furthermore, middleware enables and simplifies the integration of components developed by multiple technology suppliers. In this sense middleware systems are sets of services and abstractions that facilitate the development and deployment of distributed applications in heterogeneous, distributed, computing environments. Next-generation distributed applications and systems will increasingly be developed using middleware. This dependency poses hard challenges, including latency hiding, masking partial failures, information assurance and security, legacy integration, dynamic service partitioning and load balancing, and end-to-end quality of service specification and enforcement. To address these challenges, researchers and practitioners need to discover and validate techniques, patterns, and optimizations for middleware frameworks, multi-level distributed resource management, and adaptive and reflective middleware architectures. Following the success of past conferences in this series, the 5th International Middleware Conference will be the premier event for middleware research and technology in 2004. The scope of the conference is the design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation of distributed system platforms and architectures for future computing and communication environments. Highlights of the conference will include a high quality technical program, tutorials, invited speakers, poster presentations, and workshops. The proceedings of Middleware 2004 will be published as a Springer-Verlag volume in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series. For paper formatting instructions see the Springer-Verlag guidelines for authors. All papers should be no more than 20 pages in length. For more detailed submission instructions, please visit the Middleware 2004 web site. Topics of Interest The topics of this conference include, but are not limited to: Distributed real-time and embedded middleware platforms Reliable and fault-tolerant middleware platforms Support for multimedia in middleware platforms Middleware for Grid computing Novel quality of service architectures and evaluation techniques Event-based, publish/subscribe and messaging-oriented middleware platform= s Open architectures for reconfigurable middleware Adaptive and reflective middleware Aspect-oriented middleware Generative programming techniques for middleware development Middleware protocols and services for information assurance and security Formal methods and tools for reasoning about middleware systems and servi= ces Management and use of component-based systems in distributed environments Applications of middleware technologies, including telematics, command and control, avionics, and e-commerce Novel paradigms, APIs, and languages for distributed systems Integration of middleware with model-integrated computing architectures, such as the OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) Extensions and refinements to RM-ODP, CORBA, J2EE, .NET, etc. Impact of emerging Internet technologies and standards on middleware plat= forms Integration of middleware platforms with Web services and Java technologi= es Distributed systems management and interactive configuration and developm= ent tools Issues of scalability in existing and new distributed systems platforms Engineering distributed systems in heterogeneous and mobile networks Middleware for ubiquitous and mobile computing Organization General Chair: Steve Vinoski (IONA Technologies, Inc.) Program Chair: Hans-Arno Jacobsen (University of Toronto, C= anada) WiP Papers Chair: Jean Bacon (Cambridge University, UK) Tutorials Chair: Stefan Tai (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Advanced Workshops Chair: Fabio Kon (USP, Brazil) Posters Chair: Eyal de Lara (University of Toronto, Canada) Local Arrangements Chair: Baochun Li (University of Toronto, Canada) Publicity Chair: Cristiana Amza (University of Toronto, Canad= a) Student Travel Grants Chair: Daby M, Sow (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Program Committee Gul Agha (U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA) Gustavo Alonso (ETH Z=FCrich, Switzerland) Jean Bacon (Cambridge U., UK) Mark Baker (Canada) Guruduth Banavar (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Alejandro Buchmann (Darmstadt U. of Technology, Germany) Andrew Campbell (Columbia U., USA) Roy Campbell (U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA) Harold Carr (Sun, USA) Geoff Coulson (Lancaster U., UK) Prem Devanbu (UC Davis, USA) Jan DeMeer (IHP-Microelectronics, Germany) Naranker Dulay (Imperial College, UK) Markus Endler (PUC-Rio, Brazil) Mike Feeley (U. of British Columbia, Canada) Chris Gill (Washington U., St. Louis, USA) Aniruddha Gokhale (Vanderbilt U., USA) Peter Honeyman (CITI, U. of Michigan, USA) Bettina Kemme (McGill U., Canada) Fabio Kon (U. of S=E3o Paulo, Brazil) Doug Lea (SUNY Oswego, USA)Joe Loyall (BBN Technologies, USA) Edmundo Madeira (U. of Campinas, Brazil) Keith Moore (HP Laboratories, USA) Hausi Muller (U. of Victoria, Canada) Klara Nahrstedt (U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA) Dennis Noll (Boeing, USA) Kerry Raymond (DSTC, Australia) Luis Rodrigues (U. of Lisboa, Portugal) Isabelle Rouvellou (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Michael Stal (Siemens, Germany) Rick Schantz (BBN Technologies, USA) Douglas Schmidt (Vanderbilt U., USA) Jean-Bernard Stefani (INRIA, Grenoble, France) Joe Sventek (University of Glasgow, UK) Janos Sztipanovits (Vanderbilt U., USA) Stefan Tai (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Peter Triantafillou (U. of Patras, Greece) Nalini Venkatasubramanian (U. of California, Irvine, USA) Werner Vogels (Cornell U., USA) Martina Zitterbart (U. of Karlsruhe, Germany) Submission Deadlines Abstract submission: Tuesday, March 30th, 2004 Research Papers: Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 Work in Progress Papers: Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 Posters: Saturday, July 10th, 2004 Workshop Proposals: Tuesday, March 30th, 2004 Tutorial Proposals: Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 **All deadlines are 11:59pm PST.** Notification of acceptance (papers): Monday June 14th, 2004 Notification of acceptance (posters): Tuesday, August 10th, 2004 Camera-ready papers due (papers): Monday July 12th, 2004 Related Events The 30th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases also to be held in Toronto, Canada. For more information please visit VLDB 2004 (http://www.vldb04.org/). The 23rd Annual ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing and the Workshop on Concurrency and Synchronization in Java Programs held in conjunction. For more information please visit PODC 2004 (http://www.podc.org/podc2004/). The Global EAI Summit, May 24-28, 2004 in Banff, Canada. This is an event you won't forget whether you're a CIO, CTO, Technical Leader, Consultant, Analyst or Researcher. The event boasts speakers fr= om Australia, India, Belgium, England, Israel, Spain, Germany, Canada and t= he USA. Five of the speakers have published books in the last 6 months alo= ne and will be autographing them at the event. As a participant, you will walk away with the 300-page proceedings of all accepted papers and posters. If you want substance, this conference is it. For more information visit www.globaleaisummit.com. Member rates apply t= o members of ACM, IFIP, USENIX and other select organizations. Check the online registration section for the full list. The event offers a student rate and low-cost accomodations are available in Banff including a hostel at the YWCA. Interested participants should send an email to register@globaleaisummit.com for further information. More Information For further information and submission instructions, please visit http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/middleware2004/ . ----- From faassen@infrae.com Tue Apr 27 19:30:33 2004 From: faassen@infrae.com (Martijn Faassen) Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 20:30:33 +0200 Subject: EuroPython news update april 27 Message-ID: Hi there, Back again with news about EuroPython. The talk submission deadline has now passed, which means we can give you a little preview of our program: http://www.europython.org/conferences/epc2004/info/talks/acceptedTalksOverview Note that this is not by far the complete program, just a preview. The Zope track for instance hasn't any accepted talks yet at the time of this writing, while in reality it's shaping up to be as big as last year (i.e. 3 days of Zope related talks). If this overview suddenly prompted you to register with the conference, please note: the early bird deadline closes may 1st, which is next saturday! If you wait until later, you'll pay more. More about EuroPython, including how to register, can be found here: http://www.europython.org Hope to see you at EuroPython! Martijn From jnfoster@seas.upenn.edu Tue Apr 27 19:46:34 2004 From: jnfoster@seas.upenn.edu (Nate Foster) Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 14:46:34 -0400 Subject: 2004 ICFP Programming Contest Announcement Message-ID: Announcing... The Seventh Annual ICFP PROGRAMMING CONTEST 4 June - 7 June 2004 http://icfpcontest.org/ Convinced your favorite programming language provides unbeatable productivity? Convinced you and your friends are world-class programmers? If so, we're providing you the opportunity to prove it! We are pleased to announce the Seventh ICFP Programming Contest to be held in conjunction with the 2004 International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2004). All programmers are invited to enter the contest, either individually or in teams; we especially encourage students to enter. You may use any programming language (or combination of languages) to show your skill. On Friday, 4 June 2004 at 12:00 Noon (EDT), we will publish a challenge task on the Web site and by e-mail to the contest mailing list. Teams will have 72 hours until Monday, 7 June 2004, 12:00 Noon (EDT) to implement a program to perform this task and submit it to the contest judges. We have designed the contest for direct, head-to-head comparison of language technology and programming skill. We have a range of prizes including cash awards and, of course, unlimited bragging rights for the winners. For more information about the contest, prizes, and registration, point your browser to the contest website. - 2004 ICFP Contest Team http://icfpcontest.org/ From samschul@pacbell.net Tue Apr 27 21:22:42 2004 From: samschul@pacbell.net (Samuel Schulenburg) Date: 27 Apr 2004 13:22:42 -0700 Subject: USB mass storage devices added to SCSIPy SCSI diagnostic tools Message-ID: I have up loaded SCSIPyUSBBeta.zip to the downloaded options. Presently this is in Beta mode, but appears to work quite well. After unzipping to c:\python23 using use file path option with winzip enter Python and type the following to start a session: >> from scsi import * >> startscsi(1,0) >> initscsi('scsi','physicaldrive',1) Sam Schulenburg samschul@pacbell.net From tundra@tundraware.com Wed Apr 28 05:09:21 2004 From: tundra@tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk) Date: 28 Apr 2004 00:09:21 EDT Subject: [ANN] 'tconfpy' 1.184 Released Message-ID: 'tconfpy' 1.184 is released and available at: http://www.tundraware.com/Software/tconfpy/ The last public release was 1.181 on 4/24/2004 (Sorry for two announcements in three days, but, a last minute feature snuck in. Barring bugs, this should be it for a while ...) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This version implements "Variable Templates" which have all manner of interesting applications, not the least of which is using 'tconfpy' as a component for building data validation tools. This version also provides a new API option, 'ReturnPredefs' which allows the programmer request that the parser not return internal "predefined" variables in the final symbol table. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 'tconfpy' is an advanced configuration file parser and validator for Python programs. By using 'tconfpy', Python programmers can provide their users with an external configuration file for setting program options, defining defaults, and so on. 'tconfpy' offloads the responsibility for parsing and validating a configuration file from the main application. The Python programmer need only deal with the results and any errors or warnings generated during the parsing process. 'tconfpy' recognizes a rich configuration language and provides a number of sophisticated programming features including: - The ability to breakup large configurations into smaller pieces via the '.include' directive. - Support for string substitution and concatenation throughout the configuration file via string variables. Variables may be locally declared, a reference to a symbol already in the symbol table, or a reference to an environment variable. - A complete set of conditional directives for selective processing of configuration options. Both existential ("If variable exists ...") and comparison ("if string equals/does not equal string ...") forms are provided, as is an '.else' directive. - The ability to instantiate program options prior to reading a configuration file and make them mandatory by declaring those options as Read-Only. - Optional type validation to ensure that a user enters a value appropriate for boolean, integer, floating point, string, or complex data. - Optional value validation to ensure that a configuration option is either within a specified range or one of an enumerated set of possible values. For configuration options which are string types, 'tconfpy', can optionally specify min/max string lengths and enumerate a set of legitimate regular expressions that the string must match. - The ability to define an arbitrary number of lexical namespaces. - The ability to use the various features of 'tconfpy' as a pre- processor for any other text (including source code for other programming languages and Python itself) via the '.literal' directive. - The ability to "template" classes of variables, thereby predefining the type and value restrictions for such variables. This makes 'tconfpy' useful as a building block for data validation tools. - An optional debug capability which returns detailed information about each line parsed. - Includes a test driver program for learning how to program with 'tconfpy' and for debugging and testing your own configuration files. - Comes with approximately 40 pages of documentation including a Programmer's API Reference and a User's Guide to the 'tconfpy' configuration language. Documentation is provided in several formats including Unix 'man', Plain Text, html, pdf, and Postscript. 'tconfpy' is a Pure Python module and is platform-independent. It should work identically on any platform on which Python runs. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk tundra@tundraware.com PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ From remi@cherrypy.org Wed Apr 28 10:18:12 2004 From: remi@cherrypy.org (Remi Delon) Date: 28 Apr 2004 02:18:12 -0700 Subject: CherryPy-0.10 released Message-ID: Hello everyone, I am pleased to announce the release of CherryPy-10. It's been a while since I last announced a CherryPy release on this newsgroup but a lot has happened since then: - The cherrypy.org site now has a nice forum and a wiki - Sessions are now fully thread-safe and they work great in production environments with the thread-pool HTTP-server - Jython compatibility has been restored - Lots of new HowTos have been added to the documentation, including one HowTo about best practices for deploying a demanding production website. - Plus many bugfixes and improvements ... ------------------------------------------ About CherryPy: CherryPy is a Python based web development toolkit. It provides all the features of an enterprise-class application server while remaining light, fast and easy to learn. CherryPy allows developers to build web applications in much the same way they would build any other object-oriented Python program. This usually results in smaller source code developed in less time. Remi. http://www.cherrypy.org From ahaas@airmail.net Wed Apr 28 19:52:45 2004 From: ahaas@airmail.net (Art Haas) Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 13:52:45 -0500 Subject: ANNOUCE: Thirteenth release of PythonCAD now available Message-ID: I'd like to announce the thirteenth development release of PythonCAD, a CAD package for open-source software users. As the name implies, PythonCAD is written entirely in Python. The goal of this project is to create a fully scriptable drafting program that will match and eventually exceed features found in commercial CAD software. PythonCAD is released under the GNU Public License (GPL). PythonCAD requires Python 2.2 or Python 2.3. The interface is GTK 2.0 based, and uses the PyGTK module for interfacing to GTK. The design of PythonCAD is built around the idea of separating the interface from the back end as much as possible. By doing this, it is hoped that both GNOME and KDE interfaces can be added to PythonCAD through usage of the appropriate Python module. Addition of other interfaces will depend on the availability of a Python module for that particular interface and developer interest and action. The thirteenth release of PythonCAD is the first release to offer undo/redo abilities. The undo/redo work is in its initial stage, and upcoming releases will enhance the robustness of the code. The long term goal with undo/redo work is to make both as unlimited as possible, but for the first release the functionality works best if only the last action is undone or redone. Undoing and redoing multiple operations works in certain cases, but not not in others. Development efforts for the next release will concentrate on enhancing the undo/redo abilities of the program. This release also has the ability to save the current background and foreground colors, and offers the user the ability to specify the color for boxes drawn around points. As for code cleanups, a number of deprecated methods have been removed, and several existing methods are now deprecated. An assortment of bug fixes and code improvements have been added as well. The mailing list for the development and use of PythonCAD is available. Visit the following page for information about subscribing and viewing the mailing list archive: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythoncad Visit the PythonCAD web site for more information about what PythonCAD does and aims to be: http://www.pythoncad.org/ Come and join me in developing PythonCAD into a world class drafting program, and Happy New Year to everyone! Art Haas -- Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. -Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822 From greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz Thu Apr 29 12:01:14 2004 From: greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (greg) Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:01:14 +1200 Subject: ANN: Pyrex 0.9.1 Message-ID: Pyrex 0.9.1 is now available: http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python/Pyrex/ Enhancements: * Calling of inherited C methods * Python class __modname__ is set properly * Test suite available for download Plus numerous bug fixes -- see CHANGES.txt in the distribution or on the web page for details. What is Pyrex? -------------- Pyrex is a new language for writing Python extension modules. It lets you freely mix operations on Python and C data, with all Python reference counting and error checking handled automatically. From ajw140NO@SPAMyork.ac.uk Thu Apr 29 18:00:21 2004 From: ajw140NO@SPAMyork.ac.uk (Andrew Wilkinson) Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 18:00:21 +0100 Subject: ANN: PyLinda 0.1 Message-ID: PyLinda 0.1 By Andrew Wilkinson Contents -------- 1. Introduction 2. Installation 3. Using Linda 4. Known Problems 5. Contact 6. License 1. Introduction --------------- Linda is an widely studied distributed computing environment, centered around the notion of a tuple space. A tuple space is a bag (also called a multi-set) of tuples. A tuple is an ordered, typed chunk of data. Tuple spaces exist independently of processes in the system, and the data placed into a tuple space also exist independently. See "Generative communication in Linda" (1985) and "Multiple tuple spaces in Linda" both by David Gelernter for more information on Linda. PyLinda is a simple implementation of a linda system, however it also includes several of the more recently proposed extensions to Linda in the form of multiple tuple spaces, garbage collection, sane non-blocking primitives and bulk tuple operations. 2. Installation --------------- To install simply unpack the tarball, and execute 'python setup.py install'. PyLinda requires a Python 2.3+ and has only been tested on Linux and Solaris, however it should be possible for it to other operating systems. It may be possible for the server and some client programs to run under Windows, however since it does not support 'fork' several of the included examples will not work. 3. Using Linda -------------- First a server must be started - 'linda_server.py'. Then a client program must be started, the simplest is just the python interactive interpreter. bash$ python >>> import linda >>> linda.connect() >>> linda.universe._out((1,2,3)) Now quit that interpreter, and start a new one... bash$ python >>> import linda >>> linda.connect() >>> linda.universe._in((int, int, int)) (1, 2, 3) If you want to add a new computer to the linda network simply run 'linda_server.p -c' where the computer you supply is already running a linda server. 4. Known Problems ----------------- * The actual implementation is quite slow. The process of storing tuples is slow and uses a large amount of memory, this could probably be fixed by rewriting that bit in C. * No support for the eval primitive. * Only built in types (and tuplespace references) can be included in tuples. This will change in the future, and is the subject of my PhD. * Documentation is very thin and could do with improving. People with some knowlege of Linda should not have a problem using PyLinda however. 5. Contact ---------- All the latest news and information about PyLinda can be found at http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~aw/pylinda. Comments, suggestions and bug reports are all welcome at aw at cs dot york dot ac dot uk 6. License ---------- For full details of the license see the file LICENSE. Copyright 2004 Andrew Wilkinson . This file is part of PyLinda (http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~aw/pylinda) PyLinda is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. PyLinda is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with PyLinda; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA From faassen@infrae.com Thu Apr 29 23:06:45 2004 From: faassen@infrae.com (Martijn Faassen) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 00:06:45 +0200 Subject: EuroPython early bird deadline very soon! Message-ID: EuroPython news update april 30 =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D EuroPython early bird registration deadline is may 1, next saturday! After that you pay 60 euros more. Some cheap accomodation also still available, so if you want to attend, hurry and register now! EuroPython is the European Python and Zope Conference. This year in its third edition, we are holding the conference in the beautiful locale of G=F6teborg, Sweden. Hundreds of Python users and Zope users are expected. The conference is from june 7 to june 9. - The talk submission deadline has now passed. We now have an enormous selection of talks and are struggling to fit them all in the program. For the list of talks that have already been accepted (definitely not yet complete), see here: =20 http://www.europython.org/conferences/epc2004/info/talks/acceptedTalksOve= rview Many well known names in the Python community will be presenting, including keynote speaker Guido van Rossum. For those interested in Zope, look at the lineup of well-known people in the Zope community that are giving talks. It's a "can't miss" event in the Zope community! - Our keynote speakers will be Mark Shuttleworth and Guido van Rossum. Mark Shuttleworth is many things, not least what we think was the first Python programmer in space. He is also is the sponsor of the schooltool project to develop an open source school administration system in Python. More about about him can be found at http://www.markshuttleworth.com/ If you don't know who Guido van Rossum is, you really need to come to EuroPython to find out and meet him. More information can be found at http://www.europython.org. Hope to see you at EuroPython 2004! From sdeibel@wingware.com Fri Apr 30 05:53:07 2004 From: sdeibel@wingware.com (Stephan Deibel) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 00:53:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Python Success Stories, volume II Message-ID: Hi, O'Reilly Associates has agreed to print a second volume of Python Success Stories and I am looking for contributors of new stories. This booklet will showcase Python in the context of a variety of successful software projects, explaining why Python was a good choice. It is used by O'Reilly as a freebie to market its own books, and it's a great way to get the word out about Python and your company or project. The first Python Success Stories booklet came out in May 2003 and can be viewed here: http://python.oreilly.com/news/python_success_stories.pdf The second printed volume is planned for release before OSCON 2004 (July), and all the stories (even those that don't fit in the book) will be distributed via O'Reilly's and several other websites. There is more information on contributing a story here: http://pythonology.org/successguide Examples of finished stories are here: http://pythonology.org/success If you need additional information, please don't hesitate to contact me. Thanks very much. Sincerely, Stephan Deibel -- Wingware Wing IDE for Python Advancing Software Development www.wingware.com From calfdog@yahoo.com Fri Apr 30 13:18:07 2004 From: calfdog@yahoo.com (calfdog@yahoo.com) Date: 30 Apr 2004 05:18:07 -0700 Subject: ATTN: Pamie 1.2a is released!!! Message-ID: Pamie 1.2a has been released!!! http://pamie.sourceforge.net For latest news: http://pamie.sourceforge.net/news.html What is Pamie? This is a "free" open source tool written for QA Engineers or Developers as a means to simulate users exploring a web site. PAMIE can be used in a variety of ways to implement your web QC needs. It can be modified in a number of ways, such as: * Read the action file name as a command line parameter * Print start, end and run times for the script or individual actions * Read from a database or spreadsheet,log to a file or a database. * Modify the timeout length via a command line parameter. Example: Taking Pamie for a test drive: http://pamie.sourceforge.net/README.html This is still an Alpha version but very usable. Thank you R.L. Marchetti From jason@tishler.net Fri Apr 30 14:29:43 2004 From: jason@tishler.net (Jason Tishler) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 09:29:43 -0400 Subject: Updated Cygwin Package: python-2.3.3-2 Message-ID: New News: === ==== I have updated the version of Python to 2.3.3-2. The tarballs should be available on a Cygwin mirror near you shortly. The following are the notable changes since the previous release: o all known 64-bit I/O issues are resolved o Berkeley DB module is built against Berkeley DB 4.2 Old News: === ==== Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. If interested, see the Python web site for more details: http://www.python.org/ Please read the README file: /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/python-2.3.3.README since it covers requirements, installation, known issues, etc. To update your installation, click on the "Install Cygwin now" link on the http://cygwin.com/ web page. This downloads setup.exe to your system. Then, run setup and answer all of the questions. Note that we have recently stopped downloads from sources.redhat.com (aka cygwin.com) due to bandwidth limitations. This means that you will need to find a mirror which has this update. In the US, ftp://mirrors.rcn.net/mirrors/sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ is a reliable high bandwidth connection. In Germany, ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/pc/gnuwin32/cygwin/mirrors/cygnus/ is usually pretty good. In the UK, http://programming.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/programming/cygwin/pub/cygwin/ is usually up-to-date within 48 hours. If one of the above doesn't have the latest version of this package then you can either wait for the site to be updated or find another mirror. The setup.exe program will figure out what needs to be updated on your system and will install newer packages automatically. If you have questions or comments, please send them to the Cygwin mailing list at: cygwin@cygwin.com . I would appreciate if you would use this mailing list rather than emailing me directly. This includes ideas and comments about the setup utility or Cygwin in general. If you want to make a point or ask a question, the Cygwin mailing list is the appropriate place. *** CYGWIN-ANNOUNCE UNSUBSCRIBE INFO *** If you want to unsubscribe from the cygwin-announce mailing list, look at the "List-Unsubscribe: " tag in the email header of this message. Send email to the address specified there. It will be in the format: cygwin-announce-unsubscribe-you=yourdomain.com@cygwin.com Jason -- PGP/GPG Key: http://www.tishler.net/jason/pubkey.asc or key servers Fingerprint: 7A73 1405 7F2B E669 C19D 8784 1AFD E4CC ECF4 8EF6