Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (May 22)

[Kragen Sitaker]

QOTW:  "More details on what you want will naturally increase the
quality of the answers you receive."  Geoff Gerrietts (and many others)


Programming libraries:
    PyKDE, PyQt, and SIP --- the Python bindings to KDE and Qt and the
    tool used to build them --- released version 3.2.4 on 2002-05-18.
    This is the first version to support KDE 3.
        http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/

    The Python Spread module, a Python interface to the Spread
    toolkit, which provides a high-performance fault-tolerant
    distributed message service with both unicast and multicast
    primitives, released version 1.2 on 2002-05-17.
         http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021668360.22742.python-list%40python.org

    Pyro, a distributed object system with RPC, mobile objects
    (including mobile code), naming, events, and automatic
    reconnection, released version 2.8 on 2002-05-17.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021908666.29990.clpa-moderators%40python.org

    FXPy, the Python binding to the FOX GUI toolkit, released version
    1.0.5 on 2002-05-16:
	http://fxpy.sourceforge.net/

    PycURL, a Python interface to the cURL URL-fetching library,
    released version 7.9.7 on 2002-05-20:
        http://pycurl.sourceforge.net/

    NodeNet, a Python library for networks of connected nodes with GUI
    support, has released 1.0beta1:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021412785.12096.python-list%40python.org

    DeveloperWorks has a couple of articles on Python --- "wxHTML for
    Beginners" and "Parsing With the SimpleParse Module":
        http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-wxpython?open&l=968,t=gr
        http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-simple.html?open&l=968,t=gr

    Fredrik Lundh explains how to cancel event propagation in Tkinter.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=nvbG8.8151$p56.2321947%40newsb.telia.net

    Rob Andrews wrote an article on Jython Swing Basics:
        http://uselesspython.com/Jython_Swing_Basics.html

    Cristian Barbarosie notices that os.path.commonprefix doesn't work
    as one might expect, and suggests a fix.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6c575772.0205210145.359ea49a%40posting.google.com

Discussion on features of Python:
    Paul Graham asks about generating closures in Python, leading to a
    thread covering most of the possibilities:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4f52f844.0205141503.40000c50%40posting.google.com

    Continuations Made Simple and Illustrated
        http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier/python/continuations.html

    Skip Montanaro discusses multiparadigm languages like Python,
    Common Lisp, C++, etc.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021697071.17004.python-list%40python.org
    Christopher Browne discusses what it means for Common Lisp to be
    "multiparadigm", comparing with Oz, contrasting with Ruby,
         http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=m38z6htaf6.fsf%40chvatal.cbbrowne.com

    Generator comprehensions came up again.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4c877253.0205132231.6d286d0b%40posting.google.com

    Alex Martelli discusses adapters and PEP 246, and alternatives to
    isinstance():
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=uttC8.40554$zW3.440516%40news1.tin.it

    The desire for internationalized identifier names that was
    discussed at such length last week has come up again, in a
    different form; someone wants to know why apply() insists on
    having no unicode objects as keys in its kwargs dictionary.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021764992.14333.python-list%40python.org

    Holger Krekel and Alex Martelli discuss adding currying to Python.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021311145.2513.python-list%40python.org

    The new incarnation of Stackless Python, with "tasklets" connected
    by Alef-style "channels", is now working.
         http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021685435.8672.python-list%40python.org
    Christian Tismer explains with some details.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021881098.25873.python-list%40python.org
    Andrew Henshaw explains Occam channels, which are related but not
    the same.
         http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ueji35ihipuee3%40corp.supernews.com

    Gonçalo Rodrigues wishes he had explicit interfaces in Python.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ip5aeu4c4p9ab7q4k5uf09dj94r1sjfr0t%404ax.com
    Apparently both Zope and Twisted Python have explicit interfaces
    now.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ac3vvd$9fo$1%40newshost.accu.uu.nl

    Jack Diederich posts an implementation of a variation of PEP 274
    (dict comprehensions) with no new syntax which allows him to
    populate existing dictionaries from lists much faster than
    existing alternatives.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021913254.17657.python-list%40python.org

    Alex Martelli talks about Sather iterators and their relationship
    to Python iterators.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=CrSD8.52710$zW3.722063%40news1.tin.it

    Erik Max Francis explains why dict keys (and, by extension,
    members of a set) must be immutable.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3CE9C04F.3AD43103%40alcyone.com

    One informIT registration away is "Deitel™ Presents
    Introduction to Python Iterators".
        http://www.informit.com/content/index.asp?product_id={3D15CE9B-E318-4D74-95EE-673A498E251E}

    Cameron Laird has written an article on pydoc:
        http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/python/2001/04/18/pydoc.html

Python Programs:
    IDE Studio, an enhanced version of IDLE, the Python IDE, released
    version 1.5 on 2002-05-18:
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mike/Tide/idledev/IDEStudio.html

    Skip Montanaro points to Bicycle Repair Man, a refactoring browser
    for Python; version 0.5 was released 2002-05-15.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021667250.1977.python-list%40python.org
        http://sourceforge.net/projects/bicyclerepair/

    Mailman, the GNU mailing list manager (and the one everybody uses
    these days), released version 2.0.11, which fixes security
    holes, on 2002-05-20.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021927545.18649.python-list%40python.org

    DPythOS, a network monitoring and administration system, released
    version 0.0 on 2002-05-14; this one's by Luke Kenneth Casson
    Leighton, so it might be worth watching:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021378504.8146.clpa-moderators%40python.org

    Puffin, a framework for writing automated tests for web
    applications,  released version 0.8.10 on 2002-05-14:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021336466.10959.python-list%40python.org

    ConvertAll, a GUI program for converting quantities between
    different kinds of units, released version 0.2.2 on 2002-05-16:
        http://www.xecu.net/dougbell/convertall/

    TreeLine, a sort of cross between an outliner and a database,
    released version 0.3.4 on 2002-05-15:
        http://www.xecu.net/dougbell/treeline/

    LinkChecker, which checks HTML documents for broken links,
    released stable version 1.4.6 and development version 1.5.2 on
    2002-05-15:
        http://linkchecker.sourceforge.net/

    FlawFinder, which finds security holes in source code, released
    version 0.22 on 2002-05-15:
        http://www.dwheeler.com/flawfinder/

Problems and solutions:
    Some discussion about how to look up MX DNS records in Python:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021348163.24212.python-list%40python.org

    Current Python built with Visual C++ 7.x can't load extension
    modules without some build-configuration hackery, but it looks
    like this bug is going to be fixed:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=597ee21d.0205190433.59938215%40posting.google.com

    Matt Kimball was having trouble with getting his threads to
    be scheduled fairly on Windows XP; Tim Peters points out that it's
    a hard problem to solve in a portable fashion:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021770630.3420.python-list%40python.org
    Peter Hansen mentions that a particular trick Tim recommends to
    tweak responsiveness caused performance problems for his group:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3CE79FA1.BEECAFE8%40engcorp.com

    Sean McGrath has a weird problem: when he creates a large, complex
    object with cPickle, it takes a ridiculously long time to delete,
    much longer than if he creates the same object by other means; and
    furthermore, Python 2.1.3 takes five times longer than 1.5.2.
    Nobody has yet figured out what's going on.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021742251.22977.python-list%40python.org
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021802191.2409.python-list%40python.org

    It seems that shutil.copy and shutil.copy2 don't properly copy
    file metadata on Windows, which requires facilities prewin32all is
    not included in the main Python distribution, so shutil can't
    depend on it:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021713031.9406.python-list%40python.org

    Greg Weeks complains that Python isn't backward compatible.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1021652963.460304%40cswreg.cos.agilent.com
    David LeBlanc defends its non-backward-compatibility.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021664729.24068.python-list%40python.org

    A puzzling problem with telnetlib comes down to a bug in NT 4.0's
    gethostbyname:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=696heuo6dakvfoak328t8ej4hlqrfe29lg%404ax.com

    People discuss getting ANSI color support to work right, which is
    difficult and painful:
         http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=acc1oh$1r5$1%40peabody.colorado.edu

    There's a long discussion about how to tell whether a string
    containing Python code contains an unterminated string,
    culminating in this Holger Krekel post.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021595549.32363.python-list%40python.org

Miscellaneous:
    Mark Hadfield has made further progress running Python on his Cray
    T3E, although it still doesn't run the test suite to completion:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=absu94$vn5$1%40newsreader.mailgate.org
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=abmlke$m1n$1%40newsreader.mailgate.org
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021595314.25214.python-list%40python.org

    Laura Creighton compares programming to civil engineering, finding
    the two more similar than programmers like to think:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021473087.19545.python-list%40python.org

    Paul Boddie has released a document comparing available Python
    software to what J2EE provides for Java:
        http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/web_modules_enterprise.html

    There is a very long debate about the philosophical topic of
    aesthetics, frequently touching on ontology and epistemology;
    Laura Creighton, among others, participates.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021718851.21163.python-list%40python.org

    Jacob Hallén argues that interoperable small pieces of software
    are better than large pieces of software.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=acavng$pcq$1%40nyheter.chalmers.se

    The paper version of the Python Cookbook should be out from
    O'Reilly soon; it's in copy-editing and production.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1021569873.21855.python-list%40python.org

    Tim Danieluk doesn't believe in vendor lock-in, thinks standards
    are overrated, and thinks the real battlefield is in control of
    data, not code.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3CE9BC7F.A3565ADE%40tundraware.com


========================================================================

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  
    Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new)
    World-Wide Web articles related to Python.
	 http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html 
    While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL
    are utterly different in their technologies and generally in
    their results.

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Michael Hudson continued Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition
    of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every
    other week, into July 2001.  Any volunteers to re-start this
    valuable series?
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
	http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html

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

    The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a
    SourceForge reincarnation.
	http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse
	http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html
     
    The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
    editor at pythonjournal.com and editor at pythonjournal.cognizor.com
    welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
    of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

    *Py: the Journal of the Python Language*
        http://www.pyzine.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    Tenth International Python Conference 
        http://www.python10.org            

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/         
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant)
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


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e-mail us ideas directly.]

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