hmm, lets call it: generic __init__ problem

[paul kölle]

Hi list,

in the course of writing a small app, I tried to design a class, which 
would allow to derive its behaviour solely from its name, so that I 
would be able to write one abstract class with the logic and get 
different objects/instances by subclassing with appropriate names. 
Consider the following:

ATTRS = {'one':['attr1', 'attr2'],
	 'two':['attr3','attr4'],
	 'three':['attr5','attr6'],
	 'four':['attr7','attr8']}


class one:
	def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
		## get allowed attributes...
		for attr in ATTRS[self.__class__.__name__]:
			self.__dict__[attr] = ''

		## unknown attributes are silently ignored...
		for item in kwargs.keys():
			if self.__dict__.has_key( item ):
				 self.__dict__[item] = kwargs[item]
			else:
				 pass
		## init all parents...
		parents = self.__class__.__bases__
		if parents:
			for i in range(len(parents)):
			apply(parents[i].__name__.__init__,\ 								(self,)+args, kwargs)



class two(one):
	def foo(self):
		pass

class three(one):
	def bar(self):
		pass

class four(two, three):
	def wiskey_bar(self):
		pass

So running:
 >>> o = funClass.one()
 >>> dir(o)
['__doc__', '__init__', '__module__', '__str__', 'attr1', 'attr2']
 >>> o.attr1
''

and:
 >>> o = funClass.one( attr1='spam', attr2='chicks')
 >>> o.attr2
'chicks'

but:
 >>> dir(o)
['__doc__', '__init__', '__module__', '__str__', 'attr7', 'attr8', 
'bar', 'foo', 'wiskey_bar']

I expected to have all attrs from all parents initialized from:
parents = self.__class__.__bases__
if parents:
	for i in range(len(parents)):
		apply(parents[i].__name__.__init__,\ 								(self,)+args, kwargs)

in the __init__ method. But apparently I have misunderstood the 
self.__class__.__bases__ thingy as it does not do what I want ;(

Apart from the obvious mistake I can't figure out:
	1) Is this intelligent at all?
	2) Is there a better way to do it?
	3) How do you change tabwidth in mozilla mail?

thanks
  Paul