[Web-SIG] ANN: Pylons 0.8

[Ben Bangert]

James Gardner and myself are pleased to announce release 0.8 of Pylons.

Pylons is a modern full-stack Python web development framework that  
is frequently compared to Ruby on Rails since it uses similar  
methodologies and includes ports and re-implementations of useful  
Rails components such as Routes and AJAX Helpers.

By combining ideas from Mason, TurboGears Django, and various Python  
frameworks with a highly extensible API, Pylons provides a toolset  
that is very flexible and natural for the Python developer to use.

=== Full Web Server Gateway Interface Stack ===

Pylons is based on Paste from the ground up. Its heavy use of WSGI  
wherever possible makes for a sophisticated yet highly flexible  
system that helps you to get started quickly and enables you to get  
at the heart of what's going on when you need to.

=== Powerful URL Design ===

Pylons integrates Routes to provide a powerful system for designing  
simple, cruft-free URLs that are as carefully laid out as your  
application.

=== Flexible Templates ===

Pylons uses Myghty templates by default for their power, simplicity  
and speed but also supports Cheetah and Kid and can be also be used  
with any Buffet-compatible template language. Choose the templating  
system that best suits the way you work.

=== Helper Functions ===

Pylons web helpers provide a full range of functions that can be used  
throughout your application and templates so that you don't need to  
reinvent the wheel for common tasks. All the helpers from Rails are  
available including full AJAX support and pagination compatible with  
lists and popular ORM's like SQLObject and SQLAlchemy.

=== Interactive Debugging ===

The speed you can develop an application depends a lot on the speed  
you can correct problems. Pylons error handling middleware provides  
code snippets, value tables, extra application data and uses AJAX to  
provide an interactive Python prompt that you can use at any point in  
the error traceback to track down and solve problems fast.

=== Other Features in Brief ===

Pure Python, 2.3.5 and 2.4 compatible tested on Windows/MacOS/Linux/ 
BSD, deploy via the stand alone server or CGI/FastCGI/SCGI/mod_python  
on Apache, Lighttpd or other servers, internationalization support,  
database integration, caching, built-in testing, automatic  
documentation via Pudge, extensible helper API, JSON support,  
traceback emails, egg and easy_install compatible, helpful and  
knowledgeable community.

Locations
-------------
Web:           http://pylonshq.com/install/
Easy Install:  easy_install -f http://pylonshq.com/download/ Pylons
Mailing List:  http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss
Developers:    Ben Bangert, James Gardner and many others

If you want to get serious about Python web development, get Pylons  
and get started: http://pylonshq.com/docs/0.8/getting_started.html

-Ben Bangert