Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Dec 4)

[Paul Boddie]

QOTW: "We of all people should understand Worse Is Better. And I forgot
to mention a little flash in the pan called Python, for which Tkinter (2+2
left as an exercise) is the GUI of choice." - Ken Tilton (on comp.lang.lisp,
perhaps stretching the meaning of "of choice" somewhat)
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4d4945fb2706fc24

"It isn't that mobile platforms speak a different language to the web:
they're perfectly capable of running AJAX software, from Python to JavaScript
to full-blown Java and Flash." - Andrew Orlowski, The Register, "The mobile
web: in praise of conv ... divergence"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/30/opera_mini_web/

Still, comp.lang.python manages to score a less than on-topic quote of
the week: "> If you compare eclipse to VS, it is not that memory hungry.
And if you compare Saturn to Jupiter, it's not that big." -- sjdevnull
responding to hg
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/13d0b24029b6e753


A provisional PyCon schedule has been made available with three... no,
four lightning talk sessions:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python.announce/browse_frm/thread/7fd3fc7fbe4f7100
http://pycon.blogspot.com/2006/12/abundance-of-lightning-talks.html

Python's "benevolent dictator" himself gave a talk recently, as
previously mentioned in Python-URL!, and Niall Kennedy summarises the
content for those not in attendance:
http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/11/google-mondrian.html

Fof us who skimmed PEP 263 and thought that only "emacs-style"
comments were allowed when telling Python about source file encodings, a
careful re-reading is advised. Examples for vim users are provided in the
context of a source code tidier, PythonTidy:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/c62220ff0f4cb30a

Ravi Teja spells out communications architectures and mechanisms in the
context of CORBA:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/3f056c5c87279aca

The One Laptop Per Child developers and testers briefly consider Python
development environments (in the context of things Alan Kay presented at
EuroPython 2006):
http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-November/003176.html

... while the "Python in education" special interest group mulls over
the notion of a "view source" button for running programs:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2006-November/007418.html

E..and the best way to try the latest Python-related developments
in the OLPC project:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2006-December/007441.html

Reconstructor is an Ubuntu Linux Live CD creator written in Python and
licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL):
http://reconstructor.aperantis.com/


========================================================================
Everything Python-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in
these pages:

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

PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
marvelous 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.

For far, FAR more Python reading than any one mind should
absorb, much of it quite interesting, several pages index
much of the universe of Pybloggers.
http://lowlife.jp/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/PythonProgrammersWeblog
http://www.planetpython.org/
http://mechanicalcat.net/pyblagg.html

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

Python411 indexes "podcasts ... to help people learn Python ..."
Updates appear more-than-weekly:
http://www.awaretek.com/python/index.html

Steve Bethard continues the marvelous tradition early borne by
Andrew Kuchling, Michael Hudson, Brett Cannon, Tony Meyer, and Tim
Lesher of intelligently summarizing action on the python-dev mailing
list once every other week.
http://www.python.org/dev/summary/

The Python Package Index catalogues packages.
http://www.python.org/pypi/

The somewhat older Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collects references
to all sorts of Python resources.
http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/

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

Python Success Stories--from air-traffic control to on-line
match-making--can inspire you or decision-makers to whom you're
subject with a vision of what the language makes practical.
http://www.pythonology.com/python/success

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has replaced the Python
Consortium as an independent nexus of activity. It has official
responsibility for Python's development and maintenance.
http://www.python.org/psf/
Among the ways you can support PSF is with a donation.
http://www.python.org/psf/donate.html

Kurt B. Kaiser publishes a weekly report on faults and patches.
http://www.google.com/groups?as_usubject=weekly python patch

Although unmaintained since 2002, the Cetus collection of Python
hyperlinks retains a few gems.
http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html

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

The Cookbook is a collaborative effort to capture useful and
interesting recipes.
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python

Among several Python-oriented RSS/RDF feeds available are
http://www.python.org/channews.rdf
http://bootleg-rss.g-blog.net/pythonware_com_daily.pcgi
http://python.de/backend.php
For more, see
http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php?ShowMatch=python&ShowStatus=all
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://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0042/

The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
(e-mail address removed) and (e-mail address removed)
welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

del.icio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary.
It already aggregates quite a bit of Python intelligence.
http://del.icio.us/tag/python

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

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

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
http://www.ddj.com/topic/python/ (requires subscription)
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=python-url+group:comp.lang.python*&start=0&scoring=d&
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
There is *not* an RSS for "Python-URL!"--at least not yet. Arguments
for and against are occasionally entertained.


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[Terry Reedy]

Python's "benevolent dictator" himself gave a talk recently, as
previously mentioned in Python-URL!, and Niall Kennedy summarises the
content for those not in attendance:

http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/11/google-mondrian.html

This link is great...

The One Laptop Per Child developers and testers briefly consider
Python
development environments (in the context of things Alan Kay presented
at
EuroPython 2006):

http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-November/003176.html

But the only thing about Python here is "(Is somebody going
to write a Python development environment for children?)"

E..and the best way to try the latest Python-related developments
in the OLPC project:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2006-December/007441.html

And this has no obvious relation to its description

tjr

 

[Paul Boddie]

But the only thing about Python here is "(Is somebody going
to write a Python development environment for children?)"

Yes, it's a bit tenuous, but the context and further discussion is
where the interesting stuff is. At EuroPython, Alan Kay gave a keynote
which focused a lot on the Etoys and Squeak body of work, which is
where users (with children particularly in mind) can experiment with
different ideas in an interactive graphical environment based on
autonomous objects with editable behaviour. Since Squeak is an
image-based environment, a lot of the "view source" functionality comes
for free, whereas Python, despite its apparent similarities with
Smalltalk and Lisp, doesn't appear to have quite the same level of
convenient support for both live editing of objects and process
persistence.

The next message in the thread referenced above mentions Pygame, which
is where a lot of people believe such work should be done with Python.
Perhaps the Python density in that thread isn't great - it's not a
bunch of core developers agonising over C API minutiae - but the
significance of the project along with the issues involved is certainly
worth exploring.

And this has no obvious relation to its description

The Sugar environment is the user interface for the OLPC project. If
you look at the "human interface guidelines", you'll see the following:

"To enable such layered exploration, OLPC has written much of what can
be in Python, a scripting language, to enable children to view the
source code."

One of the more discussed topics in various places outside the Python
"mainstream" recently was whether it was convenient to try out the
Sugar environment without having the OLPC hardware. The referenced
message attempts to provide some clarity in the matter, but once again
it's the further discussion that adds extra value, I think.

Paul