python resources for the week

[Kragen Sitaker]

* Code:
    Pycaml, which interfaces Python to OCaml, a higher-level
    alternative to C for speed-critical code, released version 0.8 on
    2002-05-28.
        http://pycaml.sf.net/

    Twisted, a framework for networked applications that includes
    implementations of a large number of common protocols as well as a
    remote object protocol with bindings in Python, Java, and elisp,
    released version 0.18.0 on 2002-06-01.
        http://twistedmatrix.com/

    Pygame, a Python binding to the popular SDL games-programming
    library, released version 1.5 on 2002-05-30.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3CF79DA4.7090503%40attbi.com

    Sheila King posted some "liberal" email parsing code that handles
    malformed mail headers better than the current standard email
    module, which doesn't parse Klez emails (among others) very well.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=acvmf3.t8.1%40kserver.org

    Russell Owen posted a GenericCallback class that curries callback
    functions to ease GUI programming.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=adc8kj$1ovk$1%40nntp6.u.washington.edu

    PySQLite, a Python wrapper for the SQLite embedded RDBMS, released
    version 0.2.0 on 2002-06-02.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023065045.19962.python-list%40python.org

    libxml, the GNOME XML library, released version 2.4.22 on
    2002-05-27.
        http://xmlsoft.org/news.html

    PdfSearch, a search engine for archives of PDF files with
    command-line and GUI interfaces, released version 0.1 on
    2002-06-02.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022767921.8082.clpa-moderators%40python.org

* Discussion on Features of Python:
    Jython doesn't run finalizers promptly (or, sometimes, at all),
    with the result that open('foo.txt', 'w').write(something) may
    never write anything to foo.txt.  Some think relying on CPython's
    prompt finalization is a bug, but Francois Pinard explained why he
    thinks it's Jython's behavior that's the bug.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022711561.21409.python-list%40python.org

    There was some discussion of 'for any' and 'for every' boolean
    expressions similar to list comprehensions; Tim Peters pointed out
    that ABC had them and they were nice.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022602963.3818.python-list%40python.org

    Grant Griffin explained why the implicit string concatenation done
    by the Python parser is un-Pythonic.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ad8dp701452%40drn.newsguy.com

    Aahz advocated using the Queue module for any and all inter-thread
    communication; Mark Hammond thought that position too extreme.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3CF43BA6.5020106%40skippinet.com.au

    Berthold Höllmann complained that distutils breaks
    platform-independence of scripts when Python executables are
    installed in platform-specific directories.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=m2k7pmlj3l.fsf%40pchoel.privat.uni-hamburg.de

* Problems and Solutions:
    Tim Churches recommended RPy for easy visualization of large
    arrays of numbers, such as Numeric arrays.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022712528.1085.python-list%40python.org

    Andrei Kulakov praised the startup speed of pygtk applications in
    a thread about wxPython startup speed; several other posters on
    the thread had switched from wxPython to pygtk or even Tkinter to
    get better performance.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=slrnafj3eo.86f.ak%40ak.silmarill.org

    Carsten Gaebler noticed that popen would cause your Python program
    to hang forever on exit if you forgot to specify 'w'.  Donn Cave
    explained why.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ad0bkd$2608$1%40nntp6.u.washington.edu
    There's also a problem with Python's SIGPIPE handling and
    popen()ed programs that don't exit on their own --- they don't
    die.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ad2vun$1eua$1%40nntp6.u.washington.edu

    Someone had trouble getting McMillan Installer to work on a
    program that used Gadfly; Gordon McMillan thought it was because
    of a particular unusual technique Gadfly used to load its grammar,
    but Richard Jones said it no longer used that technique.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022623853.18650.python-list%40python.org

    Steindl Fritz wanted a variadic Cartesian product function; his
    problem got many solutions, the tersest of which was Steven
    Majewski's.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022695262.8171.python-list%40python.org

* Miscellaneous:
    "gb", from UNC-CH, posted their Python-code-folding setup for
    Emacs.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=uelftqprw.fsf%40cs.unc.edu

    Syver Enstad has a hack to allow HTML links in pydoc output to
    open your preferred editor with the right source file, but only on
    Microsoft Windows.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=un0ugnxa3.fsf%40online.no

    Emile van Sebille and Tim Delaney posted references to good online
    search pages for the Python documentation.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022801931.24850.python-list%40python.org

    EuroPython early-bird registration has been extended until
    2002-06-09 because of a rush of last-minute early-bird
    registrations and Internet problems.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022925562.29795.python-list%40python.org

    The EuroPython web site published an interview with Paul
    F. Dubois, the primary maintainer of NumPy.
        http://europython.zope.nl/interviews/entries/paul_dubois

    David Mertz has reviewed more Python books.
        http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pbook3.html

    Michal Wallace posted a reference to some code-duplication-finding
    software he'd written; Tim Peters posted a link to some research
    on the subject and mentioned he wished there was a fast
    suffix-tree extension module for Python.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022725195.17768.python-list%40python.org
    It turns out that Danny Yoo has written a suffix-tree extension
    module for Python.
        http://www-hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dyoo/python/suffix_trees/

    Quinn Dunkan extolled the merits of customized development
    environments when Oren Tirosh claimed not to have a personal
    utility library.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=slrnafafkp.eom.quinn%40regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu

    PEP 272, the API for block encryption algorithms, has been
    finalized.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022760847.17663.clpa-moderators%40python.org

    There is now a page on python.org about Python-friendly hosting
    providers.
        http://www.python.org/hosting/


-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
We are forming cells within a global brain and we are excited that we might
start to think collectively.  What becomes of us still hangs crucially on
how we think individually.  -- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web