Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jun 30)

[Irmen de Jong]

QOTW: "Giving full access rights to a secretary or new programmer ought
to insure an occasional random file deletion." -- Raymond Hettinger

"I always use join, but that's probably because that method is more likely
to run code that I once wrote. Never trust code written by a man who
uses defines to create his own C syntax." -- Fredrik Lundh


Discussion
----------
Peter Hansen is right in complimenting Sorin Marti on his excellent
problem description, and helps with reading binary data from a file.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?threadm= 3EFB0E26.9A069A 9C%40engcorp.co m>

Fredrik Lundh shows how easy it is to write macro-like extensions
for your Python application.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?threadm= mailman.1056722 085.11922.pytho n-list@python.org >

Tim Delaney provides a mutable string class that can be used to
concatenate strings efficiently and easily, instead of using
myPage+="more html..." or "\n".join(strin gs).
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?threadm= mailman.1056587 587.3703.python-list@python.org >

Bengt Richter gives a possible explanation of the (historic?) distiction
between carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF), and how this bears on
problems with "shebang" scripts.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?threadm= bdcl1d$v43$0@21 6.39.172.122>

Alan Kennedy explains why compiling to C code is not always guaranteed to
speed things up, and why PyPy (Python written in Python!) could help
in the performance department.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?threadm= 3EF9CBD8.F3AFF8 56@hotmail.com>

Raymond Hettinger explains the purpose of some of the recent iteration
constructs (itertools), and why things are this way.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?threadm= PmwJa.6109$N%6. 5701@nwrdny02.g nilink.net>

Edvard Majakari shares interesting opinions on Unit Testing and
test-driven development.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?threadm= 87of0pno5s.fsf@ titan.staselog. com>


Announcements
-------------
PyRex 0.8, a language for writing Python extension modules.
<http://www.cosc.canter bury.ac.nz/~greg/python/Pyrex/>

M2Crypto 0.11, a crypto and SSL toolkit for Python.
<http://www.post1.com/home/ngps/m2>

PythonCAD 8th release, a CAD package written in Python.
<http://www.pythoncad.o rg/>

DocUtils 0.3, a system for processing plaintext documentation
(reStructuredTe xt markup).
<http://docutils.source forge.net/>

Scratchy 0.4, an Apache log parser and HTML report generator.
<http://scratchy.source forge.net/>

ClientForm 0.0.10 and 0.1.3a, a Python module for handling
HTML forms on the client.
<http://wwwsearch.sourc eforge.net/ClientForm/>

SCons 0.90, a software construction tool (build tool, or make tool).
<http://www.scons.org/>

Twisted 1.0.6, an event-driven networking framework for server
and client applications.
<http://www.twistedmatr ix.com/>
David Mertz, our own Lulu, presents Twisted to a wider audience.
<http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-twist1.html>

TTFQuery 0.2.4, builds on the FontTools module to allow you
to query TTF font-files for metadata and glyph outlines.
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/ttfquery/>


=============== =============== =============== =============== ============
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.pytho n.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

Brett Cannon continues the marvelous tradition established by
Andrew Kuchling and Michael Hudson of 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/

The Python Business Forum "further[s] the interests of companies
that base their business on ... Python."

http://www.python-in-business.org

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.c ognizor.com.
editor@pythonjo urnal.com and editor@pythonjo urnal.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

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.c om/groups?oi=djq&a s_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup= comp.lang.pytho n


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
E-mail to <Python-URL@phaseit.net > should get through.

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