Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Sep 22)

[Raymond Hettinger]

QOTW: "Python seems to encourage and reward incremental effort, and it leads
one to explore extensions and improvements to programs because the language
makes it relatively easy to see how to do the extensions." -- Ron Stephens

"When writing programs in Python, write Python programs" -- Jeff Epler's
advice to those forcing themselves to write code using idioms learned in
other languages

"Oh come on, now, just because Java does it..." -- Dave Benjamin's snappy
comeback to Bob Grailer's facetiously offered name for an inverse yield
statement called "suck".


Discussion
----------
Alex Martelli, Simon Burton, and Richie Hindle unleash their
Pythons to crush the latest internet worm:
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?th=ca045 31642584030>
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?th=ce63b f1338b0ef8a>
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?selm=mai lman.1063988666 .28932.python-list@python.org >

David Eppstein shows how to use zip to quickly retrieve an
arbitrary column in a table stored as a list of lists:
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?selm=epp stein-87EA1B.13431116 092003@news.ser vice.uci.edu>

Rudy Shockaert coaches Bill Blancett on developing a script to send
email with attachements using smtplib and the email module:
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?selm=4fd 6e92.0309190518 .3b226735@posti ng.google.com>

Dave Brueck and Skip Montanaro provide expert advice on threadsafe
access to global variables:
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?th=b44a9 fcebc90a01d>

A dozen pythonistias share real world experience about the
relative merits and applicability of Zope, Twisted, Python CGI,
Jython, Webware, and Medusa.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?th=903e3 79430bffdfd>

Duncan Booth provides a masterfully simple explaination of Python's
"global mutex" (the so-called GIL) and its implications for
multi-threaded applications.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?selm=Xns 93FA744C65C2Bdu ncanrcpcouk@127 .0.0.1>

Stefan Franke succinctly demonstrates a fast way to filter sets.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?selm=bka 5e3%24qito9%241 @ID-105404.news.uni-berlin.de>

Along with all its usual benefits, the latest semi-monthly
python-dev summary includes interesting personal commentary
and traffic analysis from summarizer Brett Cannon.
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?th=db282 0f9a9e1e89f>

Bob Findlay offers an on-line course in Python programming:
<http://www.icanprogram .com/pythonlinux.htm l>

This week's language change suggestions:
* mutable strings
* repeat/while control structure for mid-loop termination testing
* an inverse yield statement similar to threading.Event .wait()

Releases
--------
ClientFrom 0.1.8b - module for client side HTML form handling
(parsing, filling-in, and returning data to the server).
<http://wwwsearch.sourc eforge.net/ClientForm/>

pyTerra - module for querying Microsoft's TerraServer to download
cartographic images.
<http://hobu.biz/software/pyTerra>

imgSeek 0.8.2 - photo collection manager and viewer
<http://imgseek.sourcef orge.net/net/>

Vision Egg 0.9.9 - high level interface to OpenGL for tapping into
the capabilities of graphic cards.
<http://www.visionegg.o rg/>

SpamBayes 1.0a6 - source code for the world class spam filter.
<http://spambayes.org/download.html>

Soprano 0.04 - windows GUI app for querying hosts for information
about local groups, users, and other data.
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/soprano/>

PythonCard 0.7.2 - GUI construction kit for building cross-platform
desktop applications on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
<http://pythoncard.sour ceforge.net/>

Twisted 1.0.7 - an event-driven networking framework for server and
client applications.
<http://www.twistedmatr ix.com>

XMLFilter 1.1 - provides XML parsing even if the target system lacks
a working xml.sax package.
<http://www.shearersoft ware.com/software/developers/xmlfilter/>

=============== =============== =============== =============== ============
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
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


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