🌐 Mailman 3 December 2005 - Python-list - python.org

Xah's Edu Corner: Examples of Quality Technical Writing
by Xah Lee March 9, 2006

March 9, 2006

i had the pleasure to read the PHP's manual today. http://www.php.net/manual/en/ although Pretty Home Page is another criminal hack of the unix lineage, but if we are here to judge the quality of its documentation, it is a impeccability. it has or possesses properties of: • To the point and useful. PHP has its roots in mundaness, like Perl and Apache. Its doc being practicality oriented isn't a surprise, as are the docs of Perl and Apache. • Extreme clarity! The doc is extremely well-written. The authors's writing skills shows, that they can present their ideas clearly, and also that they have put thoughts into what they wanted to say. • Ample usage examples. As with Perl's doc, PHP doc is not afraid to show example snippets, yet not abuse it as if simply slapping on examples in lieu of proper spec or discussion. • Appropriate functions or keywords are interlinked. This aspect is also well done in other quality docs, such as Mathematica, Java, MS JScript, Perl's official docs. • No abuse of jargons. In fact, it's so well written that there's almost no jargons in its docs, yet conveys its intentions to a tee. This aspect can also be seen in Mathematica's doc, or Microsoft's JScript doc, for examples. • No author masturbation. (if fact, you won't see a first-person perspective, as is the case with most quality tech writing.) We must truely appreciate the authors of the PHP doc. Because, PHP, as a free shit in the unix shit culture, with extreme ties to Perl and Apache (both of which has extremely motherfucked docs), but can wean itself from a shit milieu and stand pure and clean to become a paragon of technical writing. ------------ Reminder for the purpose of this post: The world's mother fuckers are the community and doc writers of: Unix (man pages), Perl, Apache, Python. As i have alluded or expounded before, the unix & Apache are criminally the worst, Perl being a close follow up. Python's on a class of its own, being a mutated Computer Sciency fuck that is possibly even worse on the whole than Perl's doc. Here a sample list of a variety of quality technical writings: • Mathematica http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/ • Microsoft's JScript official docs http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/script56/html/js56jsconjscriptfunda… • Emacs Lisp Introduction (by Robert J. Chassell) http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/ (GNU project's documentations are almost always quality documentations. For example, the official emacs and elisp docs ale both of high quality.) • Java official doc http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/index.html Java, being a bottled-up inflexible language with incessant lies backup by huge amounts of $money$, nevertheless hired professional writers for its huge official documentation — produced a very well done doc for a very complex language. (however, the official Java Tutorial is a fucking crap) • Scheme (R5RS) http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/r5rs-Z-H-2.html • Scheme (Teaching yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days) http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dorai/t-y-scheme/t-y-scheme-Z-H-1.html These are all quality technical writings. They have different styles and audiences and coverages. If you want to see clarity and concision, see JScript, PHP, and Scheme intro. If you want to see clarity with verbosity, see Emacs Lisp Intro. For clarity sans arcana yet covers esoterica, see the Mathematica doc. Some of these are written for people with no experience in programing, yet functions as equivalent to teaching/documenting extremely advanced programing concepts. If you want to see proper use of jargons at a IT professional level, see the Java doc. If you want to see exemplary tech writing in a academic style, see the Scheme R5RS. Related essay: Why OpenSource Documentation is of Low Quality http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/gubni_papri.html Xah xah(a)xahlee.org ∑ http://xahlee.org/

57 102

wxpython book
by johna＠uk2.net Feb. 26, 2006

Feb. 26, 2006

I have seen some brief mention of the new book by Robin Dunn in one or two posts. But none that highlight that the book is to be published sometime at then end of Jan 2006. I hope that turns out to be an accurate date. It has been long-awaited so I thought it ought to get a proper mention. I must admit that I've been waiting a long time for some solid documentation that is up to date with the current release of wxwidgets. I hope this list will be the right one to post to since there are always posts about what gui tool to use. The link is http://www.manning.com The front page of the site has a brief outline of the book. What would be good is if it had a list of contents so we could be clearer as to what subjects were covered and in what depth. I can't thank Robin and his colleague enough for the effort to produce the book. So I hope it proves very popular. John Aherne

5 4

computer algebra packages
by Rahul Feb. 23, 2006

Feb. 23, 2006

Hi. Well is there an open source computer algebra system written in python or at least having a python interface? I know of 2 efforts: pythonica and pyginac...are there any others? rahul

9 12

PyDev 0.9.8.2 released
by Fabio Zadrozny Feb. 16, 2006

Feb. 16, 2006

Hi All, PyDev - Python IDE (Python Development Enviroment for Eclipse) version 0.9.8.2 has been released. Check the homepage (http://pydev.sourceforge.net/) for more details. Details for Release: 0.9.8.2 Major highlights: ------------------------ * Content assistants reviewed (and better documented on the homepage -- I really reccomend checking it) * Timeout parsing options added (this is available in the builder preferences page) * Auto-dedent added Others that are new and noteworthy: ----------------------------------------------------- * .pyc is removed when the corresponding .py file is removed. * Debugger has been changed so that it becomes faster (still not as fast as I would like, but still... faster) -- looking for people with expertise on this to help me, as I'm kind of lost on which should be the 'recommended' way to speed it more. * Some escaped quotes problems fixed when formatting code * Navigation with Ctrl+Shift+ (up or down) has been slightly improved, so that it goes to the start or the end of the file when no other class or method declaration is found * Other bug-fixes (as ususal) Cheers, Fabio -- Fabio Zadrozny ------------------------------------------------------ Software Developer ESSS - Engineering Simulation and Scientific Software www.esss.com.br PyDev - Python Development Enviroment for Eclipse pydev.sf.net pydev.blogspot.com

1 9

PyHtmlGUI Project is looking for developers
by phoenixathell＠gmx.de Jan. 19, 2006

Jan. 19, 2006

Hi all, the PyHtmlGUI Project (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/pyhtmlgui) is looking for developers that want to join. The aim of the project is to create a web application framework. The API of PyHtmlGUI wants to be close to Trolltechs famous Qt API but incooperates the idea of a text based renderengine instead of the pixel based one. The obviouse target is html/css but through xml rendering process nearly every textual output could be generated. So far we finished a proof-of-concept prototype that is available via CVS from sourceforge. Now we would like to extend this prototype to a full useable framework. But therefore we would like to have more developer involved. On the one hand because of time issues on the other hand to get new ideas and comments for the project. What skills you should have to join ? Well, you should at least be able to program in python ;). But of course a very big plus is knowledge about Qt because the basic idea is to transfer Qt's API to PyHtmlGUI. But it is not necessary that you are a Qt guru. And if you don't have the slightest idea what Qt is you could still help us with bugfixing and unittesting. The bottom line is that we are looking for people that can help us to create a great web application framework. How can you join ? Just write me a email. Greetings, Ingo

6 10

Wingide is a beautiful application
by vinjvinj Jan. 16, 2006

Jan. 16, 2006

I haven't used an IDE in a long time but gave wing ide a try because I wanted the same development platform on Linux and Windows. I'm currently using Ultraedit and it works fine but needed something more portable as I'm moving my main platform over to Ubuntu. I first tried jedit and was reasonably happy with it but it felt slow and it did not have a native look and feel to it. It was really hard on the eyes. I was impressed! The UI has completely changed since the last time I gave it a spin. It's much more useable and beautiful on the eyes. My productivity has gone up for sure and would highly recomend it to anyone else. not to mention you'll be supporting python as well. Things I like about wingide: - Ability to double click on the project plan and it hides and you double click on it and it becomes visable again. - Ability to double click on the debug/python shell plan and it hides and you double click on it and it becomes visable again. - Auto completion is very powerful and well implemented. - Open the file that a function was defined through the context menu - Keyboard mapping for vi and emacs - Always having a python shell available - An integrated debugger. - Running in debug mode was significantly faster than any other debugger I have used. - Auto indent mode is vary useful. - The space manager. Notifies you if a file contains spaces and tabs and then converts all tabs into spaces. - Ability to debug my cherrypy and turbogears application Things that could use improvement: - The block mode Ability to work with text files in block mode where you can highlight any block in the file. Wingide implementation is reasonable but not like Ultraedit's or jedit's Does anyone know what gui toolkit wingide uses? it really is one of the best applications I've seen for some time and it's a great way to support python.

16 38

Re: Indentation/whitespace
by Lee Harr Jan. 14, 2006

Jan. 14, 2006

On 2005-12-23, Gary Herron <gherron(a)islandtraining.com> wrote: > You've got the visible/invisible aspect of things > *exactly* backwards. > The point on a line of text where things change > from white space to > non-white space is *highly* visible. The several > pixels that represent a > { or } are nearly invisible within a line of text. > (So one usually > compensates by putting them alone on a line, > making them somewhat more > visible.) > Along these lines, I was wondering recently if it would be nice to have the editor put in some subtle gradation in the background color or maybe some faint gridlines at each indentation stop. Has anyone ever experimented with that?

8 8

Subclassing socket
by groups.20.thebriguy＠spamgourmet.com Jan. 14, 2006

Jan. 14, 2006

socket objects have a little quirk. If you try to receive 0 bytes on a blocking socket, they block. That is, if I call recv(0), it blocks (until some data arrives). I think that's wrong, but I don't want to argue that. I would like to create a subclass of socket that fixes the problem. Ideally, something like: class new_socket(socket): def recv( self, bufsize, flags=0 ): if bufsize == 0: return "" else: return socket.recv( bufsize, flags ) They only problem is, sockets return socket objects via the accept call. And the socket returned is of type socket, of course, not new_socket, as I would like. I could override accept() to return a new_socket, but I don't know how to convert the old socket to a new socket. That is, I'd like to add a method to the class above something like: def accept( self ): conn, addr = socket.accept() <convert conn, which is type socket to type new_socket> return ( conn, addr ) Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do the above?

5 5

[EVALUATION] - E04 - Leadership! Google, Guido van Rossum, PSF
by Ilias Lazaridis Jan. 13, 2006

Jan. 13, 2006

Python Leadership was a weakness [1] and becomes now a threat for python, thanks to Mr. van Rossums employment at Google. - I've wrote the Leadership list prioritized (Google rules, Mr. van Rossum follows, PSF watches and accepts). The core developer of an open-source-project is 'captured' by an giant (Google). The giant does not inform the community directly, e.g. whilst posting an official statement to this media or with an official anouncement (which clarifies the details of the deal). Mr. van Rossum does not inform the community directly. The Open Source Project (PSF) does not inform the community directly. Just a thread with a little bit rumour. Guido at Google http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/07c299b817dca256 Really, this does not make a very professional impression. And this has of course nothing to do with "Leadership" - which should protect an community from wasting time and energy with unnecessary assumptions and speculations. - [1] Within this thread (which contained a simple rational change-suggestion) i've finally contacted the foundation. [EVALUATION] - E02 - Support for MinGW Open Source Compiler http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/0d2aad11f0516918 The foundation had reacted by email, but just with some justifications. Mr. van Rossum has reacted, too. This led to some funny (and off-topic) conversation, which was closed to be published (but finally he decided opposite). And very finally he suggested that I suffer from some mental disease. Many people simplify: "what I don't understand, must be nuts". I hope that he understands now (possibly he has the courage for an apology?): http://lazaridis.com/core/index.html . -- http://lazaridis.com/core/eval/python.html

25 59

Ann: Tkinter drag and drop module
by klappnase＠web.de Jan. 13, 2006

Jan. 13, 2006

I wrote a wrapper for the tkdnd Tk extension (<http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkdnd>), which adds native drag and drop support to Tkinter (windows and unix only). It was the first time for me to try wrapping a Tk extension, and I couldn't find any documentation on this, so I would still consider it experimental; however at least for the most part it seems to work well. The module can be used with both standard Tkinter and Tix, and makes it quite easy to e.g. drop a bunch of files from a file manager onto any Tkinter widget. It comes with a basic reference manual and a small demo app. It can be found at <http://www.8ung.at/klappnase/TkinterDnD/TkinterDnD.html>. Any feedback is much appreciated. Best regards Michael

4 4