🌐 Mailman 3 August 2007 - Python-list - python.org

The Modernization of Emacs
by Xah Lee Oct. 12, 2007

Oct. 12, 2007

[this post is a excerpt from The Modernization of Emacs, Xah Lee, 2006-04 at http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization.html ] The Modernization of Emacs ---------------------------------------- THE PROBLEM Emacs is a great editor. It is perhaps the most powerful and most versatile text editor. And, besides text editing, it also serves as a email application, newsgroup application, ftp application, irc application, web browser, shell interface, file management application, programable calculator, calendar and personal info management application, lisp language system, among other things. These seemingly wild functionalities are employed in production daily by a significant number of programers around the world. Some calls emacs as a Operating System as a joke. (Technically it does not qualify because a OS implies management of hardware.). If emacs is such a great and powerful text editor why almost nobody knows about it? Vast majority of people who need to write will be more than happy to use editors other than emacs. Ask a Microsoft Windows user. She'll be more than happy to use Microsoft Word↗. If he doesn't have MS Word, he'll use NotePad↗ or WordPad↗. If he is a programer, most will be more than happy to use any of other graphical editors on the Windows platform or any of the Integrated development environment↗. Same is true on other operating systems, and new editors spring up here and there even though they don't have as much power or flexibility as emacs. For example, there are NEdit, JEdit, Eclipse, Xcode↗ , or the various associated with languages or third party language software, such as Visual Basic or Borland C++. Many reasons can be made out of this. For example, emacs is not bundled on popular operating systems such as Windows or Mac, which are used by some 99% of computer users worldwide. Windows and Mac both have simple text editors bundled that will satisfy majority of computer users, which are non-professional computer users. (NotePad and WordPad on Windows, TextEdit↗ on Mac) For the few professional computer users, a majority will need a easy to use, yet powerful editor that also does styled text, formatting, and sundry light publishing needs such as table layout, simple line graphics drawing, embedded images, math formulas. They will choose and adopt Microsoft Word for their needs. The tiny percentage that might be interested in emacs, are programers. Even among professional programers, a majority shy away from emacs. A major difficulty among programers who do not use or like emacs, is that emacs's user interface is rather esoteric, involving arcane terminologies and keystrokes. This is in sharp contrast to the thousands of software applications used today, where their User Interface are similar and familiar to today's computer users. ---------------------------------------- THE COMMON USER INTERFACE The following is a excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Common User Access↗: CUA was a detailed specification and set strict rules about how applications should look and function. Its aim was in part to bring about harmony between MS-DOS applications, which until then had implemented totally different user interfaces. Examples: * In WordPerfect, the command to open a file was [F7], [3]. * In Lotus 1-2-3, a file was opened with [/] (to open the menus), [W] (for Workspace), [R] (for Retrieve). * In Microsoft Word, a file was opened with [Esc] (to open the menus), [T] (for Transfer), [L] (for Load). * In WordStar, it was [Ctrl]+[K]+[O]. * In Emacs, a file was opened with [Ctrl]+[x] followed by [Ctrl]+ [f] (for find-file). Some programs used [Esc] to cancel an action, some used it to complete one; WordPerfect used it to repeat a character. Some programs used [End] to go to the end of a line, some used it to complete filling in a form. [F1] was often help but in WordPerfect that was [F3]. [Ins] sometimes toggled between overtype and inserting characters, but some programs used it for “paste”. Thus, every program had to be learned individually and its complete user interface memorized. It was a sign of expertise to have learned the UIs of dozens of applications, since a novice user facing a new program would find their existing knowledge of a similar application absolutely no use whatsoever. ---------------------------------------- SIMPLE CHANGES In the following, i describe some critical changes that are also very easy to fix in emacs. If emacs officially adopt these changes, i think it will make a lot people, at least programers, like emacs and choose emacs as their text editor. * Change the keyboard shortcut of Copy & Paste to ctrl-c and ctrl- v as to be the same with all modern applications. * Change the undo behavior so that there is a Undo and Redo, as the same with all modern applications. * Get rid of the *scratch* buffer. * Change the terminology of “kill” to “cut”, and “yank” to “paste”. * Change the terminology of Meta key to Alt. * Make longlines-mode the default editor behavior for any file. Things emacs should do now, even though it eventually will do. * When opening a HTML document, automatically provide highlighting of HTML, CSS, and Javascript codes. Similarly for other multi-language files such as PHP, JSP, et al. This behavior must be automatic without requiring user to customize emacs. Possible Documentation Change Proposals * Reduce the use of the word “buffer” in the emacs documentation. Call it “opened file” or “unsaved document”. * Switch the terminology of Window and Frame so it is more standard. That is, Emacs's “Window” should be called Panes or Frames. While Emacs's “Frame” should be termed Window. * Change the terminology of keybinding to “keyboard shortcut” in emacs documentation. Use the term keybinding or binding only in a technical context, such as in elisp documentation. Xah xah(a)xahlee.org ∑ http://xahlee.org/

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Launch file from Python
by jocago＠gmail.com Oct. 10, 2007

Oct. 10, 2007

Good afternoon from someone who is trying to learn Python. I would like to launch an app from within a Python script. From the examples I have found, I should be able to do this with os.system. I use this: os.system("xplanet-1.2.0/xplanet.exe -fontsize 24 -label -target earth -lat 33.65 -lon -84.42 -radius 40 -num_times 1 -tmpdir .") This is copied directly from the .bat file that launches the xplanet app. It works there. and get this: 1 Can someone fill me in? Thanks.

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Re: Symbolic Link
by mosscliffe Oct. 10, 2007

Oct. 10, 2007

On 22 Aug, 00:05, Ian Clark <icl...(a)mail.ewu.edu> wrote: > Hyuga wrote: > > On Aug 19, 4:29 pm,mosscliffe<mcl.off...(a)googlemail.com> wrote: > >> The source file is in an area which python can see, but not the > >> browser. I am trying to make a link in a browser friendly area so I > >> can use it to display an image file. > > > You might want to try using an .htaccess file. Place a file > > called .htaccess in the "browser friendly area" and place in it the > > line: > > > Options +FollowSymLinks > > > Assuming your hosting service will allow that, then it should work. > > If not, then why not just copy the image files? Storage is cheap > > these days. > > > Hyuga > > My question would be why a symbolic link? Why not a hard link? Are the > two directories on different mount points? After the script finishes > does python need to see that image file again? Why not just move it? > > Ian I just imagined a symbolic link would be quicker. I have tested a hard link now and it seems to work fine. I am deleting the link/s at the end of the session/s. I think a link is better than a move, because there is always a possibility I might somehow delete the moved file and then I would lose the original one. Thanks for your help. Richard

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round-trip from egg to code and back to egg
by Catherine Oct. 8, 2007

Oct. 8, 2007

I'd like to use Scriptaculous with TurboGears on Python 2.5. Unfortunately, Scriptaculous is currently in the Cheese Shop only as a Python 2.4 egg. If I had the setup.py that was used to generate the egg, I think it would be really easy to generate a new Python 2.5 egg from the existing 2.4 egg. In fact, it would be gruntwork we could easily offload from the package authors. The trouble is, an egg doesn't include setup.py. Is there any direct way to round-trip a Python package from egg to installed code and into a new egg? I might be able to mine enough information from the files in EGG-INFO to reconstruct setup.py - reverse-engineering - but that seems unnervingly like work. Three possibilities come to mind - 1. I'm missing something simple 2. setuptools could be modified to include the original setup.py with the egg 3. a script could mine EGG-INFO to regenerate setup.py - maybe such a script has already been written? Can somebody who understands eggs better comment? Thanks very much! - Catherine http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com

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Re: Can't import Stackless in Pythonwin
by archaegeo＠gmail.com Sept. 20, 2007

Sept. 20, 2007

On Feb 9, 2:06 pm, "Gabriel Genellina" <gagsl...(a)yahoo.com.ar> wrote: > En Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:50:56 -0300, <archae...(a)gmail.com> escribió: > > > I am getting started in Python, and I have looked on both the > > stackless page and python.org and cannot find the answer to what I > > think is a simple problem. > > > If I start the python command line or idle, i can > >>>> import stackless > > > If I start pythonwin I get the following error > > ...No Module named Stackless > > > Any help? > > Maybe they are different versions, or installed on different places. > > In those three environments, execute: > > import sys > print sys.version > print sys.executable > > All should report the same version. > The executables for both python and IDLE should reside on the same > directory; for pythonwin, you should get the *same* directory plus > "Lib\site-packages\pythonwin\Pythonwin.exe" > > -- > Gabriel Genellina Ok, for Idle I get: IDLE 1.2 >>> import sys >>> print sys.version 2.5 Stackless 3.1b3 060516 (python-2.5:53557:53567, Jan 25 2007, 22:01:46) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] >>> print sys.executable C:\Python25\pythonw.exe >>> And for the command line i get the same thing except the executable is python.exe But for pythonwin i get >>> import sys >>> print sys.version 2.5 (r25:51908, Sep 19 2006, 09:52:17) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] >>> print sys.executable C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\pythonwin\Pythonwin.exe >>> So does this mean stackless is not usable with pythonwin? Also, is pythonwin needed for the win32 extensions and mfc? Thanks

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ANN: M2Crypto 0.18
by Heikki Toivonen Sept. 17, 2007

Sept. 17, 2007

M2Crypto is the most complete Python wrapper for OpenSSL featuring RSA, DSA, DH, HMACs, message digests, symmetric ciphers (including AES); SSL functionality to implement clients and servers; HTTPS extensions to Python's httplib, urllib, and xmlrpclib; unforgeable HMAC'ing AuthCookies for web session management; FTP/TLS client and server; S/MIME; ZServerSSL: A HTTPS server for Zope and ZSmime: An S/MIME messenger for Zope. Download links on the homepage at http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/MeTooCrypto. Changelog: - Added EVP.pbkdf2 to derive key from password - X509_Store_Context.get1_chain added - Added X509_Name.__iter__, __getitem__, get_entries_by_nid which allow iterating over all X509_Name_Entries or getting just all commonName entries, for example - Added X509_Name_Entry.get_object, get_data, set_data - Added back PKCS7.get0_signers (was removed in 0.16) - X509_Extension.get_value accepts flag and indent parameters. - support multiple dNSName fields in subjectAltName - support multiple commonName fields for SSL peer hostname checking - Checking for erroneous returns from more OpenSSL EVP_* functions, which means that certain things that used to fail silently will now raise an EVP.EVPError; affected m2 functions are: digest_final, cipher_init, cipher_update, cipher_final and sign_update. sign_final will now raise EVP.EVPError instead of SystemError as well. - Fixed Pkey.verify_final to take a sign parameter - If a subjectAltName extension of type dNSName is present in peer certificate, use only the dNSNames when checking peer certificate hostname, as specified by RFC 2818. If no dNSNames are present, use subject commonName. - Fixed memory leaks in m2 functions ec_key_new_by_curve_name, pkey_get_modulus, ecdsa_verify, threading_init and X509.X509.verify, X509.X509_Stack (which manifested for example when calling X509.new_stack_from_der), SSL.Connection (which manifested with some connection errors or when connect was never called), twisted wrapper, SSL.Connection.makefile (in BIO.IOBuffer really) - Fixed threading regressions introduced in 0.16, by Aaron Reizes and Keith Jackson - Added SSL session caching support to HTTPSConnection, by Keith Jackson - Added the ability to save and load DER formatted X509 certificates and certificate requests, by Keith Jackson - m2xmlrpclib.py fixed to work with Python 2.5, by Miloslav Trmac - 64-bit correctness fixes, by Miloslav Trmac - Added X509_Name.as_hash, by Thomas Uram - Moved --openssl option from general setup.py option to build_ext option, meaning you need to do: python setup.py build build_ext --openssl=/path, by Philip Kershaw - Fixed build problem affecting certain systems where OpenSSL was built without EC support - M2CRYPTO_TEST_SSL_SLEEP environment variable controls how long to sleep after starting the test SSL server. Default is 0.5, but 0.1 or even 0.05 might work with modern computers. Makes tests finish significantly faster. -- Heikki Toivonen

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Python Unicode to String conversion
by thijs.braem＠gmail.com Sept. 17, 2007

Sept. 17, 2007

Hi everyone, I'm having quite some troubles trying to convert Unicode to String (for use in psycopg, which apparently doesn't know how to cope with unicode strings). The error I keep having is something like this: ERREUR: Séquence d'octets invalide pour le codage «UTF8» : 0xe02063 (sorry, locale is french, it means "byte sequence invalid for encoding <<utf8>>", the value is probably an e with one of the french accents) I've found lots of stuff about this googling the error, but I don't seem to be able to find a "works always"-function just to convert a unicode variable back to string... If someone could find me a solution, that'd really be a lifesaver. I've been losing hours and hours over this one :s thijs

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Re: We need PIGs :)
by Bruno Desthuilliers Sept. 16, 2007

Sept. 16, 2007

Martin Marcher a écrit : > Hello, > > having worked quite a bit with python in the last months (some Java > before, and some C++ before that) I was very impressed by an idea the > Java people had. > > Explanation: the JSRs define how to implement certain services and or > features in Java so that they can be reused. I haven't found such a > thing for python yet. > (snip) > My idea was to define "Python Implementation Guidelines" (PIGs) that > specify a problem formalize it enough so that implementations are > interchangeable (in this example create a module that has an > "authenticate(username, password)" method so that one could easily > take that module for any given app and then authenticate against > postgres, and also against my plaintext file (which was the original - > quite useless - implementation). > > Does that sound like a good idea or would that be over formalization? The problem with Java is that it makes it very painfull to bridge two APIs together, while Python usually makes it a breeze (easy delegation, no dumb-ass psycho-rigid type system). So Java's solution (hyper-formalization) isn't necessary here. Now there's something along this line - just much more useful and flexible IMHO - in Zope3 and Twisted. You may want to look at Zope's "Interfaces" for more infos on this, or to read this post by the BDFL: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=155123 HTH

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customizing a logging logger
by garyjefferson123＠gmail.com Sept. 13, 2007

Sept. 13, 2007

Suppose I have some sort of context variable that I want to appear in log messages. E.g.: logger = logging.getLogger("somelogger") class SomeOp: def __init__(self, ctx): self.ctx = ctx def method1(self): logger.info("%s: here's a message", self.ctx) What's the idiomatic way to abstract away the inclusion of self.ctx from the calls in logger.info() et al? Is there some way I can declare a @property def info(self): return logger.info but have it insert the '"%s: " % self.ctx' bit for me in one place instead of the dozens of places I currently do it in the class? Thanks, Gary

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"Variable variable name" or "variable lvalue"
by mfglinux Sept. 11, 2007

Sept. 11, 2007

Hello to everybody I would like to know how to declare in python a "variable name" that it is in turn a variable In bash shell I would wrote sthg like: for x in `seq 1 3` do M$i=Material(x) #Material is a python class done Why I need this? Cause I have a python module that obliges me to build a variable called Period, which should have a variable name of summands (depends on the value of x) #Let's say x=3, then Period definition is Period=Slab(Material1(12.5)+Material2(25)+Material3(12.5)) #Slab is a python class I dont know how to automatize last piece of code for any x thank you Marcos

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