🌐 Mailman 3 April 1999 - Pythonmac-SIG - python.org

MacOS X Server( was: Over My Head )
by Bob Savage April 9, 1999

April 9, 1999

Recently there has been some discussion about using Python on MacOS X Server. I have just confirmed the version which ships on the third party CD is version 1.4 :(

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Looking for hackers
by Jack Jansen April 8, 1999

April 8, 1999

Folks, as you may be aware (or may not) I'm pretty busy lately with our internet-based multimedia editor GRiNS, which is of course 100% written in Python. As this is going to be commercial software we've come up with a key-protected license scheme, but of course every such scheme is only as good as whatever the author (i.e. me:-) thought of at the time. So, right now I'm looking around for hackers with a bit of free time to have a look at our licensing scheme to see if they can break into it. The grand prize (haha) is a free license to the GRiNS editor (which, of course, you'll need because I'll quickly plug any leaks you find). If anyone is interested in giving this a try please let me know, -- Jack Jansen | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++ Jack.Jansen(a)cwi.nl | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++ http://www.cwi.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm

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next release?
by Joseph J. Strout April 8, 1999

April 8, 1999

Jack, Just, & others who may be involved... any hint as to when the next release of MacPython is coming? My wife just downloaded the 1.5.2b1, and is exploring, but she keeps stumbling over errors in the IDE, omissions in the Mac toolbox files, etc., which have all been fixed internally but not released. In addition, the QuickDraw backend for PIDDLE more or less requires the latest version, since it refers to font constants etc. which are not included in 1.5.2b1. So I'm hoping to hear that there will be a 1.5.2b2 (or 1.5.2b1.1, whatever) very soon... Thanks, -- Joe ,------------------------------------------------------------------. | Joseph J. Strout Biocomputing -- The Salk Institute | | joe(a)strout.net http://www.strout.net | `------------------------------------------------------------------'

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Re: Using Python or Java for data analysis
by Chris Barker April 8, 1999

April 8, 1999

This is a reply to anthony wilson's request for comments. First a bit about where I am coming from: I have recently started using Python quite a bit, and like it a lot. I am hoping that I will eventually be able to use it for numerical analysis/number crunching in much the same way I use MATLAB now, except with the ability to distribute apps that are cross platform (Linux, Mac-OS, Windows, and plus ?) I have no experience with JAVA. First to address your questions, from the Python point of view: >1). File Input parsing into some usable form Python's string handling routines make this pretty easy, and I am starting to work on a file scanning module (something like MATLAB's fscanf) that would make it even easier (and faster). Let me know if you would like to work with me on this. >2). 2 -D plotting. This would also include interactive labeling and such. This is the tough one. I have yet to find a plotting package for Python that works on the Mac. There are a couple that look like they could be ported without much pain (Gist, for instance), but no one seems to have done this yet. I need this desperately! I am thinking about a writting a plotting package build on Tkinter's canvas, for maximum portability. Konrad Hinsen's TkPlotCanvas is a good start to this (it's in his Scientific package) Does anyone know the status of the SNOW project? >3). X-Y labeling see above >4). GUI for the calculator front end Tkinter would make this VERY easy. There are nifty GUI GUI-builders for JAVA that might make it even easier, but I've never tried them. >5). Numerical Analysis Support. for data processing NumPy has most (if not all) of what you need, and adding more would not be too hard. I think Python has a real advantage over JAVA here. >6). speed With NumPy, Python would be as fast as anything, at least for the number crunching which is probably the only thing that matters. Tkinter is plenty fast. >7). Application delivery. Final product as an application for others to >use. I'd like to see this easier to do with Python. You would probably have to distribute Python, and all the modules that you need with your app. This might make it a bit messier than it has to be. On Linux, yopu could make a rpm out of it, and it would be pretty easy. On the mac, you could make an installer that would be pretty easy, or even put everything you need into the Resource fork, and make it look like a stand alone app. >At the moment, I am leaning towards using Java because of the cross >platform and new 2D API support. But Python, I really like and its >easier to program using Python. Well, Python is pretty darn Cross Platform as well, with the exception of the plotting packages. Easier to program is worth a lot! >I would appreciate any comments on any aspect of this development. >Please only serious commentary. I would like to use the best language >for the job. Good idea! I'd like to add two points that I think make Python a better choice: 1) Scriptability. If your app will be only a "point and click" affair, JAVA may be a better choice, but if you use Python, you get a complete scripting/macro language in the package! My guess is that with the kind of analysis you are talking about, your users might very well want to enhance/extend the capabilities of your progam, and having the Python interpreter as part of your app would be a great way to do this. Note that if you were to write your app in C or C++, imbedding a Python interpretter would still be a great idea! 2) there are a lot of folks using Python for similar things already, so you would have a whole community of people (at least me, if no-one else!) that you could work with on at least the individual pieces of your program, such as the plotting routines, file I/O, and perhaps some numerical routines. You would also be contributing to a nobel effort! By the way, if you are thinking of going with JAVA, you could also consider just sticking with C++ and WX Windows. It's not "write once,run anywhere" but it could be "write once, compile anywhere" if you are carefull about it! Good luck, -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. cbarker(a)jps.net --- --- --- http://www.jps.net/cbarker -----@@ -----@@ -----@@ ------@@@ ------@@@ ------@@@ Water Resources Engineering ------ @ ------ @ ------ @ Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics ------- --------- -------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Drag & Drop (was: Using Python or Java for data analysis)
by savageb April 7, 1999

April 7, 1999

Jack Jansen <Jack.Jansen(a)cwi.nl>: > > Recently, Chris Barker <cbarker(a)jps.net> said: >> >7). Application delivery. Final product as an application for others to >> >use. >> >> I'd like to see this easier to do with Python. > > *STILL* easier??!? You mean "drag and drop script onto > BuildApplication" isn't easy enough?!??!?!? > > (seriously: since 1.5.2b1 this has indeed become simple drag and > drop. Now if you'd have said this last year you would have been right, > but not any more...:-) I had a wierd problem or two using the drag & drop method, so I just "Save as applet..." which works quite well. What I found was if I selected PowerPC only as the type of application to build, it just didn't work (if I remember it quit without any errors, but no application was built -- or it might have been an out of memory error). I might have had a problem with the FAT building method too, but I started "save as"-ing and never really went back. Bob

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Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] mxDateTime precompiled binary?
by savageb April 7, 1999

April 7, 1999

Wolfgang Keller <w_keller(a)gmx.de>: > I was looking for an easy way to add/subtract/etc. date and time data and > fund the mxDateTime module. But although a precompiled binary for PythonMac > is mentioned on the WWW-site of the author, I couldn't find it... Am I just > blind :-) or does it really not exist? I have been using mxDateTime ever since Joe Strout considerately compiled it. I think the website is a little confusing in the way it is phrased because it seems you are looking for a seperate package, but in fact the Mac binary is included in the regular archive. It works great! I really enjoy using it. It makes many things I do *much* easier. Thanks again, Joe! Bob

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PythonIDE - debugger problems
by Wolfgang Keller April 7, 1999

April 7, 1999

Hello, and yet another question... :-) I'm currently playing around with the nntplib module, and when I tried to debug a script that, among others, fetches a full group list from my provider's newsserver, I found out that the debuger of the PythonIDE does not seem to 'like' tupels, lists, dictionaries, etc. with lots of items. Before the script fetches the list, starting up the debugger and stepping through the code goes instantly. But once I have the full list with > 10000 items assigned to a variable, it takes ages (several minutes for starting the debugger, each step, etc.). I guess that this is due to the fact that the browser panes display the values of all local and global variables (in my case, they are few, but large) all the time and update them at each step. If so, would there be any problem (apart from the fact that someone has to do it :-)) to change this behaviour to display only the name and type/class of the variables all the time and display the values of a selected variable only on request? For example, in a fourth pane on the right in the top row? Or am I comepletly missing the point and the slowdown I experience is due to /something completely different/? :-) TIA, regards, Wolfgang Keller Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen von Junkmail lesen Sie de.admin.net-abuse.mail und fragen sie Ihren Postmaster oder Provider

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mxDateTime precompiled binary?
by Wolfgang Keller April 7, 1999

April 7, 1999

Hello, I was looking for an easy way to add/subtract/etc. date and time data and fund the mxDateTime module. But although a precompiled binary for PythonMac is mentioned on the WWW-site of the author, I couldn't find it... Am I just blind :-) or does it really not exist? If not, what could I use instead (I don't have Codewarrior to compile the sources myself)? All I need is to do basic operations (+, -, *, /, round, etc.) with date and time information efficiently. TIA, Regards, Wolfgang Keller Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen von Junkmail lesen Sie de.admin.net-abuse.mail und fragen sie Ihren Postmaster oder Provider

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Re: Python Data Analysis and Plotting
by David Ascher April 6, 1999

April 6, 1999

--- "Anthony L. Wilson" <alwkappa(a)thinkapple.com> wrote: > This is a follow-up message to the response to the topic "Using Python > or Java for Data Analysis" > > It seems that there are two promising projects that may be of use for > me: Snow and Piddle. I am glad to see some work is still on-going in > this area. In looking at the other packages( > http://www.python.org/topics/scicomp/plotting.html ), I could not find > one that would fit the bill for running on both Linux and Mac OS. The > main reason for inquiring about plotting and such, is to create a set of > tools that would complement MacSpice( > http://home.earthlink.net/~wilsona/macspice.html) for plotting data and > producing presentation quality output. Yes, I know I could use Matlab, > Igor Pro, IDL from Research Systems, Inc., or Excel( Arghh!!!), but I > wanted something that would be portable across platforms (MacOS, > Linux/Unix, Windows) as these are the machines I use most for my real > work: circuit simulation, and freely available. > > Snow > ------ > It seems Snow, developed by David Ascher, is further along in > development for producing output and backend renderers. Thanks for the > pointer David( http://starship.python.net:9673/crew/da/Snow ). I liked > the sample files. They seem to be able to produce the multiple formats > that I am looking for with the multiple axis style. I will try to set > this up on my Linux machine and test a few things. If this works, I'll > look into setting it up on my Mac. The big hurdle for the Mac will be > the use of PyPDF and PDFlib > (http://www.ifconnection.de/~tm/software/pdflib/index.html ) that is > used by Snow. Any one planning/doing/done work in this area?? Let me > know. I plan on replacing the use of PDFlib with PDFgen, a Python-only framework being developed by Andy Robinson. In fact I already have a back-end for Snow which uses PDFgen, but am waiting for release until PDFgen is upgraded to include such features as rotated text and color control. I don't expect this to be a long-term problem. In the meantime the PS/EPS back-end should work fine on the mac. > Questions on Snow: > 1. any comments on pursuing this for the Mac? What do I need to set > everything up? i.e. MacPython Source, PIL source, PDFlib source, > extension module setup, etc. It depends on which back-end you wish to use. For PS/EPS, all you should need is NumPy. For bitmap output, PIL binaries should be ok (but I don't know where they are -- you may need PIL 1.0b1 or later). For PDF, I'd recommend waiting until PDFgen is available. See comments below on a GUI/interactive version and the issues involved. > 2. Does Snow require PDFlib to produce GIF, JPEG, and PNG pictures or > is this supported by PIL? The latter. PIL is great. =) FYI#1: PIDDLE is quite promising -- I plan to provide a PIDDLE back-end to Snow at some point -- there are some things which Snow needs which Piddle doesn't provide in version 1.0 (such as arbitrary rotation of text and clipping), but that won't be a problem for many plots. In other words, Snow and Piddle aren't mutually incompatible, and Piddle is probably going to be a very good way to get Snow output on the mac (either the QD or Tkinter back-end to piddle). I'm willing to remove my back-ends and plug in Piddle if/when it's an appropriate replacement. I haven't yet started work on said back-end. (at this point, I think that there are enough back-ends for Snow to be a good proof-of- concept of the back-end architecture -- more urgent work lies elsewhere). FYI#2: There is a very undocumented Piddle-like set of classes in Snow, which has a similar approach but slightly different API, with more emphasis on multiple coordinate sets and "state-setting" objects, paths as 'higher-class' objects than in PIDDLE, etc. Not at all to claim that the code in popy.py and *Device.py in Snow is better than Piddle -- just a slightly different approach. FYI#3: on the GUI front I have an PyOpenGL back-end for snow which is not ready for distribution but which I've used in the past as part of a GUI for an interactive function plotter (shown at the last IPC conference), and I may add a Tkinter-only back-end if I can't fit the Piddle+Tk system in it neatly. My personal plans are to build up a GUI which uses Tkinter for buttons and menus and the like and to use PyOpenGL in a Tk window for the output/mouse input. I find OpenGL to be both fast and very high quality. The only problem with OpenGL is that there is currently no version of Togl (the OpenGL in a Tk widget widget) for the Mac. Also FYI -- simple back-ends like PDFgen, PIL, and PS, take about 2 hours to get 90% of the functionality. The part of the back-end which allows interactivity is not yet that well defined. The part of the back-end which knows about 3-D is nonexistent. Further along the way lie plans for a GUI based on Swing+Java2D (or maybe 3D) output on top of JPython. I'd be curious to hear of any progress in getting Snow to work on the Mac, and I'll try to help with such efforts, but I don't have access to a programming setup on the mac, and my Mac hacking days predate my Python era. --david PS: I am hoping to have quite a bit more time to devote to Snow in April/May. Expect to see the beginning of doc, code cleanup, and more graph types. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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Python Data Analysis and Plotting
by Anthony L. Wilson April 6, 1999

April 6, 1999

This is a follow-up message to the response to the topic "Using Python or Java for Data Analysis" It seems that there are two promising projects that may be of use for me: Snow and Piddle. I am glad to see some work is still on-going in this area. In looking at the other packages( http://www.python.org/topics/scicomp/plotting.html ), I could not find one that would fit the bill for running on both Linux and Mac OS. The main reason for inquiring about plotting and such, is to create a set of tools that would complement MacSpice( http://home.earthlink.net/~wilsona/macspice.html) for plotting data and producing presentation quality output. Yes, I know I could use Matlab, Igor Pro, IDL from Research Systems, Inc., or Excel( Arghh!!!), but I wanted something that would be portable across platforms (MacOS, Linux/Unix, Windows) as these are the machines I use most for my real work: circuit simulation, and freely available. Snow ------ It seems Snow, developed by David Ascher, is further along in development for producing output and backend renderers. Thanks for the pointer David( http://starship.python.net:9673/crew/da/Snow ). I liked the sample files. They seem to be able to produce the multiple formats that I am looking for with the multiple axis style. I will try to set this up on my Linux machine and test a few things. If this works, I'll look into setting it up on my Mac. The big hurdle for the Mac will be the use of PyPDF and PDFlib (http://www.ifconnection.de/~tm/software/pdflib/index.html ) that is used by Snow. Any one planning/doing/done work in this area?? Let me know. Questions on Snow: 1. any comments on pursuing this for the Mac? What do I need to set everything up? i.e. MacPython Source, PIL source, PDFlib source, extension module setup, etc. 2. Does Snow require PDFlib to produce GIF, JPEG, and PNG pictures or is this supported by PIL? Piddle ----- Piddle, developed by Joe Strout ( http://www.strout.net/python/piddle/ ) is taking a different approach by making an independent graphics layer that sits on top of the platform specific calls( i.e. backends ). I like this package because of the native calls and MacOS support. Being promoted as a package for producing 2-d graphics. With a plotting package, Graphite, just getting started, this has potential also. Also, due to having native calls, it is mentioned that there may be some capability for interaction by the user. This would be a plus. The capability to annotate after the plot is rendered would be a big plus. But there is only a Quickdraw backend available at the moment. I'll try this one after I look at Snow. Question on Piddle: 1. Any time frame on the other backends? 2. What are the requirements for Piddle? 3. What does Piddle use to produce its PDF output? Both packages have some, but not all (at the moment) of what I am looking for. It would be good to couple the two. Use Piddle as the generic graphics layer( for native on-Screen drawing ) and Snow as the backend for producing the multiple output. I doubt if this is possible in a merged development effort. But once Piddle is further along I plan to look at more closely. Thanks for reponses. -anthony wilson http://home.earthlink.net/~wilsona mailto:wilsona@earthlink.net mailto:alwkappa@ThinkApple.com

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