QOTW: "Paraphrasing Occam, I would say 'don't multiply base classes without necessity'. ;)" - Michele Simionato
"The world diversifies, the world congeals." - Raymond Hettinger (commenting on the fact that py.test happily runs unittest test suites) "I can think of no better reason for a programmer to regularly learn languages: 'our tools warp our thinking.' A programmer is a professionally warped thinker." - Scott David Daniels Highlight of the week; Python 2.4.1 final is out: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python.announce/msg/b82afbc729226433 The effbot was once asked how to find an object's name: "The same way as you get the name of that cat you found on your porch: the cat (object) itself cannot tell you its name, and it doesn't really care -- so the only way to find out what it's called is to ask all your neighbours (namespaces) if it's their cat (object) ... and don't be surprised if you'll find that it's known by many names, or no name at all!" Duncan Booth shows us how to ask the neighbours: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/237dc92f3629dd9a Ian Bicking and David Hansson talk marketing: http://blog.ianbicking.org/why-web-programming-matters-most.html http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000432.html Incidentally, when will a hero(ine) emerge to do for GUI toolkits what the PyWebOff has started for Web frameworks? A couple of nice decorator examples this week: Scott David Daniels suggests that a decorator might tidy up wxPython event handlers, and Oren Tirosh shows us how to hide globals from a function: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/338134f3bd7c439c http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/d34e97cc2ae284d6 Guido demonstrates multimethods, and Ian Bicking gives us an alternative implementation using generic functions: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=101605 http://blog.ianbicking.org/more-on-multimethods.html Is Python supposed to be boring? http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/ccf712755b3af3f4/437f80709adcbd86?rnum=1#ba7ad3fb3f503426 Evan Jones shows us How to Use UTF-8 with Python: http://evanjones.ca/python-utf8.html ======================================================================== 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 marvelous 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. For far, FAR more Python reading than any one mind should absorb, much of it quite interesting, several pages index much of the universe of Pybloggers. http://lowlife.jp/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/PythonProgrammersWeblog http://www.planetpython.org/ http://mechanicalcat.net/pyblagg.html comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software. Be sure to scan this newsgroup 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 intelligently 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 Python Success Stories--from air-traffic control to on-line match-making--can inspire you or decision-makers to whom you're subject with a vision of what the language makes practical. http://www.pythonology.com/success The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has replaced the Python Consortium as an independent nexus of activity. It has official responsibility for Python's development and maintenance. http://www.python.org/psf/ Among the ways you can support PSF is with a donation. http://www.python.org/psf/donate.html Kurt B. Kaiser publishes a weekly report on faults and patches. http://www.google.com/groups?as_usubject=weekly%20python%20patch Cetus collects Python hyperlinks. http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html Python FAQTS http://python.faqts.com/ The Cookbook is a collaborative effort to capture useful and interesting recipes. http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python Among several Python-oriented RSS/RDF feeds available are http://www.python.org/channews.rdf http://bootleg-rss.g-blog.net/pythonware_com_daily.pcgi http://python.de/backend.php For more, see http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php?ShowMatch=python&ShowStatus=all 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.cognizor.com. [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work. del.icio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary. It already aggregates quite a bit of Python intelligence. http://del.icio.us/tag/python *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/ (requires subscription) http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=python-url+group:comp.lang.python*&start=0&scoring=d& http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant) or http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome. E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> should get through. To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning (approximately), ask <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> to subscribe. Mention "Python-URL!". -- The Python-URL! 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