Re: Gmail eats Python

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Chris Angelico :

> Emacs tries to be absolutely everything, not just editing text files;
> that's why it's big.

I use emacs for most of my text inputting needs. Sometimes I even use it
to type in web forms (prepare it in emacs and copy the text over into
the form).

I'm typing now. Hence, I'm using emacs. It's great that I don't have to
settle for less.

No matter what I'm typing, M-$ spell-checks the word under the cursor.
No matter what I'm typing, M-x picture-mode allows me to draw a picture
in ASCII graphics. And C-x ( starts a macro -- immensely useful in many
circumstances.

Emacs also works over text terminal connections. I use it all the time
to access virtual machines at the office as well as my home machine from
overseas.


Marko
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Sun, 26 Jul 2015 00:58:08 -, Grant Edwards writes:

>You use mutt or something else decent as your MUA.
>

I do -- the problem is all the gmail users out there.

Laura
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Re: O'Reilly Python Certification

[mircaviar]

On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at 9:19:05 PM UTC+3, mjkan...@gmail.com wrote:
> I just completed all four modules and Kirby was my instructor.  I really 
> enjoyed the class and got a lot out of it.  I am not a developer, so common 
> concepts like objects were new to me, whereas standard data structures like 
> lists, dicts, etc. were already known.  It definitely allowed me to increase 
> my overall understanding of common programming concepts while I learned the 
> pythonic way to implement them.
> 
> I recommend the class.  It's a bit pricey, so best if your employer can foot 
> the bill.

Hi there, I just started the classes, I want to ask you long does take you to 
finish the four modules?
thanks
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Re: Hi

[Joseph Wayodi]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 8:30 AM, 김지훈  wrote:
> Hi.
> I recently changed my path to be a programmer so I decided to learn python.
> I downloaded files(Python 2.7.10 - 2015-05-23) to setup on your website.
> (also got the version of x64 because of my cpu)
> But when I try to install it, there is an error.
> The error is "There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A DLL
> required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support
> personnel or package vendor."
>
> I searched on google but I couldn't find the answer.
> My computer is 64bit windows 7.
>
> I'm looking forward to receiving your reply ASAP.
>
> Thanks.
>

A similar question has been asked on Super User:
.
You might want to try the suggestions provided on there.
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Rustom Mody]

On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 12:25:42 PM UTC+5:30, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> Chris Angelico:
> 
> > Emacs tries to be absolutely everything, not just editing text files;
> > that's why it's big.
> 
> I use emacs for most of my text inputting needs. Sometimes I even use it
> to type in web forms (prepare it in emacs and copy the text over into
> the form).
> 
> I'm typing now. Hence, I'm using emacs. It's great that I don't have to
> settle for less.
> 
> No matter what I'm typing, M-$ spell-checks the word under the cursor.
> No matter what I'm typing, M-x picture-mode allows me to draw a picture
> in ASCII graphics. And C-x ( starts a macro -- immensely useful in many
> circumstances.
> 
> Emacs also works over text terminal connections. I use it all the time
> to access virtual machines at the office as well as my home machine from
> overseas.

Emacs 'tries to be everything' in exactly the same way that a 'general purpose
programming language' is too general and by pretending to solve all problems
actually solves none (until you hire a programmer).

Problem with emacs (culture) is that its aficionados assume that a superb 
conceptual design trumps technological relevance, UI clunkiness etc. Which is 
true... within reasonable limits.

For something a little more contemporary (and successful) than mail clients
here's emacs doing git: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zobx3T7hGNA

[Did you notice that you used the locutions 'M-$', 'M-x'?
What sense does this 80s terminology make to an emacs uninitiate in 2015?
>From seeing my 20-year-olf students suffer all this combined with the 
hopelessness of convincing the emacs folks that we are in 2015, not 1980, I 
conclude this is a losing battle
]
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Rustom Mody :

> Emacs 'tries to be everything' in exactly the same way that a 'general
> purpose programming language' is too general and by pretending to
> solve all problems actually solves none (until you hire a programmer).

Emacs isn't too general. It's just right.

> Problem with emacs (culture) is that its aficionados assume that a
> superb conceptual design trumps technological relevance,

It's relevant to me every day, for business and pleasure.

> [Did you notice that you used the locutions 'M-$', 'M-x'? What sense
> does this 80s terminology make to an emacs uninitiate in 2015?

They can be initiated in mere seconds to that esoteric knowledge.

> From seeing my 20-year-olf students suffer all this

What do your students suffer from? The beauty of the matter is that they
can use any editor they like. They don't have to like or use emacs.

(In some shops you actually virtually *have* to use Eclipse or Visual
Studio or the some such thing. That *is* painful.)

> combined with the hopelessness of convincing the emacs folks that we
> are in 2015, not 1980,

What do you need to convince emacs folks about? Emacs isn't perfect at
everything, but the emacs developers have kept it admirably up to date.
It has been following the quirks of Java, git and MS Exchange even if it
has been an uphill battle.

> I conclude this is a losing battle

What would you like to achieve, exactly?


Marko
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Cameron Simpson]

On 25Jul2015 22:43, Ian Kelly  wrote:

On Jul 25, 2015 4:51 PM, "Ben Finney"  wrote:

Laura Creighton  writes:
> So it was my fault by sending him a reply with >>> to the far left.

No, it was Google Mail's failt for messing with the content of the
message.


Specificly, by manking the text without leave(*).


What Internet standard is being violated by reflowing text content in
the message body?


RFC3676: http://tools.ietf.org/rfcmarkup?doc=3676
See also: http://joeclark.org/ffaq.html

There is a variant on plain old text/plain, namely the format= parameter.  
(This message is using it.) If you set it to format=flowed then the user agent 
is allowed to reflow te text to fit the display width. It also specifies a 
tighter interpretation of the quoted-message indentation markers (i.e. the 
">>>") allow for reflow of the quoted material as well.



I'm also skeptical that this was caused by Gmail, which I've never
seen do this and did not do this when I tried to repro it just now.
Also, unless I'm misinterpreting the headers of the message in
question, it appears to have been sent via Gmane, not Gmail.


Who knows if it was caused by GMail. Hard to tell at this point.

(*) However, it does look like something may have treated a plain text message 
as plain text in format=flowed form.


Or perhaps some user agent has just gone rogue.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

in rec.moto, jsh wrote:

Dan Nitschke wrote:
> Ged Martin wrote:
> > On Sat, 17 May 1997 16:53:33 +, Dan Nitschke scribbled:
> > >(And you stay *out* of my dreams, you deviant little
> > >weirdo.)
> > Yeah, yeah, that's what you're saying in _public_
> Feh. You know nothing of my dreams. I dream entirely in text (New Century
> Schoolbook bold oblique 14 point), and never in color. I once dreamed I
> was walking down a flowchart of my own code, and a waterfall of semicolons
> was chasing me. (I hid behind a global variable until they went by.)
You write code in a proportional serif? No wonder you got extra
semicolons falling all over the place.

No, I *dream* about writing code in a proportional serif font.
It's much more exciting than my real life.
/* dan: THE Anti-Ged -- Ignorant Yank (tm) #1, none-%er #7 */
Dan Nitschke  pedan...@best.com  nitsc...@redbrick.com
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Cameron Simpson]

On 26Jul2015 09:02, Laura Creighton  wrote:

In a message of Sun, 26 Jul 2015 00:58:08 -, Grant Edwards writes:

You use mutt or something else decent as your MUA.


I do -- the problem is all the gmail users out there.


Take heart - gmail used to do much worse than this:-)

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Rustom Mody]

On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 2:06:00 PM UTC+5:30, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> Rustom Mody :
> 
> > Emacs 'tries to be everything' in exactly the same way that a 'general
> > purpose programming language' is too general and by pretending to
> > solve all problems actually solves none (until you hire a programmer).
> 
> Emacs isn't too general. It's just right.
> 
> > Problem with emacs (culture) is that its aficionados assume that a
> > superb conceptual design trumps technological relevance,
> 
> It's relevant to me every day, for business and pleasure.
> 
> > [Did you notice that you used the locutions 'M-$', 'M-x'? What sense
> > does this 80s terminology make to an emacs uninitiate in 2015?
> 
> They can be initiated in mere seconds to that esoteric knowledge.

You are being obtuse Marko!

Yeah that 'M-' is what everyone calls Alt can be conveyed in a few seconds
But there are a hundred completely useless pieces of comtemporary-to-emacs
inconsistency:
- What everyone calls a window, emacs calls a frame
- And what emacs calls a window, everyone calls a pane
- What everyone does with C-x emacs does with C-w (and woe betide if you mix 
that up)
- What everyone calls head (of a list) emacs calls Car (Toyota?)

> 
> > From seeing my 20-year-olf students suffer all this
> 
> What do your students suffer from? The beauty of the matter is that they
> can use any editor they like. They don't have to like or use emacs.
> 
> (In some shops you actually virtually *have* to use Eclipse or Visual
> Studio or the some such thing. That *is* painful.)
> 
> > combined with the hopelessness of convincing the emacs folks that we
> > are in 2015, not 1980,
> 
> What do you need to convince emacs folks about? Emacs isn't perfect at
> everything, but the emacs developers have kept it admirably up to date.
> It has been following the quirks of Java, git and MS Exchange even if it
> has been an uphill battle.
> 
> > I conclude this is a losing battle
> 
> What would you like to achieve, exactly?

Some attitude correction?
That emacs starts its tutorial showing how to use C-p and C-n for what
everyone uses arrows is bad enough.
That the arrow-keys are later found to work quite alright is even worse
and speaks of a ridiculous attitude
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[alister]

On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 01:50:21 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

> On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 2:06:00 PM UTC+5:30, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>> Rustom Mody :
>> 
>> > Emacs 'tries to be everything' in exactly the same way that a
>> > 'general purpose programming language' is too general and by
>> > pretending to solve all problems actually solves none (until you hire
>> > a programmer).
>> 
>> Emacs isn't too general. It's just right.
>> 
>> > Problem with emacs (culture) is that its aficionados assume that a
>> > superb conceptual design trumps technological relevance,
>> 
>> It's relevant to me every day, for business and pleasure.
>> 
>> > [Did you notice that you used the locutions 'M-$', 'M-x'? What sense
>> > does this 80s terminology make to an emacs uninitiate in 2015?
>> 
>> They can be initiated in mere seconds to that esoteric knowledge.
> 
> You are being obtuse Marko!
> 
> Yeah that 'M-' is what everyone calls Alt can be conveyed in a few
> seconds But there are a hundred completely useless pieces of
> comtemporary-to-emacs inconsistency:
> - What everyone calls a window, emacs calls a frame - And what emacs
> calls a window, everyone calls a pane - What everyone does with C-x
> emacs does with C-w (and woe betide if you mix that up)
> - What everyone calls head (of a list) emacs calls Car (Toyota?)
> 
> 
>> > From seeing my 20-year-olf students suffer all this
>> 
>> What do your students suffer from? The beauty of the matter is that
>> they can use any editor they like. They don't have to like or use
>> emacs.
>> 
>> (In some shops you actually virtually *have* to use Eclipse or Visual
>> Studio or the some such thing. That *is* painful.)
>> 
>> > combined with the hopelessness of convincing the emacs folks that we
>> > are in 2015, not 1980,
>> 
>> What do you need to convince emacs folks about? Emacs isn't perfect at
>> everything, but the emacs developers have kept it admirably up to date.
>> It has been following the quirks of Java, git and MS Exchange even if
>> it has been an uphill battle.
>> 
>> > I conclude this is a losing battle
>> 
>> What would you like to achieve, exactly?
> 
> Some attitude correction?
> That emacs starts its tutorial showing how to use C-p and C-n for what
> everyone uses arrows is bad enough.
> That the arrow-keys are later found to work quite alright is even worse
> and speaks of a ridiculous attitude

emacs is a great operating system - the only thing it lacks is a good 
text editor ;-)



-- 
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you 
in.
-- Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 04:43 pm, Ian Kelly wrote:

> I'm also skeptical that this was caused by Gmail, which I've never
> seen do this and did not do this when I tried to repro it just now.
> Also, unless I'm misinterpreting the headers of the message in
> question, it appears to have been sent via Gmane, not Gmail.

The message that Laura is referring to is this:

https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2015-July/694570.html


There's no easy way to get to the headers from the list archive, but looking
at the version I downloaded via Usenet, I agree that Gmail appears to be a
red-herring.

I can't be sure how it was sent to the list, but my guess is sent to the
newsgroup comp.lang.python via Gmane, which forwards to the mailing list.
Sebastian's post claims to be sent by Gnus:

User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (gnu/linux)

and although he uses a Gmail account, I see no sign that this particular
message went via Gmail.


-- 
Steven

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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Rustom Mody :

> You are being obtuse Marko!
>
> Yeah that 'M-' is what everyone calls Alt can be conveyed in a few
> seconds

Often Alt doesn't work. For example, the stupid GUI thinks it can
intercept some Alt key combinations. Then, it's good to know the ESC
prefix functions as Alt.

Also, in some settings, it is not Alt but some other funny Windows or
Mac keyboard key that serves as Meta. It's all explained at the
beginning of the builtin tutorial (C-h t).

> - What everyone calls a window, emacs calls a frame

Emacs called its windows windows long before there were windowing
systems. For example the command M-x other-window (ordinarily bound to
C-x o) would have to be renamed in a radically backward-incompatible
manner if terminology were changed.

> - And what emacs calls a window, everyone calls a pane

Uh, I believe "pane" is used by GUI programmers only. And the meaning is
not exactly the same as the emacs window.

Thing is, an emacs window is a true window in a windowing system
implemented by emacs itself. I must say, too, that it is much more
comfortable to stick to emacs windows in a single frame than working
with multiple frames.

> - What everyone does with C-x emacs does with C-w (and woe betide if you
> mix that up)

I hate typing outside emacs, where the keys mean wrong things.

> - What everyone calls head (of a list) emacs calls Car (Toyota?)

Now you're inventing things.

> That emacs starts its tutorial showing how to use C-p and C-n for what
> everyone uses arrows is bad enough.

>From said tutorial:

   Moving from screenful to screenful is useful, but how do you move to
   a specific place within the text on the screen?

   There are several ways you can do this. You can use the arrow keys,
   but it's more efficient to keep your hands in the standard position
   and use the commands C-p, C-b, C-f, and C-n. These characters are
   equivalent to the four arrow keys, like this:

  Previous line, C-p
  :
  :
  Backward, C-b  Current cursor position  Forward, C-f
  :
  :
Next line, C-n

There's nothing I would change in this explanation. I do use the arrow
keys occasionally, but I mostly use the C-p et al.

> That the arrow-keys are later found to work quite alright is even
> worse and speaks of a ridiculous attitude

Please read the tutorial passage again.


Marko
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Marko Rauhamaa  wrote:
>> - What everyone calls head (of a list) emacs calls Car (Toyota?)
>
> Now you're inventing things.

No, but it's LISP rather than Emacs that calls it that. And it dates
back to an assembly language opcode. Why that got perpetuated in a
high level language, I don't know - it'd be like building a language
today and using "interrupt" as the name of its call mechanism, because
it's built on the Intel INT opcode.

ChrisA
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Chris Angelico :

> On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Marko Rauhamaa  wrote:
>>> - What everyone calls head (of a list) emacs calls Car (Toyota?)
>>
>> Now you're inventing things.
>
> No, but it's LISP rather than Emacs that calls it that.

You'd have to get into programming lisp before you encountered "car" in
emacs. It's much easier to grasp than "class" in Python.

Python still retains "lambda", BTW. And what are "strings", "floats",
"braces" and "sockets"? Only "bubblegum" and "ducktape" are missing
(however, "ducktype" is included).

> And it dates back to an assembly language opcode. Why that got
> perpetuated in a high level language, I don't know - it'd be like
> building a language today and using "interrupt" as the name of its
> call mechanism, because it's built on the Intel INT opcode.

It is funny, that's for sure. It comes from the time when the mechanics
of a computer inspired much more awe with the theorists than it does
nowadays.

The separation between layers of abstraction is a never-ending challenge
in our profession.

An anecdote:

Back in the late 80's I had to deal with the GSM MAP protocol. In
protocol layers, you would find MAP on top of the protocol stack as
follows (go go gadget M-x picture-mode):

+---+
| MAP   | application
+---+
| ASN.1 | presentation
+---+
| TCAP  | transaction
+---+
| SCCP  | session
+---+
| MTP3  | network
+---+
| MTP2  | link
+---+
| T1/E1 | wire
+---+

Now you express MAP data abstractly using ASN.1's abstract notation.
Phone numbers are defined (somewhat less abstractly) as hexstrings. If
the phone number is

   1234567

you express that in MAP as

   '214365F7'H

Huh?

I wondered that aloud to Nokia Network's GSM specialist. He thought
about it for a while and then said, "Well, that way the phone number
bits go out on the wire in the right order."

In telephony protocols, the least significant bit is transmitted first
on the serial wire. So, if you want the first digit (1) to go out first,
you have to place it in the lower nibble of the first octet (in the BER
encoding of ASN.1).

I was left speechless.


Marko
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Re: scalar vs array and program control

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Laura Creighton wrote:

> […] "Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn" writes:
>> Laura Creighton wrote:
>>> […] "Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn" [writes]:
 Laura Creighton wrote:
> […]  You really cannot make your code 'more functional' and 'more
> object-oriented' at the same time -- more in one style implies less
> in the other.
 How did you get that idea?
>>> Because pure object oriented techniques are best when you have
>>> a fixed set of operations on things, and as your code evolves
>>> you primarily add new things.  Things written in a functional style
>>> work best when you have a fixed set of things, and your code evolves
>>> you add new operations for the existing things.
>> Your logic is flawed.  “*Pure* object oriented” is your raising the bar.
> 
> Yes.  But I could have said, and probably should have said 'pure
> functional style' as well.

That would not have changed anything.  It is the “pure” that makes your 
argument fallacious.  The “pure” falsely implies that you cannot have both 
at the same time, that you can have either function or object-oriented code. 
And ISTM that you are extending on the questionable idea that only “pure” is 
“good” to say that it would be inadvisable to have both at the same time.  
That is circular, for *that* property alone fallacious, logic.

>>First of all, object-oriented programming and functional programming are
>>programming *paradigms*, not merely techniques.  Second, they are _not_
>>mutually exclusive paradigms.  Third, Python supports both because in
>>Python, functions are first-class objects.  (In fact, if I am not
>>mistaken, everything except None is an object in Python.)
> 
> Ah, digression here.  I generalise  between paradigms that generate
> useful techniques, (functional programming and object oriented programming
> both do this) and those that do not (the Marxist paradigm of the
> labour theory of value).

You may not find them useful; several other people do.

> It still may be very useful and instructive to think on the Marxist Labour
> Theory of value, and it may have new utility if we can replace all labour 
> with computer/robotic/IT ... but for now, do not run your economy on this 
> theory, ok, because it does not work.)

Trollish nonsense.  Leave politics outside the door, it has nothing to do 
with this.
 
> Second digression:  that a thing uses objects does not make the thing
> more object oriented.

Yes, it does.  That is the very definition of *object*-*oriented*.
 
> But I suspect that it is only possible in things that are in
> the behavioural middle.

Now you are making up terminology.

> You needed a lambda to make the thing more functional,

I did not; it was merely a better visible shortcut, for a lambda expression 
is obviously a part of functional programming.  I could have defined a 
function instead and used the function identifier, and AISB I could also 
have used a reference to a method of an object.  The functional aspect of it 
was not the “lambda” but that I passed (a reference to) a function (a lambda 
expression is an inline function definition).

That is only possible if functions are first-class objects, meaning that 
they can be rvalues [sic] (“object” is not necessarily to be understood as 
the “object” in OOP, but for several programming languages, including 
Python, the other meaning applies as well; I used the term too loosely in my 
previous followup).

> and to create a class where none was before to make it more object-
> oriented. 

I did not need to, but, again, it was more obvious that way.  I could also 
have used an existing class, and its existing or newly added method.  AISB, 
almost everything in Python is an object; therefore, almost everything in 
Python has a class (try “print((42)).__class__)” in Py3k).  And Python is 
not the only object-oriented programming language for which this is true.  
Other object-oriented programming languages, for example ECMAScript 
implementations (which are my primary research topic), still have primitive 
values as well, but those are implicitly converted into object values when 
OOP patterns are used, and then those objects inherit properties as well.

> But this means that the thing wasn't all that> functional nor object-
> oriented -- most likely procedural -- to start with.

Obviously nonsense.  The procedural programming paradigm is neither the 
antithesis of the functional nor of the object-oriented programming one.

> So, very clever.  But still the general rule in refactoring, is that
> you want to go more oo or more functional, not both at the same time.

Nonsense.  You are projecting your misconceptions and ignorance (of Python, 
and programming paradigms in general) onto others.

-- 
PointedEars

Twitter: @PointedEars2
Please do not cc me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail.
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Re: scalar vs array and program control

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:

> Laura Creighton wrote:
>> and to create a class where none was before to make it more object-
>> oriented.
> 
> I did not need to, but, again, it was more obvious that way.  I could also
> have used an existing class, and its existing or newly added method. 
> AISB, almost everything in Python is an object; therefore, almost
> everything in Python has a class (try “print((42)).__class__)” in Py3k). 
   ^
> […]

| >>> print((42).__class__)
| 

Most interesting (but understandable):

| >>> print(42..__class__)
| 

BTW, another common misconception that I read from your argument is that 
“object-oriented” would be synonymous with “class-based”; that one needs a 
class for OOP.  In fact, however, there are several object-oriented 
programming languages, again for example most ECMAScript implementations, 
that are prototype-based: one object/instance inherits from another, its 
prototype.

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Please do not cc me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail.
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Capturing stdin and stdout using ctypes

[Adam Bartoš]

Hello,

how can I capture C stdin and stdout file pointers using ctypes in Python
3? I want them to be able to call PyOS_Readline via ctypes.

Thank you, Adam Bartoš
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Jussi Piitulainen]

Rustom Mody writes:
> On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 2:06:00 PM UTC+5:30, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

>> What would you like to achieve, exactly?
>
> Some attitude correction?

With all respect, take your own advice. And use an editor that works for
you.

> That emacs starts its tutorial showing how to use C-p and C-n for what
> everyone uses arrows is bad enough.

It doesn't. Those keys come three screens down the tutorial (C-h t, line
70) and are introduced as follows:

   There are several ways you can do this.  You can use the arrow keys,
   but it's more efficient to keep your hands in the standard position
   and use the commands C-p, C-b, C-f, and C-n.  These characters are
   equivalent to the four arrow keys, like this:

> That the arrow-keys are later found to work quite alright is even
> worse and speaks of a ridiculous attitude

Notice what the tutorial actually says about the arrow keys? That it
actually says something about the arrow keys, and it says it before it
introduces the mnemonic bindings?

There was a time when the arrow keys were not found to work. Quite a
while ago, but older versions of the tutorial may still be around.

An Alt is still not always available as Meta: I notice it mainly works
in my current setup, but Alt-C-(left arrow) is interpreted by my desktop
manager. Yet M-C-b works, and M-C-(left arrow) works with Esc as Meta.
It's a *system*.

But, by all means, do use an editor that works for you, and a newsreader
that works for you. I only mentioned Gnus because it's what I prefer to
use and I've had this one issue with it that turned up in a thread about
formatting code for the newsgroup. (And Emacs came up because Gnus is
implemented in Emacs.)
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Mark Lawrence]

On 26/07/2015 07:15, Rustom Mody wrote:

On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 11:05:14 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote:

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Rustom Mody  wrote:

JFTR: Ive been using emacs for 20+ years.  And I have the increasing feeling
that my students are getting fedup with it (and me).  Used Idle for my last 
python
course without too much grief.  If only it were an option for 25 programming 
languages, and org-mode and unicode/devanagari/tex input and.


Not sure whether you're making the point deliberately or accidentally,
but that's exactly why emacs is so big and heavy: "if only, if only".
Simpler things do less.


Do you not use ½ dozen (at least) languages?


No, I use precisely one as it fits my purposes.

--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Mark Lawrence]

On 26/07/2015 10:21, alister wrote:


emacs is a great operating system - the only thing it lacks is a good
text editor ;-)



notepad

--
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what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Jussi Piitulainen]

Chris Angelico writes:

> On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>>> - What everyone calls head (of a list) emacs calls Car (Toyota?)
>>
>> Now you're inventing things.
>
> No, but it's LISP rather than Emacs that calls it that. And it dates
> back to an assembly language opcode. Why that got perpetuated in a
> high level language, I don't know - it'd be like building a language
> today and using "interrupt" as the name of its call mechanism, because
> it's built on the Intel INT opcode.

It's stuck partly *because* it's meaningless. Original LISP used
two-field cells (cons cells aka pairs) to build all structured data, and
it wouldn't have been appropriate to tie otherwise useful names for the
two fields. Should "second" mean "cdr" or should it mean "car-of-cdr"?
That depends on what data structure is being implemented by the pair.

There's also a tradition of having composites of car and cdr, up to four
deep (down to four deep?), named like cadr (meaning car of cdr), and
Lispers used to find these transparent (caar "meant" the first key in an
association list and cdar was the associated value, caadr and cdadr were
the second key and value ...). They've resisted the loss of this.

Data structure habits are more abstract now, and some conventional uses
of the concrete list structures come with aliases, notably "first" for
"car", "second" for "cadr", "rest" for "cdr" in Common Lisp.

I suppose early hackers were also incredibly tolerant of obscure names
in general.
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Jussi Piitulainen :

> I suppose early hackers were also incredibly tolerant of obscure names
> in general.

At first, there was only the machine language. Assembly languages
introduced "mnemonics" for the weaklings who couldn't remember the
opcodes by heart.

(Playing cards went through a somewhat similar transition when Americans
added numbers for those who couldn't immediately perceive the number of
dots on the card.)

To this day, assembly language programmers prefer to keep the mnemonics
short and leave the nonpreschoolers wondering what EIEIO could possibly
stand for.


Marko
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[BartC]

On 25/07/2015 12:36, tandrewjohn...@outlook.com wrote:


For intensive numerical calculations, I'd recommend using the NumPy module, as 
well as the 64-bit version of Python is possible.


How do you actually install Numpy in Windows?

I had a go a month or two ago and couldn't get anywhere.

I realise that this is something that apparently no-one else on the 
planet has no problem with except me, but nevertheless it would be 
interesting to know exactly how it's done.


I've just at numpy.org, they direct me to scipy.org, which talks about 
sources and binaries at sourceforge.


The only thing on offer there is numpy-1.9.2.zip, which I duly download 
and install onto my machine.


Now I have a directory tree with some 1200 files in it.

I look at README.txt, which tells me nothing much, except how to test it 
after installing. So I look at INSTALL.txt instead, which is now going 
on about *building* Numpy; but I thought

 this was the binary of it!

Then it goes on to suggest suitable free compilers to use. My thought at 
that point was, 'forget it'! I can't be the only one either. (I know 
from experience that building complex packages under Windows, especially 
those that originate under Unix or Linux, is a bloody nightmare, and 
hardly ever works.)


Apart from which, INSTALL.txt doesn't actually say what do next.

Is this DIY approach really the only way to get numpy, or is there a 
proper installer that takes care of all the details?


And is there anything I've done wrong above? (Apart from trying to use 
Windows.)


--
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 10:49 PM, BartC  wrote:
>
> And is there anything I've done wrong above? (Apart from trying to use
> Windows.)

Not sure about done *wrong*, per se, but there's something that you
didn't mention doing: search the web for "numpy windows", which
brought me to this page:

http://www.scipy.org/install.html

The recommendation there is to grab a prepackaged Python like
Anaconda. I haven't tried it myself (never needed numpy on Windows)
but it does seem to be the easiest way to go about it.

ChrisA
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[Adam Bartoš]

> How do you actually install Numpy in Windows?

In theory, `pip install numpy` should work, but there are currently no
wheels for Windows, see https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/5479. Try
`pip install -i https://pypi.binstar.org/carlkl/simple numpy` (see last
posts in the issue).

Adam Bartoš
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[Mark Lawrence]

On 26/07/2015 13:49, BartC wrote:

On 25/07/2015 12:36, tandrewjohn...@outlook.com wrote:


For intensive numerical calculations, I'd recommend using the NumPy
module, as well as the 64-bit version of Python is possible.


How do you actually install Numpy in Windows?



http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/

You should be able to point pip there to get numpy.  If you can't then 
download the whl file for your Python version and install from the local 
file name.  Completely ignore the big title at the top of the site 
"Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages", I've been 
using stuff from there for years and never once had a problem.


--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Rustom Mody]

On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 4:13:17 PM UTC+5:30, Jussi Piitulainen wrote:
> Rustom Mody writes:
> > On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 2:06:00 PM UTC+5:30, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> 
> >> What would you like to achieve, exactly?
> >
> > Some attitude correction?
> 
> With all respect, take your own advice. And use an editor that works for
> you.
> 
> > That emacs starts its tutorial showing how to use C-p and C-n for what
> > everyone uses arrows is bad enough.
> 
> It doesn't. Those keys come three screens down the tutorial (C-h t, line
> 70) and are introduced as follows:
> 
>There are several ways you can do this.  You can use the arrow keys,
>but it's more efficient to keep your hands in the standard position
>and use the commands C-p, C-b, C-f, and C-n.  These characters are
>equivalent to the four arrow keys, like this:
> 
> > That the arrow-keys are later found to work quite alright is even
> > worse and speaks of a ridiculous attitude
> 
> Notice what the tutorial actually says about the arrow keys? That it
> actually says something about the arrow keys, and it says it before it
> introduces the mnemonic bindings?

Ok I was wrong on that one, sorry.
[Im not sure when the last time I looked and I didnt find it]
Doesn't change the fact that there are dozens of obsoleteisms
For the old user they are mostly irrelevant
For the new they steepen the learning curve with trivia.

Funny thing is I said much the same on the emacs list just a few weeks ago:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2015-05/msg00230.html

And nobody pointed out what you are Marko just did
[Unless I missed somethin' there as well??]
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 10:49 pm, BartC wrote:

> How do you actually install Numpy in Windows?

Are you installing from source, or a pre-built binary?

To install from source, you need a C or Fortran compiler, and a bunch of
extra libraries (I think BLAS is one of them?).


> I had a go a month or two ago and couldn't get anywhere.
> 
> I realise that this is something that apparently no-one else on the
> planet has no problem with except me, but nevertheless it would be
> interesting to know exactly how it's done.

No, it's not just you.

> I've just at numpy.org, they direct me to scipy.org, which talks about
> sources and binaries at sourceforge.

Well, did you read what they said?

Paragraph two:

"For most users, especially on Windows and Mac, the easiest way to install
the packages of the SciPy stack is to download one of these Python
distributions, which includes all the key packages: ..."


> The only thing on offer there is numpy-1.9.2.zip, which I duly download
> and install onto my machine.

The sourceforge UI is rubbish.

Ignore the link to the zip file at the top of the page, and click into the
version number you want. Presumably you want the latest version. Click
through to here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/NumPy/1.9.2/

Look ma, pre-built installers for Windows!




-- 
Steven

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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[BartC]

On 26/07/2015 14:07, Chris Angelico wrote:

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 10:49 PM, BartC  wrote:


And is there anything I've done wrong above? (Apart from trying to use
Windows.)


Not sure about done *wrong*, per se, but there's something that you
didn't mention doing: search the web for "numpy windows", which
brought me to this page:

http://www.scipy.org/install.html


I saw that but it was about installing the SciPy Stack, whatever that 
is. The only mention of numpy there is to do with linux systems, except 
for a link near the end which takes me to that same Sourceforge site.



The recommendation there is to grab a prepackaged Python like
Anaconda. I haven't tried it myself (never needed numpy on Windows)
but it does seem to be the easiest way to go about it.


OK, I've done that now, and it works, thanks. Now 'import numpy' doesn't 
report an error.


(But Christ, it's massive! A 0.3GB download that took ages to install, 
and occupied 1.3GB on disk (32000 files), about 20-40 times as big as a 
normal Python install. It was also Python 2.7, which I didn't notice 
until it was too late. Presumably I must have clicked the wrong button 
at some point. I dread think how big a Python 3.x version might be!)


--
Bartc


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[RELEASED] Python 3.5.0b4 is now available

[Larry Hastings]

On behalf of the Python development community and the Python 3.5 release
team, I'm delighted to announce the availability of Python 3.5.0b4.  Python
3.5.0b4 is scheduled to be the last beta release; the next release will be
Python 3.5.0rc1, or Release Candidate 1.

Python 3.5 has now entered "feature freeze".  By default new features may
no longer be added to Python 3.5.

This is a preview release, and its use is not recommended for production
settings.

An important reminder for Windows users about Python 3.5.0b4: if installing
Python 3.5.0b4 as a non-privileged user, you may need to escalate to
administrator privileges to install an update to your C runtime libraries.


You can find Python 3.5.0b4 here:

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-350b4/

Happy hacking,


*/arry*
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Re: [Python-Dev] [RELEASED] Python 3.5.0b4 is now available

[Stephane Wirtel]

\o/

> On 26 juil. 2015, at 4:37 PM, Larry Hastings  wrote:
> 
> 
> On behalf of the Python development community and the Python 3.5 release 
> team, I'm delighted to announce the availability of Python 3.5.0b4.  Python 
> 3.5.0b4 is scheduled to be the last beta release; the next release will be 
> Python 3.5.0rc1, or Release Candidate 1.
> 
> Python 3.5 has now entered "feature freeze".  By default new features may no 
> longer be added to Python 3.5.
> 
> This is a preview release, and its use is not recommended for production 
> settings.
> 
> An important reminder for Windows users about Python 3.5.0b4: if installing 
> Python 3.5.0b4 as a non-privileged user, you may need to escalate to 
> administrator privileges to install an update to your C runtime libraries.
> 
> 
> You can find Python 3.5.0b4 here:
> https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-350b4/
> Happy hacking,
> 
> 
> /arry
> ___
> Python-Dev mailing list
> python-...@python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
> Unsubscribe: 
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/stephane%40wirtel.be
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[BartC]

On 26/07/2015 15:22, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 10:49 pm, BartC wrote:


How do you actually install Numpy in Windows?


Are you installing from source, or a pre-built binary?

To install from source, you need a C or Fortran compiler, and a bunch of
extra libraries (I think BLAS is one of them?).



I had a go a month or two ago and couldn't get anywhere.

I realise that this is something that apparently no-one else on the
planet has no problem with except me, but nevertheless it would be
interesting to know exactly how it's done.


No, it's not just you.


I've just at numpy.org, they direct me to scipy.org, which talks about
sources and binaries at sourceforge.


Well, did you read what they said?


On which site, numpy, scipy or sourceforge? I tried this:

numpy.org; nothing on that page.

Click 'Getting Numpy' => Obtaining Numpy & SciFi libraries. The only 
references to Windows takes me to the sourceforge site (ignoring the 
link to do with building).


The sourceforge site (http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/) has 
nothing like that either. It just has 'Looking for the latest version? 
Download numpy-1.9.2.zip'. That's the obvious link.


Or I can ignore that and click on the 'NumPy' link.  That takes me to a 
long list of versions (1.9.2 to 1.0.4).


Nothing that looks like your paragraph 2, or the proper installers.

It's only after examining your link that I realise that each version 
number such as 1.9.2 actually opens up a new directory of files. And 
*now* I can see that some files are proper installers (which I've 
installed and it was a lot smaller and quicker than the Anacondo one).



 Paragraph two:

"For most users, especially on Windows and Mac, the easiest way to install
the packages of the SciPy stack is to download one of these Python
distributions, which includes all the key packages: ..."


But I've still found of the above quote.

You see the problem however? Loads of confusing links that all look very 
similar, and sometimes just go around in circles?


Why can't they just have that direct link on the numpy home page? Just 
for Windows users as presumably everyone else has any problem. And no 
one wants to mess around building things from scratch.


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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Grant Edwards]

On 2015-07-26, Chris Angelico  wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 4:15 PM, Rustom Mody  wrote:
>> Well Almost.
>>
>> Emacs used to stand for "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping"
>> At a time when 8 MB was large. Is it today?
>> So let me ask you:
[...]
>> If you have one app to do them all, I'd like (and pay!) for it
>> If not I bet they are mutually inconsistent.
>
> For the most part, I use a single text editor. But all their
> ancillary tools are separate. Emacs tries to be absolutely
> everything, not just editing text files; that's why it's big. Size
> isn't just a matter of disk or RAM footprint, it's also (and much
> more importantly) UI complexity.
>
> It's a trade-off, of course. If you constantly have to switch programs
> to do your work, that's a different form of UI complexity.

There's always Eclipse, where you spend 30% of your time trying to get
plugins to work, 30% upgrading it, 30% trying to figure out why a
project somebody else created won't work for you, and 10% shopping for
more RAM.

-- 
Grant


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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Grant Edwards]

On 2015-07-26, Rustom Mody  wrote:

> JFTR: Ive been using emacs for 20+ years.  And I have the increasing
> feeling that my students are getting fedup with it (and me).

I don't understand.

Why do your students even _know_ (let alone care!) what editor you
use?

I admit it was years ago, but after attending three universities and
getting a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in Computer Science and
Electrical Engieneering, I hadn't the foggiest idea what editors any
of the faculty used.  Nor would I have cared one way or the other if I
had known.

-- 
Grant
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Grant Edwards]

On 2015-07-26, Laura Creighton  wrote:
> In a message of Sun, 26 Jul 2015 00:58:08 -, Grant Edwards writes:
>
>>You use mutt or something else decent as your MUA.
>>
>
> I do -- the problem is all the gmail users out there.

So am I, and I use mutt as my MUA pretty much exclusively. [I
sometimes use the web UI when I want to do fancy searches.]

-- 
Grant



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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Rustom Mody]

On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 9:17:16 PM UTC+5:30, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2015-07-26, Rustom Mody wrote:
> 
> > JFTR: Ive been using emacs for 20+ years.  And I have the increasing
> > feeling that my students are getting fedup with it (and me).
> 
> I don't understand.
> 
> Why do your students even _know_ (let alone care!) what editor you
> use?
> 
> I admit it was years ago, but after attending three universities and
> getting a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in Computer Science and
> Electrical Engieneering, I hadn't the foggiest idea what editors any
> of the faculty used.  Nor would I have cared one way or the other if I
> had known.

Its 2015 now and any ½ decent teacher of programming, writes programs in front 
of the class. And debugs and hacks and pokes around OS-related stuff (ps, top 
and more arcane) etc. 

[Yeah I did hear complaints about an OS teacher who puts up PPTs and reads them
out. So the set < ½-decent is not empty I guess]

So while emacs makes everything else look rather puerile, setting it up
is such a bitch that last python course I just switched to idle.
Must admit it was more pleasant than I expected.
Except that sometimes we need C and C++ and assembly and haskell and make and 
config files and git commits and...
And so emacs (or eclipse!!) remains the only option
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Re: Which GUI?

[Paulo da Silva]

On 26-07-2015 05:47, blue wrote:
> Hi .
> I tested all. Now I think the PySide can more.

No python3!
Besides ... any differences to pyqt4?
Thanks


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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Mark Lawrence]

On 26/07/2015 16:59, Rustom Mody wrote:


So while emacs makes everything else look rather puerile, setting it up
is such a bitch that last python course I just switched to idle.
Must admit it was more pleasant than I expected.
Except that sometimes we need C and C++ and assembly and haskell and make and
config files and git commits and...
And so emacs (or eclipse!!) remains the only option



Here's what you need 
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2949917/application-development/visual-studio-2015-expands-language-roster-mobile-support.html


Only takes around four hours 30 minutes to install and up to 8G of disk 
space.  Ideal for most people I'd have thought :)


--
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what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[E.D.G.]

"Laura Creighton"  wrote in message 
news:mailman.980.1437832769.3674.python-l...@python.org...

The most common way to do things is to tell your users to install
whatever python distribution you pick and then optionally
install these extra packages (if you need any) and then give them a python
program to run.
But you can also package everything up into a .exe for them if they
need this.



Posted by E.D.G.   July 26, 2015

  For general interest purposes, as you can see, with my posts I 
usually include E.D.G. and the date of the posting.  This is because the 
projects that I work on involve scientific research.  And this way printed 
versions of the posts can be made.  And they will include references that 
people can use.  The printed versions would not have the types of 
information that are included with the electronic newsgroup distributions.



  What I was asking about in that earlier post is something that very 
few programmers or perhaps even no programmers are familiar with.  Most 
people know what the .exe versions of programs are.  But what I was asking 
about is more basic.


  It can take a considerable amount of time and effort to get a 
programming language installed and running with all of the features that are 
needed.  It probably took me 5 to 10 years to get Perl organized on my 
computer like that.


  Once that process is done, people who are not professional 
programmers don't want to have to constantly update and change the basic 
language they have running on their computers.  So, they might do what I do 
though I have never heard of anyone else doing that.


  My entire Perl language is in a directory called "Perl" on my 
computer.  I use ActiveState 5.10 Perl which is a very old version.  But it 
does everything that needs to be done except graphics and fast calculations. 
For the graphics I use a Perl to Gnuplot "Pipe" that works quite well and 
which took a long time for me to develop.  A very old version of Gnuplot is 
also used for simplicity.  I consists of just 2 small .exe files.


  Then if I want to run a .pl program on any computer or even from a 
flash drive I simply copy the entire 5.10 Perl directory to the new computer 
or flash drive.  And any Perl program will then run on the new computer or 
from the flash drive.


  Windows let you specify that a .pl program should always be opened 
with perl.exe.  The same is probably true with Python.  So, Perl itself does 
not actually need to be installed on a computer to get .pl programs to run. 
However, it is probably a good idea to do that so that the perl.exe address 
is in the right Windows Environment variables.


  So, that is what I was asking about Python.  Once it is installed and 
running properly, can people simply copy the entire Python directory to some 
other computer or flash drive and a Python language program will then run?



  If necessary, to get Perl programs to run faster we were planning to 
use a Perl to Fortran "Pipe" plus file storage of bulk data.  Fortran would 
then process the files and tell the Perl program when it was done.  But 
before doing that we decided to see if we could find another language that 
would do everything that my version of Perl does plus graphics and fast 
calculations.  It appears that Python will do that.  But it also appears 
that it would take quite a while to select a specific version of Python and 
then learn how to get everything organized and running.


  Another of my posts will probably go into more detail regarding that 
subject.


Thanks for the comments.

Regards,

E.D.G.

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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 27 Jul 2015 01:59 am, Rustom Mody wrote:

> Its 2015 now and any ½ decent teacher of programming, writes programs in
> front of the class. 

Yeah, but the fully decent teachers prepare before hand, so the students
don't have to wait while they type out the (buggy) program in front of
them.

*half a smiley*


> And debugs and hacks and pokes around OS-related stuff 
> (ps, top and more arcane) etc.

And you do that in Emacs instead of the shell?

Or IPython?


> [Yeah I did hear complaints about an OS teacher who puts up PPTs and reads
> [them out. So the set < ½-decent is not empty I guess]

Did the students really complain "Teacher X came to class prepared with code
already written"? Or was the complaint about the technology used? Or
something else?

I really don't know how I feel about this. I did maths and physics at uni,
and it seems natural for the lecturer to work through the mathematics in
front of you. I also did computer science, and it feels completely natural
for the lecturer to hand out notes with the code already written. (These
days, I suppose, you would use slides, or give them a URL and tell them to
download the code.) Except for the most trivial interactive examples in the
Python REPR, I can't imagine why anyone would want to watch the lecturer
type the code out in front of them.

I can think of one exception... watching somebody go through the iterative
process of debugging code.


> So while emacs makes everything else look rather puerile, setting it up
> is such a bitch that last python course I just switched to idle.
> Must admit it was more pleasant than I expected.
> Except that sometimes we need C and C++ and assembly and haskell and make
> and config files and git commits and...
> And so emacs (or eclipse!!) remains the only option

Um... your students are probably using Macs, Windows, and a small minority
with Linux, yes? On laptops?

Your Linux students are probably fine. Some of them probably know more than
you :-)

Mac users have access to a full BSB environment, even if most of them don't
know it.

Your Windows users are the problem. You could try GnuWin and Gnu Core
Utilities for a set of GNU tools for Windows. You could build a bootable
USB stick containing the Linux installation of your choice, and get them to
use that. (Of course, I can imagine your school/university having a
conniption fit at the thought of the liability issues if the software
erased somebody's hard drive...)

Things were much better in my day. Nobody expected the students to have
access to a computer at home. You used a dumb workstation to log into a VAX
running Unix, and used the tools the uni supplied, or a standalone Mac 512K
(if you were lucky) or Mac 128K (if you weren't), and again, you used the
tools they supplied.



-- 
Steven

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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Sebastian P . Luque]

On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 18:34:30 +0200,
Laura Creighton  wrote:

> Gmail eats Python.  We just saw this mail back from Sebastian Luque
> which says in part:

 try: all_your_code_which_is_happy_with_non_scalars except
 WhateverErrorPythonGivesYouWhenYouTryThisWithScalars:
 whatever_you_want_to_do_when_this_happens

> Ow!  Gmail is understanding the >>> I stuck in as 'this is from the
> python console as a quoting marker and thinks it can reflow that.

> I think that splunqe must already have gmail set for plain text or
> else even worse mangling must show up.

> How do you teach gmail not to reflow what it thinks of as 'other
> people's quoted text'?

Apologies for all the concern the formatting of the quoted message in my
reply has generated.  I actually cannot see the multiple ">" you quote
here on my original follow-up message.  I can tell you I'm using Emacs
Gnus, and when viewing my un-processed message, that snippet looks like
this:

>> try: all_your_code_which_is_happy_with_non_scalars except
>> WhateverErrorPythonGivesYouWhenYouTryThisWithScalars:
>> whatever_you_want_to_do_when_this_happens

Sure, the reflowing is probably a feature I've set up to wrap long
lines.  I know it annoys some people (mildly myself, as I haven't found
a fix), but when reading coding fora, I never really take quoted code
snippets seriously and always check the original post for these...

-- 
Seb

-- 
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[Laura Creighton]

>   It can take a considerable amount of time and effort to get a 
>programming language installed and running with all of the features that are 
>needed.  It probably took me 5 to 10 years to get Perl organized on my 
>computer like that.


>   So, that is what I was asking about Python.  Once it is installed and 
>running properly, can people simply copy the entire Python directory to some 
>other computer or flash drive and a Python language program will then run?

Yes.  That is actually the usual way to do things for quite a few years now.
What you are talking about is what we call a Python virtual environment.
see: http://iamzed.com/2009/05/07/a-primer-on-virtualenv/
http://simononsoftware.com/virtualenv-tutorial-part-2/
for an introduction to them.

It is common to have many of them for different purposes.  The bottom
line is that it lets you utterly ignore (at least from the python
point of view) any system packages you have on your machine.  Instead,
in a directory, you end up with exactly the tools, modules, etc
that you want for this project.

Works fine on a memory stick, too.

You don't have to worry about conflicts because you are, in effect, doing
a clean build from scratch for every project you have -- or indeed I
usually have many of them even with a single project so I can test that
my code works with different combinations of different versions of other
software.

Laura

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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[E.D.G.]

"Laura Creighton"  wrote in message 
news:mailman.1018.1437935917.3674.python-l...@python.org...
Yes.  That is actually the usual way to do things for quite a few years 
now.

What you are talking about is what we call a Python virtual environment.
see: http://iamzed.com/2009/05/07/a-primer-on-virtualenv/
http://simononsoftware.com/virtualenv-tutorial-part-2/
for an introduction to them.


Posted by E.D.G.   July 26, 2015

  Great!  That is exactly what I needed to know.  And in response to my 
original post I am going to post another note about this general programming 
effort.


Regards,

E.D.G.

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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[E.D.G.]

"E.D.G."  wrote in message 
news:jf6dnqimoz_gxc7inz2dnuu7-s2dn...@earthlink.com...


Posted by E.D.G.   July 26, 2015

   These are some additional comments related to my original post.

  The effort I have been discussing actually involves developing a 
totally free version of some language that scientists around the world could 
easily install and use.



1.  With my own science related Perl programs I provide people with .exe 
versions in addition to the .pl versions.  And for the .pl versions, at one 
of my Web sites there is actually an entire Perl programming language 
directory available in a .zip package.  So, people can download the file, 
unzip it, and then save it as the Perl directory and .pl programs will then 
run on that computer.  We would like to be able to do the same thing with 
Python if we start working with that language.  And a response in another 
post indicates that this should be possible.


2.  Python looks especially attractive because so many people are using it. 
And I myself have a friend who is a very experienced professional Python 
programmer.  On the other hand, there are so many versions of Python that it 
might be difficult at first to determine which one to start with.


3.  I asked that Python programmer if Python could run on an Internet server 
as a CGI program.  And the answer was "I have no idea."  So, amusingly, 
apparently even experienced professional programmers don't know everything 
there is to know about a given programming language!


4.  I myself know that Perl programs will run on Internet servers as CGI 
programs and have written several myself using a development program called 
Xampp to create and test them before installing them on the server computer.


5.  My retired professional programming colleague has now told me that he 
downloaded and installed the ActiveState Windows version of Python with no 
difficulties.  So, that is encouraging news.


6.  He said that he is looking around for a good IDE for Python and found 
one called "Eric" that he is checking.


7.  With my Perl language programs I have developed a resource that will do 
the following.  And I imagine that this could also be done with Python. 
This resource can't be developed with many and probably most programming 
languages.


  In part because of limited calculation speeds it can take one of my 
important probability calculation Perl programs as much a two hours to run 
and create all of the necessary data arrays.  Many, many millions of 
calculations are involved.  And once everything is set, for time limitation 
reasons it would be ordinarily be impossible to make any changes to the data 
or to the original program code without losing all of the data.


  So, I have developed a special Perl program that makes that possible. 
And as I said, I am guessing that this approach would also work with Python.


  When the Perl program is done with its calculations, instead of 
ending it jumps to another Perl program.  But all of the data in the arrays 
it created remain active in memory.  The original program code can then be 
changed.  The second Perl program is then told that the changes are complete 
and that it should return to the first program.  Perl then attempt to 
recompile the original code.  If it is successful it then uses the new code 
and does whatever is specified.  The previously created arrays are still 
active in memory using the same array names etc.


  If there was an error in the new code, a Windows screen appears 
explaining that there was an error and the compilation ends.  But, the data 
remain in the active computer memory.


  Changes can then be are made to the program code to fix the error. 
And, the second Perl program is told to try again.  If there are no new 
errors the first program recompiles and runs using the already created 
arrays etc.


 This is a very useful resource for scientists as it lets them create 
and test new program code without having to recreate all of the data arrays. 
And as I stated, it would probably not be possible to develop such a 
resource with most programming languages.


Regards,

E.D.G.

--
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Grant Edwards]

On 2015-07-26, Rustom Mody  wrote:
> On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 9:17:16 PM UTC+5:30, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2015-07-26, Rustom Mody wrote:
>> 
>>> JFTR: Ive been using emacs for 20+ years.  And I have the increasing
>>> feeling that my students are getting fedup with it (and me).

[...]
>> Why do your students even _know_ (let alone care!) what editor you
>> use?
>> 
>> I admit it was years ago, but after attending three universities and
>> getting a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in Computer Science and
>> Electrical Engieneering, I hadn't the foggiest idea what editors any
>> of the faculty used.  Nor would I have cared one way or the other if I
>> had known.
>
> Its 2015 now and any ½ decent teacher of programming, writes programs
> in front of the class. And debugs and hacks and pokes around
> OS-related stuff (ps, top and more arcane) etc. 

I still don't get it.

You're not teaching the _editor_, so why would it matter to anybody
which editor you're using to show them the code?  They can see the
code, and they can see what it does.  Are they too stupid to figure
out how to insert or delete a line using whatever editor they prefer?

I remember being shown live examples in a numerical programming class,
and not only was the _editor_ one I had never touched (or would), the
language and OS were ones I had never used and never would.  It didn't
detract from what was actually being _taught_ -- which was not "how to
edit and run programs on an Apple-something-or-other".

The live examples we were shown for APL not only used a differnt
editor, OS, and virtual machine that we used, it didn't even use the
same character set!

I guess I have unealisitically high expections of modern students.

... and back then all we had were zeros!


-- 
Grant

-- 
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Ian Kelly]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 12:20 AM, Cameron Simpson  wrote:
> On 25Jul2015 22:43, Ian Kelly  wrote:
>>
>> On Jul 25, 2015 4:51 PM, "Ben Finney"  wrote:
>>>
>>> Laura Creighton  writes:
>>> > So it was my fault by sending him a reply with >>> to the far left.
>>>
>>> No, it was Google Mail's failt for messing with the content of the
>>> message.
>
>
> Specificly, by manking the text without leave(*).
>
>> What Internet standard is being violated by reflowing text content in
>> the message body?
>
>
> RFC3676: http://tools.ietf.org/rfcmarkup?doc=3676
> See also: http://joeclark.org/ffaq.html

Thanks for the link. However, this only describes how reflowing is
permitted on Format=Flowed messages. Both the message in question and
the message it replied to omitted the Format parameter, which per the
linked RFC makes them Format=Fixed by default. I can't find any
standard discussing how Format=Fixed messages may or may not be
reflowed when quoted.

The > character that is commonly used as a prefix by virtually all (?)
MUAs is also a form of mangling. As far as I know, it is not an
Internet standard, just common convention (RFC 3676 specifies it, but
again only for Format=Flowed plain text). Is there some standard I'm
not aware of that permits quoting but forbids reflowing?

Note that RFC 5322 recommends a line length limit of 78 characters and
requires a limit of 998 characters, so in a sufficiently long
exchange, reflowing would eventually become necessary.
-- 
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[mm0fmf via Python-list]

On 26/07/2015 20:17, E.D.G. wrote:

"E.D.G."  wrote in message
news:jf6dnqimoz_gxc7inz2dnuu7-s2dn...@earthlink.com...

Posted by E.D.G.   July 26, 2015

These are some additional comments related to my original post.

   The effort I have been discussing actually involves developing a
totally free version of some language that scientists around the world
could easily install and use.


1.  With my own science related Perl programs I provide people with .exe
versions in addition to the .pl versions.  And for the .pl versions, at
one of my Web sites there is actually an entire Perl programming
language directory available in a .zip package.  So, people can download
the file, unzip it, and then save it as the Perl directory and .pl
programs will then run on that computer.  We would like to be able to do
the same thing with Python if we start working with that language.  And
a response in another post indicates that this should be possible.

2.  Python looks especially attractive because so many people are using
it. And I myself have a friend who is a very experienced professional
Python programmer.  On the other hand, there are so many versions of
Python that it might be difficult at first to determine which one to
start with.

3.  I asked that Python programmer if Python could run on an Internet
server as a CGI program.  And the answer was "I have no idea."  So,
amusingly, apparently even experienced professional programmers don't
know everything there is to know about a given programming language!

4.  I myself know that Perl programs will run on Internet servers as CGI
programs and have written several myself using a development program
called Xampp to create and test them before installing them on the
server computer.

5.  My retired professional programming colleague has now told me that
he downloaded and installed the ActiveState Windows version of Python
with no difficulties.  So, that is encouraging news.

6.  He said that he is looking around for a good IDE for Python and
found one called "Eric" that he is checking.

7.  With my Perl language programs I have developed a resource that will
do the following.  And I imagine that this could also be done with
Python. This resource can't be developed with many and probably most
programming languages.

   In part because of limited calculation speeds it can take one of
my important probability calculation Perl programs as much a two hours
to run and create all of the necessary data arrays.  Many, many millions
of calculations are involved.  And once everything is set, for time
limitation reasons it would be ordinarily be impossible to make any
changes to the data or to the original program code without losing all
of the data.

   So, I have developed a special Perl program that makes that
possible. And as I said, I am guessing that this approach would also
work with Python.

   When the Perl program is done with its calculations, instead of
ending it jumps to another Perl program.  But all of the data in the
arrays it created remain active in memory.  The original program code
can then be changed.  The second Perl program is then told that the
changes are complete and that it should return to the first program.
Perl then attempt to recompile the original code.  If it is successful
it then uses the new code and does whatever is specified.  The
previously created arrays are still active in memory using the same
array names etc.

   If there was an error in the new code, a Windows screen appears
explaining that there was an error and the compilation ends.  But, the
data remain in the active computer memory.

   Changes can then be are made to the program code to fix the
error. And, the second Perl program is told to try again.  If there are
no new errors the first program recompiles and runs using the already
created arrays etc.

  This is a very useful resource for scientists as it lets them
create and test new program code without having to recreate all of the
data arrays. And as I stated, it would probably not be possible to
develop such a resource with most programming languages.

Regards,

E.D.G.



Am I the only person thinking Troll?
--
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Rustom Mody]

On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 11:11:04 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2015 01:59 am, Rustom Mody wrote:
> 
> > Its 2015 now and any ½ decent teacher of programming, writes programs in
> > front of the class. 
> 
> Yeah, but the fully decent teachers prepare before hand, so the students
> don't have to wait while they type out the (buggy) program in front of
> them.
> 
> *half a smiley*
> 
> 
> > And debugs and hacks and pokes around OS-related stuff 
> > (ps, top and more arcane) etc.
> 
> And you do that in Emacs instead of the shell?
> 
> Or IPython?
> 
> 
> > [Yeah I did hear complaints about an OS teacher who puts up PPTs and reads
> > [them out. So the set < ½-decent is not empty I guess]
> 
> Did the students really complain "Teacher X came to class prepared with code
> already written"? Or was the complaint about the technology used? Or
> something else?
> 
> I really don't know how I feel about this. I did maths and physics at uni,
> and it seems natural for the lecturer to work through the mathematics in
> front of you. I also did computer science, and it feels completely natural
> for the lecturer to hand out notes with the code already written. (These
> days, I suppose, you would use slides, or give them a URL and tell them to
> download the code.) Except for the most trivial interactive examples in the
> Python REPR, I can't imagine why anyone would want to watch the lecturer
> type the code out in front of them.
> 
> I can think of one exception... watching somebody go through the iterative
> process of debugging code.
> 
> 
> > So while emacs makes everything else look rather puerile, setting it up
> > is such a bitch that last python course I just switched to idle.
> > Must admit it was more pleasant than I expected.
> > Except that sometimes we need C and C++ and assembly and haskell and make
> > and config files and git commits and...
> > And so emacs (or eclipse!!) remains the only option
> 
> Um... your students are probably using Macs, Windows, and a small minority
> with Linux, yes? On laptops?
> 
> Your Linux students are probably fine. Some of them probably know more than
> you :-)
> 
> Mac users have access to a full BSB environment, even if most of them don't
> know it.
> 
> Your Windows users are the problem.

Pretty much.
½ Linux ½ Windows, 1 mac
Tried to get everyone onto linux.
Most did. Some failed to install it.
[I actually called these stragglers for one special ubuntu-setup session.
Didn't happen for some silly reasons]
So I couldn't dictate linux, just 'suggest' it :-)
Policy-wise: College provides machines (supposedly) setup
Practically: If one relies on that, the hours the students spend with these
will end up being ¼ what they would spend on their own laptops

> You could try GnuWin and Gnu Core
> Utilities for a set of GNU tools for Windows. You could build a bootable
> USB stick containing the Linux installation of your choice, and get them to
> use that. (Of course, I can imagine your school/university having a
> conniption fit at the thought of the liability issues if the software
> erased somebody's hard drive...)
> 
> Things were much better in my day. Nobody expected the students to have
> access to a computer at home. You used a dumb workstation to log into a VAX
> running Unix, and used the tools the uni supplied, or a standalone Mac 512K
> (if you were lucky) or Mac 128K (if you weren't), and again, you used the
> tools they supplied.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Steven

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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Seb]

And for those interested in how I received Laura's message (the one I
replied to):

------
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From: Laura Creighton 
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.python.general
Subject: Re: scalar vs array and program control
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2015 14:44:43 +0200
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Archived-At: 

And because I was rushed and posted without revision I left out something
important.

>So this is, quite likely, the pattern that you are looking for:
>
>try:
>   all_your_code_which_is_happy_with_non_scalars
>except WhateverErrorPythonGivesYouWhenYouTryThisWithScalars:
>   whatever_you_want_to_do_when_this_happens
>
>This is the usual way to do things.

I forgot to

Re: Gmail eats Python

[Rustom Mody]

On Monday, July 27, 2015 at 1:15:29 AM UTC+5:30, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2015-07-26, Rustom Mody  wrote:
> > On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 9:17:16 PM UTC+5:30, Grant Edwards wrote:
> >> On 2015-07-26, Rustom Mody wrote:
> >> 
> >>> JFTR: Ive been using emacs for 20+ years.  And I have the increasing
> >>> feeling that my students are getting fedup with it (and me).
> 
> [...]
> >> Why do your students even _know_ (let alone care!) what editor you
> >> use?
> >> 
> >> I admit it was years ago, but after attending three universities and
> >> getting a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in Computer Science and
> >> Electrical Engieneering, I hadn't the foggiest idea what editors any
> >> of the faculty used.  Nor would I have cared one way or the other if I
> >> had known.
> >
> > Its 2015 now and any ½ decent teacher of programming, writes programs
> > in front of the class. And debugs and hacks and pokes around
> > OS-related stuff (ps, top and more arcane) etc. 
> 
> I still don't get it.
> 
> You're not teaching the _editor_, so why would it matter to anybody
> which editor you're using to show them the code?  They can see the
> code, and they can see what it does.  Are they too stupid to figure
> out how to insert or delete a line using whatever editor they prefer?
> 
> I remember being shown live examples in a numerical programming class,
> and not only was the _editor_ one I had never touched (or would), the
> language and OS were ones I had never used and never would.  It didn't
> detract from what was actually being _taught_ -- which was not "how to
> edit and run programs on an Apple-something-or-other".
> 
> The live examples we were shown for APL not only used a differnt
> editor, OS, and virtual machine that we used, it didn't even use the
> same character set!
> 
> I guess I have unealisitically high expections of modern students.
> 
> ... and back then all we had were zeros!

Was setting up machines for use a job you did in your days?
I know we didn't set up any -- there were no machines to set up other than the 
privately unaffordable public resources.
Today a machine is about as personal and private as a toothbrush.

DevOps is a fashionable term these days.
We used to call it system-administration.
As expected CS education is about 10 years behind the curve in seeing its
importance
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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[E.D.G.]

"mm0fmf"  wrote in message 
news:J5ctx.20800$IK6.11473@fx46.am4...

> Am I the only person thinking Troll?

Posted by E.D.G.   July 26, 2015

  In my opinion, one of the most important aspects in considering the 
selection of a new programming language is the willingness of people posting 
notes to the language's newsgroup to be friendly and cooperative.  And in 
that regard, I have found the Fortran people to be the best.  I never 
encountered an unfriendly note in that newsgroup.  Unfortunately, Fortran 
just "ran out of steam" when it came to Windows applications.


  As far as I can recall, yours is only the second time I have 
encountered a Python newsgroup note that, in my opinion, did not have a 
friendly tone to it.  And if that appears to be the general case here then 
all of the people with whom I work will just dump Python as a language to 
consider.


  The Perl newsgroup is yet another matter.  And we have all largely 
decided to abandon Perl as the language of choice because it has seemed to 
be so difficult to get any help in that newsgroup.


Regards,

E.D.G.

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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[E.D.G.]

"E.D.G."  wrote in message 
news:q5sdntejbkkjxyjinz2dnuu7-tedn...@earthlink.com...


Posted by E.D.G.  July 26, 2015

  There is an additional comment for people who are interested in 
scientific programming efforts.


  Most people are aware that when the U.S. Government tried to get a 
Web site running in connection with the Affordable Care Act a while ago, the 
government Web site crashed.


  One of the major problems with government programming efforts appears 
to me to be the fact that people working in different government agencies 
are often using different programming languages.  And those people don't 
communicate with one another.  The results are inefficiency.


 To demonstrate that the programming effort I am discussing is quite 
serious I am providing the following indirect link.  This is for a proposed 
effort to get as many government scientists etc. as possible connected with 
one another and moving in the same direction at the same time.


http://www.freewebs.com/eq-forecasting/DSAT.html

  If that type of program does eventually get created then the 
government scientists are still going to want some computer language that 
they can all work with.  And an important question at this time is, "Might 
one of the languages of choice be Python?"


Regards,

E.D.G.

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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[Ned Batchelder]

On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 5:15:31 PM UTC-4, mm0fmf wrote:
> On 26/07/2015 20:17, E.D.G. wrote:
> > "E.D.G."  wrote in message
> > news:jf6dnqimoz_gxc7inz2dnuu7-s2dn...@earthlink.com...
> >
> > Posted by E.D.G.   July 26, 2015
> >
> > These are some additional comments related to my original post.
> >
> >The effort I have been discussing actually involves developing a
> > totally free version of some language that scientists around the world
> > could easily install and use.
> >
> >
> > 1.  With my own science related Perl programs I provide people with .exe
> > versions in addition to the .pl versions.  And for the .pl versions, at
> > one of my Web sites there is actually an entire Perl programming
> > language directory available in a .zip package.  So, people can download
> > the file, unzip it, and then save it as the Perl directory and .pl
> > programs will then run on that computer.  We would like to be able to do
> > the same thing with Python if we start working with that language.  And
> > a response in another post indicates that this should be possible.
> >
> > 2.  Python looks especially attractive because so many people are using
> > it. And I myself have a friend who is a very experienced professional
> > Python programmer.  On the other hand, there are so many versions of
> > Python that it might be difficult at first to determine which one to
> > start with.
> >
> > 3.  I asked that Python programmer if Python could run on an Internet
> > server as a CGI program.  And the answer was "I have no idea."  So,
> > amusingly, apparently even experienced professional programmers don't
> > know everything there is to know about a given programming language!
> >
> > 4.  I myself know that Perl programs will run on Internet servers as CGI
> > programs and have written several myself using a development program
> > called Xampp to create and test them before installing them on the
> > server computer.
> >
> > 5.  My retired professional programming colleague has now told me that
> > he downloaded and installed the ActiveState Windows version of Python
> > with no difficulties.  So, that is encouraging news.
> >
> > 6.  He said that he is looking around for a good IDE for Python and
> > found one called "Eric" that he is checking.
> >
> > 7.  With my Perl language programs I have developed a resource that will
> > do the following.  And I imagine that this could also be done with
> > Python. This resource can't be developed with many and probably most
> > programming languages.
> >
> >In part because of limited calculation speeds it can take one of
> > my important probability calculation Perl programs as much a two hours
> > to run and create all of the necessary data arrays.  Many, many millions
> > of calculations are involved.  And once everything is set, for time
> > limitation reasons it would be ordinarily be impossible to make any
> > changes to the data or to the original program code without losing all
> > of the data.
> >
> >So, I have developed a special Perl program that makes that
> > possible. And as I said, I am guessing that this approach would also
> > work with Python.
> >
> >When the Perl program is done with its calculations, instead of
> > ending it jumps to another Perl program.  But all of the data in the
> > arrays it created remain active in memory.  The original program code
> > can then be changed.  The second Perl program is then told that the
> > changes are complete and that it should return to the first program.
> > Perl then attempt to recompile the original code.  If it is successful
> > it then uses the new code and does whatever is specified.  The
> > previously created arrays are still active in memory using the same
> > array names etc.
> >
> >If there was an error in the new code, a Windows screen appears
> > explaining that there was an error and the compilation ends.  But, the
> > data remain in the active computer memory.
> >
> >Changes can then be are made to the program code to fix the
> > error. And, the second Perl program is told to try again.  If there are
> > no new errors the first program recompiles and runs using the already
> > created arrays etc.
> >
> >   This is a very useful resource for scientists as it lets them
> > create and test new program code without having to recreate all of the
> > data arrays. And as I stated, it would probably not be possible to
> > develop such a resource with most programming languages.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > E.D.G.
> >
> 
> Am I the only person thinking Troll?

Yes.

--Ned.
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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Rick Johnson]

On Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 11:35:02 AM UTC-5, Laura Creighton wrote:
> How do you teach gmail not to reflow what it thinks of as
> 'other people's quoted text'?

My simple solution is to bulk replace ">>> " with "py> ".
Also has the benefit of differentiating between languages
when a proper "tag" is used.

py> # Python code

rb> # Ruby code

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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[E.D.G.]

"Ned Batchelder"  wrote in message 
news:b68af3d4-6f12-49d6-8c15-f18a95441...@googlegroups.com...

Am I the only person thinking Troll?

Yes.


Posted by E.D.G.   July 26, 2015

  With some humor intended, thanks for the supportive note.

  This is an indirect URL for a potentially important computer program 
that I feel needs to be developed.  Unfortunately, although Python could be 
used to create PC or Mac versions of the program I don't think that those 
programs would run on Internet server computers.  But I don't yet know 
enough about Python to be able to tell if that is the case or not.


http://www.freewebs.com/eq-forecasting/Disaster_Response_System.html

  There are two Perl programs that I have developed that I believe many 
Python users would like to have available in Python versions.  And at some 
point I might create a Web page that will discuss them in detail.  For the 
moment I have just made the decision to combine them into a single program 
that would be quite helpful for the scientific community.  People don't 
actually even need my assistance with developing these types of programs. 
Some versions are likely already available for free.


  The first program can do things such as automatically go to a Web 
site that provides weather information for example, feed information to the 
Web page program running at that site, wait for the results, copy them to a 
PC or Mac, and start processing the data.  It is a tremendously powerful and 
versatile program that can save scientists etc. large amounts of time by 
helping them automate repetitive tasks that take a lot of time if done 
manually.  Microsoft at one time had a Windows program available that did 
things like that.  I seem to remember that it was called "Recorder."  My own 
Perl version of the program is many times more powerful.


  The second program acts as a type of universal communicator for 
Windows programs.  It would actually work with any operating system.


  Running in the background it can start, stop, and interact with any 
Windows compatible programs such as other Perl programs, Notepad.exe, Excel, 
Fortran, Python undoubtedly, and also execute DOS shell commands etc.  With 
word processor programs and spreadsheet programs like Excel it makes life 
much easier as a person needs to learn how to program in only one language 
to get things done instead of all of those individual macro languages.


Regards,

E.D.G.

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Re: Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[Mark Lawrence]

On 27/07/2015 00:12, Ned Batchelder wrote:

On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 5:15:31 PM UTC-4, mm0fmf wrote:

On 26/07/2015 20:17, E.D.G. wrote:


[around 90 lines snipped]



Am I the only person thinking Troll?


Yes.

--Ned.



Was it really necessary to resend all of the original for the sake of a 
seven word question and a one word answer?


--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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Re: Gmail eats Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 3:40 AM, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
>> So while emacs makes everything else look rather puerile, setting it up
>> is such a bitch that last python course I just switched to idle.
>> Must admit it was more pleasant than I expected.
>> Except that sometimes we need C and C++ and assembly and haskell and make
>> and config files and git commits and...
>> And so emacs (or eclipse!!) remains the only option
>
> Um... your students are probably using Macs, Windows, and a small minority
> with Linux, yes? On laptops?
>
> Your Linux students are probably fine. Some of them probably know more than
> you :-)
>
> Mac users have access to a full BSB environment, even if most of them don't
> know it.
>
> Your Windows users are the problem. You could try GnuWin and Gnu Core
> Utilities for a set of GNU tools for Windows. You could build a bootable
> USB stick containing the Linux installation of your choice, and get them to
> use that. (Of course, I can imagine your school/university having a
> conniption fit at the thought of the liability issues if the software
> erased somebody's hard drive...)

There's another option, and it's what we use at Thinkful: direct all
your students to a browser-based IDE that's backed by a consistent
Linux VM. At the moment, we're recommending Cloud 9; we used to use
Nitrous, and there are plenty of other options out there. It may not
be as fast as working natively, but believe you me, it's a huge boon
to have all your students start off with something consistent! (Those
who know what they're doing are welcome to diverge from the
recommendation; I have several students who use their own desktops,
usually either Mac OS or Linux, but one uses Windows. But the same
thing still applies: playing around with the C9 IDE is the reliable
fallback for when they have trouble.)

In terms of dev environments, Linux is usually the easiest to set up -
even when you try to support umpteen distros. Partly this is because
most people who use Linux are aware of what their package manager is,
so you can say "Go and install the python-numpy package" and most of
them can figure that out (apt-get, yum, pacman, GUI front-end,
anything). Macs aren't overly difficult; as Steven says, there's
plenty of stuff available, plus it's reasonably easy to describe path
names and such in the Unix way, and have them be compatible with Linux
and Mac OS. Even the shell is almost always consistent - I've yet to
meet any student who isn't using some variant of bash. Windows, on the
other hand, is a pest to support, because so much is different. Do you
tell people to install Git Bash and work in Cygwin? Do you tell them
to grab one of the scientific Python stacks and use PowerShell? The
default shell is sufficiently weak that it needs to be replaced, but
there's no one obvious answer. So a browser-based alternative is the
way to go for us.

ChrisA
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Re: Python 3.4 Idle?

[Terry Reedy]

On 7/23/2015 9:28 PM, Steve Burrus wrote:

Listen I got back the Idle EAditor the other day but I had to install
the older, version 2.7, version of Python to get it. So naturally I w
onder if I can get Idle for version 3.4.*?


Yes, just install 3.4.3.

--
Terry Jan Reedy

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