Re: The Python Papers Edition One

[Tennessee Leeuwenburg]

On 11/23/06, Stephen Hansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > 3.) Can I have an HTML version?
> > A) No, we like it pretty.
>
>
> The interesting thing is, there's nothing in your layout or format that you 
> can't do with some nice standards-compliant HTML and CSS. It could look 
> identical as HTML-- and be significantly more "reachable" by people, easier 
> for them to use and read, link to, and so on and so forth.
>
> Plus you could stick some Google adwords ads on it :)
>
> But, really... if you're eventually wanting this to be a 
> printed/published/mailed sort of thing, I can understand why you'd want to do 
> it as a PDF... but you will be limiting your audience in the meantime. A lot 
> of people just find it too tedious and difficult, and if your goal is to 
> reach people and communicate
>
> Why not do both? Might take a bit more work-- but the layout you have isn't 
> that hard to do in HTML, and there's gotta be a way to html2pdf... I've never 
> wanted to, but there has to be. =)
>

Thanks v. much for the comments. Not a week goes by that this
limitation doesn't irk me. All I can say is that I feel your pain, and
also I really appreciate the response, because the project succeeds
only according to the enthusiasm that can be generated.

 So, why aren't we publishing in HTML and not worrying about PDF?
   * Document lodgement in online archives. PDFs are a nice bundled
format which preserves formatting, paging etc, isn't resolution
dependent
   * Page numbers and tables of contents
   * Lack of a WYSIWYG gui for advance HTML layouts fully supporting
all browser differences.
   * Source application is currently OpenOffice, which *definitely*
doesn't support good enough HTML output.
   * If you say LaTex, I'll eat your brain. Or my hat. Unless I'm
seriously underrating it, but I don't think so.
   * Scribus crashed multiple times when I was testing it out using on
our first version. I think it's too big.

In my explorations, I have found:
   * pdf2html is a lame duck
   * html2pdf can't be done

The only possibility is going from something like odt to both PDF and
html, but you seriously lose out in using OpenOffice to generate the
HTML. I haven't been able to identify a truly working upstream
application from which both HTML and PDF can be derived.

PDF2ASCII works okay, but you lose your images.

Docbook format appears to be a possibility, but it lacks a good GUI
for editing in, so you're talking raw XML. OpenOffice claims to
support it, but I couldn't get it to work properly.

Article submissions need to be handled in a variety of formats,
usually word or OpenOffice are used, for example.

It might be possible using Python and ReportLabs to *write* something
which would support a layout which could be translated into HTML and
PDF without a major loss of quality, but this is a major project in
its own right. It would also require that authors make proper use of
sections and heading options rather than just fiddling with the font
size. .

Trust me, I thought about it. It still bugs me. It will probably bug
me forever. At this stage, the only viable options I can see are to go
to HTML as the primary format, increase the workload involved in
typesetting and layout, and abandon the idea of a print-friendly
layout, or to continue with the current situation despite its
drawbacks.

If anyone has any good ideas for how to cope as a publisher with these
difficulties, I'm all ears. I want something that Just Works. If
there's a Good Way to Do Things, I'll happily adopt it.

 Cheers,
 -T (Editor-In-Chief)
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Python Papers: Submission Deadline Imminent for Volume 2

[Tennessee Leeuwenburg]

Submission Deadline Imminent  To
those who have submitted content for The Python Papers, we salute you. To
the rest, we will be accepting zero-hour submissions up until the time of
publication. However, the closer the deadline gets, the less likely it is
that submissions will be processed in time. Submissions may be kept for the
next edition, however.

This edition will also be aimed to complement the upcoming PyCon 2007. As we
offer peer-review for academic publications, we hope to offer an opportunity
to participants who might regard this as an advantage.

We would still like to hear from anyone participating in any Python User's
Group to be a spokesperson. We will feature a series of articles covering
PUGs from around the world, and it would be fantastic to show people just
how diverse, wide-ranging and interesting the Python community really is.

Cheers,
-T
(Editor-In-Chief)
-- 
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Re: [python-advocacy] Would You Write Python Articles or Screencasts for Money?

[Tennessee Leeuwenburg]

Firstly, let me put up my hand and say that I would be happy to write
Python articles for cash.

Now, on to business.

I am already doing something similar with /The Python Papers/. As part
of putting together each edition (especially the upcoming, bumper
edition due out soon), I seek out authors, solicit contributions,
review available literature and generally promote good content. I
don't think it's too much to suggest that anyone seeking to assist in
creating a good image for Python could very usefully contribute to
this effort.

In the last edition we offered a prize for the best article, and also
undertook some review of published papers and articles, reprinting
'best of' papers from the recent OSDC conference. We are also seeking
recommendations from other conference organisers so that we can, on an
ongoing basis, select and republish 'the best' and present them in one
globally accessible place.

The Python Papers has a growing profile, but it is still very early
days. We need help at the editorial level very much, and also in
building a new website.

Additionally, I can see the value in getting more column inches in
journals and magazines with already large readerships. As editor, I
already have a relationship with many authors of Python material. If I
knew of opportunities for publishing in other journals, I would be
more than happy to try to organise a contribution.

I have been waiting until after the publication of our next edition to
propose anything of the kind, but in light of this discussion perhaps
I should bring it up now -- perhaps there is the possibility of The
Python Papers becoming more officially related to python.org. This
might give the PSF a tool by which they can officially recognise
members of the Python community.

Unfortunately, we are limited at the moment by a lack of manpower.
Each edition is the result of a lot of effort on my part, and also by
contributors and other members of the editorial board. Being able to
have more committed individuals involved in its production would, I
feel, rapidly improve the reach and quality of the publication.

I'm not looking for a handout, as I'm happy with what I'm doing
already, but I thought I'd point out that The Python Papers could be
an instrument for achieving many of the goals outlined in this
discussion.

All the best,
-Tennessee

On 4/25/07, Facundo Batista <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 2007/4/24, Steve Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> > and I was more looking for a way to reward authors of excellence, as
> > judged by some subset of the Python community - this might have to be
> > the PSF membership given the impracticality of running a meaningful poll
> > with a larger set of voters.
>
> Why? Because of spammers and/or false voters?
>
> When I first read about this, I thought about a web page where anybody
> could "propose" articles for voting, and anybody could vote them.
> Monthly, an award goes for the top 1, and that article goes out from
> the poll.
>
> Why can't that be done?
>
> Other point: what happens with all the non-english articles? Other categories?
>
>
> > There are many other possibilities too. What about an award for "most
> > helpful responses on c.l.py" over some period? I think one of the
>
> How do you evaluate such thing? I think this is too complicated...
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> .Facundo
>
> Blog: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/plog/
> PyAr: http://www.python.org/ar/
> ___
> Advocacy mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy
>
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Re: [python-advocacy] Need Help in Preparing for Study of Python by Forrester Research

[Tennessee Leeuwenburg]

I've read through the document. It seems basically okay, although
highly web-oriented. There are still *some* desktop developers left in
the world!

I was a little disappointed not to see more on the community -- e.g.
engagement of the community, activity in support fora, availability of
books and tutorials etc.

The questions looked like a reasonable checklist if you were
developing an enterprise web app, but didn't really turn out very much
about the language itself, or cover elegance, programming style.

It would probably be good to see a few standard algorithms implemented
in each language rather than allowing each language to submit whatever
they like. A bit of both might be nice.

Just my 2c.

Cheers,
-T

On 5/2/07, Jeff Rush <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Forrester Research is doing a study on dynamic languages and has asked that
> Python be represented.  As advocacy coordinator I've volunteered to drive
> this, collecting answers from the community and locating representatives to
> participate in interviews.
>
> The goal of the study is to:
>
>  - identify the criteria to use for evaluating such languages
>  - identify the relevant choices of dynamic languages
>  - identify how the different dynamic languages stack up
>  - examine where dynamic languages work best
>
> Initially, they'd like feedback (not yet the answers themselves) from us
> regarding their proposed evaluation criteria - questions to add or that give
> no value, rewording to make them more clear.  I've posted their draft
> criteria, which came as a spreadsheet at:
>
>   http://dfwpython.org/uploads/ForresterPrep/DynamicLanguagesCriteria.xls
>
> Later, between May 8 and 25, the researchers will need to interview via 1-hour
> telephone calls, several developers with experience using Python.  And they
> want to also interview one person with an executive viewpoint, able to
> describe relevant background, positioning, value proposition, customer base,
> and strategic vision.
>
> And later they would also like snippets of Python code that illustrate the
> power of Python, and I hope to call upon community members to help in
> producing that.  The snippets do not have to be originally written and can be
> pulled from existing projects.
>
> But those steps come later.  For now let's focus on analysis of the evaluation
> criteria at the above URL.  Time is short as they'd like that feedback by May
> 3, so please get any responses to me as soon as possible.  And be thinking who
> would best represent the executive view of Python in an interview.
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
> Jeff Rush
> Advocacy Coordinator
> ___
> Advocacy mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy
>
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alias method definitions / syntactic sugar suggestion

[Tennessee Leeuwenburg]

I'm not sure if this problem I face affects many other people, but I'll just
describe it and see what kind of feedback I get.

I have a suggestion for a new piece of Python syntax when defining methods.
I have seen the following done, and have done it myself


class FanstasticClass:

def __init__(self):
self.someFantasticMethod("Hello")

def someFantasticMethod(self, argument = True):
print argument

justAsFantastic = someFantasticMethod


In order to set up a second method, justAsFantastic, which is just an alias
to someFantasticMethod

The shortcoming of this approach is that supposing we have some unfamiliar
codebase. In my method I see a call to someObject.justAsFantastic("Wahoo").
In order to find that method, I do a file search for "def justAsFantastic("
in order to make sure (a) I only get method definitions and (b) I don't get
any extraneous methods.

This is especially relevant to methods which might be commonly used as
variable names elsewhere in the code.

I suggest allowing the following syntax:

   def justAsFantastic = someFantasticMethod

which will *do* exactly the same thing, but by a syntactic marker that the
variable justAsFantastic points to a method.


Comments appreciated!

-- 
----------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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Re: alias method definitions / syntactic sugar suggestion

[Tennessee Leeuwenburg]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Chris Rebert  wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Tennessee Leeuwenburg
>  wrote:
> > I'm not sure if this problem I face affects many other people, but I'll
> just
> > describe it and see what kind of feedback I get.
> >
> > I have a suggestion for a new piece of Python syntax when defining
> methods.
> > I have seen the following done, and have done it myself
> >
> >
> > class FanstasticClass:
> >
> > def __init__(self):
> > self.someFantasticMethod("Hello")
> >
> > def someFantasticMethod(self, argument = True):
> > print argument
> >
> > justAsFantastic = someFantasticMethod
>
> This sounds like a code smell to me. You shouldn't have 2 methods with
> different names that do the same thing, it seems like bad design IMHO.
> Also, I don't think this is done anywhere near frequently enough to
> warrant new syntax. I'm -1 on the idea personally.


Yeah, I can see that. There is one instance where I've done it personally,
and another where I've seen it done.

Where I've done it personally, it was to, shall we say, compensate for a
design feature. Where I've seen it done was (I think) for
backwards-compatibility reasons.

*If* you are going to have two methods with different names that do the same
thing, they *really should* execute the same lines of code! :)

The alternative of course is:
   def justAsFantastic(self):
  return self.someFantasticMethod()


In fact, probably I should just do that... at the time it seemed appropriate
to do the alias thing.

-T
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