Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for April 29, 2003

QOTW:  "But I like to [polish] the code while it does not yet exist, or
make hundreds of new options DURING the programming. That's why many of
my programs never see the daylight :)" -- Dino Levy

"For a long time, the industry labored under the illusion that if we
could all agree on One Big API then we'd have interoperability.
Examples have included Posix, X11, OLE/COM/DCOM, CORBA, DCE, OpenDoc,
and  the list goes on; and it's never, ever, ever worked (with the
single exception of the "sockets" library for IP networking)."  -- 
Tim Bray  http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/03/24/XMLisOK


Discussion:
    Techniques for making *small* stand-alone versions of Python
    programs.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=3dac0b6a85d8c13a>

    Jack Diederich exhibits two real-life uses for metaclasses:
    registering classes with a factory, and named prototypes.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=296a0181247593f3>

    Jeff Epler describes some common uses of C++ references, and shows
    how the same problems are usually solved in Python.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=5c54ac4ec68aeafa#link6>

    Tim Peters comments on reverse-engineering a mysterious 48-bit
    floating-point number format, illustrating the complexity of the
    subject.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?th=6a220801e92e14e#link8>

    In the middle of a tongue-in-cheek discussion of overloadable
    short-circuiting operators, a speculative notion for implementing
    microthreads (inter alia) by turning all functions into generators.
        <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1051284157.17376.python-list%40python.org>

Announcements:
    Python 2.3b1: The first beta release of Python 2.3.
        <http://www.python.org/2.3/>

    Matplotlib 0.1: Matplotlib's goal is to make publication-quality
    plotting easy in Python, with a syntax familiar to Matlab users.
        <http://nitace.bsd.uchicago.edu:8080/matplotlib>

    mxODBC Zope Database Adapter 1.0.4: Allows you to easily connect
    your Zope installation to just about any database backend on the
    market today.
        <http://www.egenix.com/>

    Pyro 3.2: Pyro is an advanced and powerful Distributed Object
    Technology system written entirely in Python, that is designed to
    be very easy to use.
        <http://pyro.sourceforge.net/>

    Sybase DB-API module 0.36: The Sybase module provides a Python
    interface to the Sybase relational database system.  It supports
    all of the Python Database API, version 2.0 with extensions.
        <http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/>

    Twisted 1.0.4: Twisted is an event-driven framework for building
    networked clients and servers.  It contains a powerful and simple
    networking core, a full-featured suite of interoperable protocols,
    among them a powerful web server and applications framework.
        <http://www.twistedmatrix.com/>


========================================================================
Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  
    Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new)
    World-Wide Web articles related to Python.
         http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html 
    While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL
    are utterly different in their technologies and generally in
    their results.

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Brett Cannon continues the marvelous tradition established by 
    Andrew Kuchling and Michael Hudson of summarizing action on the
    python-dev mailing list once every other week.
	http://www.python.org/dev/summary/

    The Python Package Index catalogues packages.
        http://www.python.org/pypi/

    The somewhat older Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collects references
    to all sorts of Python resources.
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Business Forum "further[s] the interests of companies
    that base their business on ... Python."
	http://www.python-in-business.org

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
        http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a
    SourceForge reincarnation.
        http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse
        http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html
     
    The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
    editor@pythonjournal.com and editor@pythonjournal.cognizor.com
    welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
    of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

    *Py: the Journal of the Python Language*
        http://www.pyzine.com

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/         
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant)
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
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