From: Paul Prescod <paulp@ActiveState.com> To: Dr.Dobb's.Python-URL.distribution@starbase.neosoft.com Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jun 4) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 07:32:28 -0500 (CDT) The DISLIN data plotting library has reached the ripe old age of 7.5. DISLIN isn't only usable from Python but what other language would you choose? <wink> http://www.dislin.de/ It seems DISLIN is the topic of the week. Eric Hagemann covers it in his onging series on numerical programming in Python: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/06/02/magazine/numerically.html Maybe the topic of the week is more general than DISLIN. How about graphics? Michael Wallace describes how to generate graphics with Piddle: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2001/05/31/piddle.html You'll need a user interface to go with all of those pretty pictures. PYUI is a user interface library written in 100% Python using PyGame! http://pyui.sourceforge.net/ Games based on PyGame just keep popping up. Pygris is a falling blocks game written in Python. Next I predict, PyKombat, PyMario and PyQuake! http://www21.brinkster.com/coonsta/pygris/ How do you do serial IO in Python? Usual answer: It depends on your operating system. New answer: not anymore! XIO is a new cross-platform serial port driver for win32 and Unix. http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&th=dae9fa4438b9bc9a,3 Python is great as a first programming language. Point your newbie friends at this article by Cameron Laird to convince them to stick their toes in the programming pool in the shallow end. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/06/02/magazine/python_first_language.html If Cameron didn't convince them, how about a review from an expert. Ron Stephens describes a newbie's love affair with Python: http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&th=b5d4dd1f55a71d62,3 PyChecker 0.5 has been released. PyChecker helps you find common bugs in python source code. http://pychecker.sourceforge.net/ Chapter 5 of "Dive Into Python" is available. This chapter discusses Unit Testing. http://diveintopython.org/roman_divein.html Python is great at talking COM, CORBA, SOAP and now cross platform COM(XPCOM)! XPCOM is the component system developed in the Mozilla project. Uche Ogbuji tells all: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/components/library/co-pyxp1.html A variety of threads this week dived into arcana relating to numbers. First there is recurring discussion of whether Python should adopt rationals, or decimal floating point and if so with what syntax: http://groups.google.com/groups?th=893850c4619119ea,109&ic=1 Then there was an interesting debate on the nature of randomness. Bill Bell summarizes it well: "What is it about random numbers that provokes so much discourse". The thread starts here: http://groups.google.com/groups?th=3afeb4752bc8482a,62&ic=1 Stephen Figgens takes a look at structured grep and its relationship to Python. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2001/05/23/pythonnews.html Frank Willison challenges the Python community to contribute to the Python cookbook: http://www.oreilly.com/frank/ ======================================================================== 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 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 Michael Hudson continues Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every other week. http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/ http://www.amk.ca/python/dev The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect 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 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.de/oo_python.html Python FAQTS http://python.faqts.com/ Python To-Do List anticipates some of Python's future direction http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/todo.py Python Journal is at work on its second issue http://www.pythonjournal.com Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive what AI can generate http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python 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://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html 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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