hi folks, got a small favour to ask of the python community - or, more specifically, i feel compelled to alert the python community to "a need" with which you may be able to help: we're due for another release, and it's becoming an increasingly-large task.
given the number of examples requiring testing (75+) the number of browsers (15+) and desktop engines (3 so far, on 3 different OSes) that pyjamas supports is just... overwhelming for any one individual to even contemplate tackling. for the pyjamas 0.6 release, for example, i spent three weeks straight, just doing testing. from that experience i decided to set a rule, which is very straightforward: ask for help in testing, set a (reasonably firm) deadline for a release date, and then whatever has been tested by contributors by that time, that becomes the stable release. thus, in this way, the community receives a stable release that is of the quality that the *community* requires. the list of platforms tested already is quite long: however it's not long _enough_! and, also, on each task, there needs to be many more examples actually tested. here's what's been done so far: http://code.google.com/p/pyjamas/issues/list?can=2&q=milestone=Release0.8.1 we need more testing on opera, more testing on safari, more versions of firefox - more of everything basically! so, this is basically more of a "notification" than it is anything else, that if you'd like to help with the responsible task of ensuring that a python compiler and GUI toolkit has a release that the python community can be proud of, that i'm placing that responsibility directly into your hands: i'm just the gatekeeper, here. lastly, i'd like to leave you with this thought. i am doing a web site for a client (a general-purpose content management system which will be released as free software at some stage). the user management roles are stored as a comma-separated list in the database (kirbybase). i needed to split the string back into a list, and before i knew it i had typed this: import string roles = map(string.strip, user['roles'].split(",")) what struck me was that, although i've been working with pyjamas for over three years, it _still_ had me doing a double-take that this is *python*, yet this will end up running in *javascript* in the actual web site. the level of pain and awkwardness that would need to be gone through in order to do the same operation in javascript, and being completely unable to actually test and develop with confidence under pyjd directly at the python interpreter, i just... i can't imagine ever going back to that. and that's just... fricking awesome, but it highlights and underscores that there's a real reason why pyjamas is worthwhile helping out with (and using). you *do not* have to learn javascript, yet can still create comprehensive web sites that will work across all modern web browsers... *if* they're tested properly :) ok enough. thanks folks. l. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list