Re: Broken essays on python.org
Steven Bethard wrote: Brian Cole wrote: I'm not sure if this is the proper place to post this... A lot of the essays at http://www.python.org/doc/essays/ have a messed up layout in Firefox and IE. The proper place to post this is to follow the Report website bug link at the bottom of the sidebar and post a tracker item. I was feeling generous today ;) so I did that for you: http://psf.pollenation.net/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/333 STeVe Thanks for the report.. they're fixed now.. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: python application ideas.
Anthony Greene wrote: Hello, I know this isn't really a python centric question, but I'm seeking help from my fellow python programmers. I've been learning python for the past year and a half, and I still haven't written anything substantial nor have I found an existing project which blows my hair back. Python is my first language, and I plan on learning lisp within the next week but before I do so I'd like to write something meaningful, does anyone have any suggestions? Something they always needed, but never got around to writing it? Without an imagination you pretty much stagnate your whole learning process. Thanks in advance. How about writing a standalone wiki markup parser? I know a *lot* of people who would find this useful.. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: proposed Python logo
Michael Tobis wrote: That said, and conceding that the first impression is positive, I don't see how it represents Python. More to the point, the longer I look at it the less I like it, and I would NOT wear it on a T-shirt. over 25 people disagree with you so far and thats without any advertising whatsoever (and it's an older version of the logo) because you can get T-Shirts from cafepress.com/pydotorg and any profits go to the psf. I'll add the new logo over the weekend. The + formation is positive enough, and it has a yin-yang feel to it which to me conjures up the image of balance, not divisiveness. Both the cross and the yin-yang have religious associations, which will be positive for some and negative for others but will certainly be unrepresentative of what Python is. This would be a great logo for Taoist Christians, if such a group exists. How is Python about balance? It is about abstraction, composition, the whole greater than the parts, yes, but there's nothing there that really draws on duality. So the whole two-ness of the thing is one of the parts that disturbs me. They're freindly snakes at a tadpole fancy dress competition having a 'cuddle'. Where do you think Python eggs come from... Tim Parkin p.s. the logo is actually based on mayan representations of snakes which very often represent only the head and perhaps a short length of tail. The structure of the snake representations the natural coiling/nesting of a snake as seen side on.. The following image shows a similar representation (we have a snake house nearby which makes it easier to observe behaviour) http://www.xcalak.info/images/florafauna/fer_de_lance_l.jpg The mesoamerican calendar also represents snake heads in a similar manner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzolkin The abstraction of the snake design used in mayan culture seemed non-denominational enough to only raise contrived objections. The shapes used (cross/spiral/yin-yang) are also primitive enough that there will always be connotations that can be derived. http://www.alovelyworld.com/webhon/gimage/hdu011.jpg http://www.khoahoc.com.vn/photos/Image/2005/11/16/maya-snake.jpg http://www.xcalak.info/images/florafauna/fer_de_lance_l.jpg The two headed snake was also an influence on the design http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bjayatil/British%20Museum%20%20London/slides/17-aztec_snake.html which is also a common 'meme' in many continents, including africa http://www.sfu.ca/archaeology/museum/ndi/cam5.jpg And I'd like to see you tell a civil war soldier that it looks like his trousers are held up by a two headed tadpole http://www.civilwarrelics.com/museum/graphics/Frame25a.JPG If you look carefully at the logo, you will also see an indian symbol of peace.. (I'll leave this one alone as it can also mean something else). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: proposed Python logo
BartlebyScrivener wrote: (and it's an older version of the logo) because you can get T-Shirts from cafepress.com/pydotorg and any profits go to the psf. I just ordered some stuff from cafe press, are you saying I'm getting an old version of the logo? An alternate 'collectors' rendition of the new logo as used by Guido Van Rossum in his recent New York Google presentations and also as on t-shirts, mugs and flags handed out during EuroPython 2005! Tim Parkin p.s. was that good enough spin for you ;-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: The World's Most Maintainable Programming Language
John Salerno wrote: There is an article on oreilly.net's OnLamp site called The World's Most Maintainable Programming Language (http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/03/the_worlds_most_maintainable_p.html). It's not about a specific language, but about the qualities that would make up the title language (learnability, consistency, simplicity, power, enforcing good programming practices). I thought this might be of interest to some of you, and I thought I'd point out the two places where Python was mentioned: It's interesting to see a slightly different take on type checking.. In the real world it is an error to put five pounds of potatoes in a ten pound sack The same might be true of computer games, where a type checker so careful that it might refuse to allow an operation where a 180-pound character can carry 10,000 gold pieces might actually remove the aspect of fun from the game. Isn't this data validation and if it is, should the compiler be checking this? Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python 2.4.3 Documentation: Bad link
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now, it works well... I really don't know why it before report 404 Not Found... I was tested it 5x... I'm sorry for unwanted false bug report. Hi Bones, It really was a bug!! I'd seen it reported on the bug tracker and made a quick fix which is why I hadn't closed the issue in the bug tracker (it was you that reported it?). Thanks Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python website, new documentation ?
John J. Lee wrote: How about the desktop icon used on Windows boxes? Will we see the shy tadpoles replacing the squiggly green pixellated Python snake in 2.5? If not, why not? -- is this not a branding excercise? (I don't personally like the tadpoles, FWLIW, but inconsistency seems worse) John I presume so. It's not really up to me though. Someone has created some new icons based on the new logo that have received some positive feedback and that I like a lot. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python website, new documentation ?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I was wondering : as there has been a change in python.org website with a new design, is it planned for the documentation section to be revamped as well ? If yes, would it be just a appearance renewal or would there also be changes in the doc itself ? Martin. docs.python.org will stay the same as far as I am aware but I'll be looking at trying out a version of the docs using the new python.org layout. Obviously this will affect more regular users of the site and so will need testing out first. The structure of the documentation won't change but it will have a new navigation (rather than just the back, up, forward on the current latex2html output). It's probably best to get something up on a test site to look at before over-analysing it though.. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python logo in high resolution format
Brian Quinlan wrote: The new Python logo is available in high-resolution format here: http://tinyurl.com/n4rge Cheers, Brian Thats the old logo, the new logo is at the same address but swap the last url segment from 'logo' to 'newlogo' There still isn't a 'usage' guide for the new logo but I'll get onto one soon hopefully. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Nevow LivePage tutorial
Jean-Paul Calderone wrote: On 26 Mar 2006 23:12:33 -0800, Mir Nazim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2. Form handling in Nevow http://divmod.org/trac/browser/trunk/Nevow/examples/formbuilder http://forms-project.pollenation.net/cgi-bin/trac.cgi Jean-Paul And http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodNevow/FormHandling Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Nevow LivePage tutorial
Mir Nazim wrote: I really appriciate the help a lot, the but the problems is that i have already real those. What i was looking for was some kind of detailed tutorial, that explains the basic ideas about live page and formhandling etc. (my be it the time some nevow know guy got onto it) What are you trying to implement.. it may be that you don't need livepage at all.. Is it just some javascript to enhance a form field? Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: SSH, remote login, and command output
Spire 01 wrote: Greetings! I'm working on a Python program for a small LAN of Linux systems running Gentoo, and I need a little help figuring out what I need to do it. So what I'd like to do is, from any given computer, log on to every other computer, run a certain command (which normally outputs text to the terminal), and store the output so I can use the aggregate statistics later in the program. I would normally something along the lines of SSH to do it, but I don't know what I would need to pull that off in Python. There's also one complication: the systems could be Gentoo systems, or they could be logged into Windows since they're dual booted. Considering all of this, can anyone give me some recommendation as to what library I should learn how to use to pull this off? I admit, I haven't done too much in the way of networks, but if someone can tell me what I need to do remote logins in this way, I'll do what I can to make it work. Thanks a million! Spire I wrote a small tool to implement cron like functionality over ssh using twisted (with public/private keys). This was written to scratch a small itch but also to learn how twisted works with conch, it's ssh module. http://crontorted-project.pollenation.net/cgi-bin/trac.cgi Feel free to use, I haven't put a license on it but it would be MIT/BSD .. contact me if you want an explicit confirmation. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: SSH, remote login, and command output
Tim Parkin wrote: Spire 01 wrote: Greetings! ... Thanks a million! Spire I wrote a small tool to implement cron like functionality over ssh using twisted (with public/private keys). This was written to scratch a small itch but also to learn how twisted works with conch, it's ssh module. http://crontorted-project.pollenation.net/cgi-bin/trac.cgi Feel free to use, I haven't put a license on it but it would be MIT/BSD .. contact me if you want an explicit confirmation. Actually, unless you are happy to implement a BSD/MIT (or your own) license crontab parser (crontorted/crontab.py) the whole will have to be GPL? The current crontab.py is from Bothan (Thomas Herve therve doesntlike spam AT free DOT fr) if you're interested, I'll write my own crontab parser and release it. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New-style Python icons
Luis M. González wrote: This is strange... I've been trying to access this site since yesterday, but I couldn't (Firefox can't stabilish connection with server www.doxdesk.com). However, I seem to be the only one with this problem... You could try using a proxy (one of the anonymous proxies would do the job). Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Terry Hancock wrote: On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:22:09 -0700 Steven Bethard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A.M. Kuchling wrote: On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 10:25:19 +0100, Fredrik Lundh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: and while you're at it, change python-dev to developers and psf to foundation (or use a title on that link). I've changed the PSF link, but am not sure what to do about the python-dev link. As others have noted, Developers is ambiguous about whether it's for people who develop in Python or who develop Python itself. Core Development? (Used on both perl.org and tcl.tk, so maybe this is the best option.) Development Team? +1 on Core Development. It's still ambiguous, but less so. And I can't think of anything better. ;) Since I just said almost that independently on an earlier thread, I guess that makes me +1 on Core Development (or Core Developers) myself. Sold to the man in the blue hat!! It's on the server now... Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Fredrik Lundh wrote: A.M. Kuchling wrote: I've changed the PSF link, but am not sure what to do about the python-dev link. As others have noted, Developers is ambiguous about whether it's for people who develop in Python or who develop Python itself.Core Development? (Used on both perl.org and tcl.tk, so maybe this is the best option.) core development is fine with me. /F I've tried this out on a test page and I think it works well.. I've also removed a couple of bits from the left hand nav and moved the style sheet switcher elsewhere (it probably should be in the help section). I think the left hand nav is a lot clearer if kept simple. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Fredrik Lundh wrote: A.M. Kuchling wrote: I've changed the PSF link, but am not sure what to do about the python-dev link. As others have noted, Developers is ambiguous about whether it's for people who develop in Python or who develop Python itself.Core Development? (Used on both perl.org and tcl.tk, so maybe this is the best option.) core development is fine with me. /F forgot the link.. http://psf.pollenation.net/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/attachment/ticket/47/python-amends-2.png Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Old Python Logo
Josef Meile wrote: Can someone post a link or email me an image of the old Python logo? I'd like to save a copy of it, I rather liked it - very retro. the dot matrix logo ? you can get a copy from this page: That website is down. You could try the archive as well: http://web.archive.org/web/20050401015445/http://www.python.org/ or you can look at http://archive-www.python.org which will be up for the next month. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Fredrik Lundh wrote: just change the link on the main site to read packages and while you're at it, change python-dev to developers and psf to foundation (or use a title on that link). /F For most people 'developers' would mean people developing *with* python, not developing python. Also 'Foundation' could be confused with 'beginners' or 'basic'. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Fredrik Lundh wrote: Tim Parkin wrote: For most people 'developers' would mean people developing *with* python, not developing python. the page it leads has headings that say Python Developers Guide and Links for Developers, and contains links about Development Process, Developer FAQ, etc. I think telling people they are in the wrong place isn't quite as good as helping them get to the right place. I'm convinced that people visiting python.org can distinguish between using python to develop stuff and developing python, but that's me. Simple user questions (i.e. asking people what they think a 'developers' link would lead to on a programming site) suggests that the majority of people think differently to you. Also 'Foundation' could be confused with 'beginners' or 'basic'. while PSF is completely incomprehensible for someone who doesn't already know what it is... why even keep it on the front page ? Usability says that people choose the first appropriate link to click on. They will only click on psf if they already know what it is. If it was called *foundation* and they were a beginner then they may well click on 'foundation'. If they wanted to know about the support and community behind python, that material should be obviously placed under 'community' and the information should also be under 'about'. Navigation usability isn't about trying to make every link mean something to every user, it's about making sure that for each use case, a clear path to the information is available. The difference is subtle but important. Calling the link *foundation* goes halfway to solving the problem in the wrong place. (give it its own section on the community page instead. the link is already there; all it needs is a heading and a short blurb). It was in the community section but most people wanted it back on the top level. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Fredrik Lundh wrote: Tim Parkin wrote: Simple user questions (i.e. asking people what they think a 'developers' link would lead to on a programming site) suggests that the majority of people think differently to you. so where's this mythical user group that you're using for the site testing ? /F freinds and colleagues both online and off.. Some of whom are python programmers, most not. Without a budget for 'comprehensive testing' then the next best thing is asking people, at least you'll generally get rid of the big bloopers.. it's typically referred to as guerilla testing and whilst not scientific, it's better than nothing at all. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Fredrik Lundh wrote: Tim Parkin wrote: I surely hope you're not optimizing the site only for people who don't in- tend to leave the front page... I sureley hope you can stop being facetious.. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Paul Boddie wrote: Fredrik Lundh wrote: (I'd solve this by adding disambiguation to the page itself, since people can arrive on it in many different ways. good information design is not only about what's on the front page...) True, but then I'd hope that, for example, a Support link would lead to a Support page which had support-related resources. Any front page link to a developers of the implementation page would also have to lead to something pertinent to that description, too. But having looked in the past at various parts of the old site in order to find canonical resources, perhaps the biggest challenge in maintaining the Python site is having coherent navigation with less redundant content: I got the impression that there were a number of pages that had been kept around just in case we don't mention this somewhere else and links through such pages with no guarantee that you'd get to an up-to-date summary of the desired information in a timely fashion, if at all. Indeed, that is one of the big challenges and we're trying to approach it from the top down. At the moment we've trimmed down the number of top level sections and the next stage is to address the top page of each of those sections (e.g. the 'community', 'documentation','python-dev' pages). Still some work left cleaning up after the move to the new site but this is going to be a priority very soon. Do you want me to include you on any emails regarding this? Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers
Steve Holden wrote: Tim Parkin wrote: Fredrik Lundh wrote: I sureley hope you can stop being facetious.. And I surely hope we can all work together for the better representation of Python to *all* of its communities :-) regards Steve My apologies to all, I shouldn't rise to the bait.. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Evangelism
Andrew Gwozdziewycz wrote: To emphasize the point as a newbie: I know what CPAN is. I would go to the Vaults of Parnassus for Python stuff. But Cheese Shop? Well, why don't we promote it as PyPI (Python Package Index)? The url _is_ python.org/pypi, and I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that PyPI was the intended name... If the community then decides on some standardized automated package management, I'm sure PyPI (cheese shop) would probably be the definitive repository. $ pypi install hello is much better than $ bluecheese install hello I have to say I prefer pypi myself.. I think it's a great idea subtitling it 'cheeseshop' but referring to it directly as cheeseshop is confusing at best. I've already had a few requests to change the text of the link on the home page to 'packages' or 'package index'. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New python.org website
Roy Smith wrote: The first two links on the News and Announcements are dead -- they get you a 404 File Not Found. I've opened a critical ticket on this in the bug tracker. I see there's another ticket open already on a similar issue. My recommendation would be that if these can't be resolved in very short order. to revert to the old site until these are fixed. fixed -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Zope/Plone - Is it the right solution?
Fredrik Lundh wrote: kbperry wrote: I am currently a student, and for our HCI class project we are redeveloping our CS website. I attend a very large university (around 30,000 students), and the CS site will need to be updated by many people that don't have technical skills (like clerical staff). The biggest problem with the current site is that not enough people have access to update it. Since I love python, these seemed like viable solutions. 1) Is Zope/Plone overkill for this type of project? 2) Why use Plone vs. straight up Zope? 3) Is there a way to get over the steep learning curves (that I have read about)? do you want to build a web application, use a ready-made CMS, or is the goal to easily get lots of information on to the (intra)web ? if the latter, a modern wiki with good access control could be worth investigating: http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/ http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/HelpOnAccessControlLists (for performance, you may want to run the wiki behind mod_proxy) if you want a ready-made content management system, pick Plone. I'd heartily agree with Fredrik on this.. If you just want to manage a set of interlinked documents (i.e. content oriented web pages) then a wiki will get you going and contributors updating stuff faster than pretty much anything going. Plone will give you more structure (allow you to create your own types of conten or object e.g. courses, buildings, whatever) with more effort and more maintenance. Rolling your own with any framework out there will inevitably give you the most flexibility (you can do pretty much what you want) traded off against a lot larger investment in time at the start and ongoing. If you want it to be a project, there isn't much to get your teeth into in creating a wiki based site (you can write you own modules and plug-ins I suppose). Plone/Zope3 would challenge you more and you'd have a chance to learn some different approaches to common cs problems. If I were to recommend based on you wanting a project, I'd say zope3. If it's based on getting some content up and editable quickly then I'd say wiki. If you're aiming for a structured website to handle some of the typical course info (handling events, rooms, dates, etc) I'd recommend plone. Tim Parkin p.s. The steep learning curve should only be if you want to do something to 'extend' the plone/zope system. As long as you are happy with the defaults for common components you shouldn't have too much to learn. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: editor for Python on Linux
Mladen Adamovic wrote: Hi! I wonder which editor or IDE you can recommend me for writing Python programs. I tried with jEdit but it isn't perfect. I've been using wing for quite some time and it's an excellent dedicated editor for python. If you want flexible debugging in a gui environment it's hard to beat. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python, Forms, Databases
Xavier Morel wrote: Tempo wrote: Larry I do see your point. There does seem to be a lot more support for PHP and MySQL together than there is Python and ASP. But I want to first try to accomplish my goal by using Python first before I give up and revert back to PHP. So if I was going to parse HTML forms and place the data into a MySQL database, what should I use? CGI module? Zope? Webware? Thanks for any and all help. If you're talking about a pair of page and nothing more, the CGI module and manually handling your stuff (with a DBAPI2 MySQL module for the DB link) is more than enough. If you want to create something more complex (a full database driven website), it would probably be a good idea to check some of Python's web frameworks, Django for example. Simple cgi example http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/pyBiblio/tips/wilson/basiccgi.php or you can go the more complex route which generates, validates and parses forms for you. http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodNevow/FormHandling for which you'll need twisted sumo and pollenations forms package Here is some sample code: http://divmod.org/trac/attachment/wiki/DivmodNevow/FormHandling/Example1.2.tac.py Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: How can I find a freelance programmer?
Charles wrote: Hello, I am looking for a freelance Python programmer to create a cross-platform application with wxPython. Any idea where I could find one? Thanks, You could ask Steve Holden? - that'll be 10% commission Steve! ;-) Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Small newbie question
Byte wrote: How would I do this: Write a program that simply outputs a ramdom (in this case) name of (for this example) a Linux distibution. Heres the code ive tryed: from random import uniform from time import sleep x = 2 while x 5: x = uniform(1, 5) if x = 1 = 1.999: print 'SuSE' elif x = 2 = 2.999: print 'Ubuntu' elif x = 3 = 3.999: print 'Mandriva' elif x = 4 = 4.999: print 'Fedora' sleep(2) It dosnt work: only keep printing SuSE. Please help, Thanks in advance, -- /usr/bin/byte import random dist = ['suse','ubuntu','mandriva','fedora'] random.choice(dist) is that ok? Tim Parkin [1] http://www.python.org/doc/lib/module-random.html -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Twisted book opinions?
Eddie Corns wrote: Jay Parlar [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I was hoping to get some c.l.p. opinions on O'Reilly's new Twisted book. Well I certainly felt that I understood it better after reading the book. OTOH I haven't tried to put that knowledge into practice yet. I think calling it a cookbook is misleading, it shows how to do essential tasks using fairly complete examples. It's really more of an example based tutorial book than cookbook. What it does do really well is 'networking programming essentials'. I found it quite a good book and managed to write a distributed ssh cron tool in an evening after reading the sections on SSH. What I'd really like now is a 'Web Application Development with Twisted/Nevow' book that takes off where this 'network protocol' oriented book leaves off. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Twisted book opinions?
Andrew Gwozdziewycz wrote: What I'd really like now is a 'Web Application Development with Twisted/Nevow' book that takes off where this 'network protocol' oriented book leaves off. I thought the O'Reilly book was pretty decent at describing how to setup a web application. It's not entirely complete, but I was able to piece together an application with a somewhat complex web application on top of it. Twisted made it quite easy. OK perhaps I wasn't as clear as I could have been. It discusses the use of Twisted with web protocols but doesn't really go into the current, recommended way to build web applications (because at the time of writing the possibility of api changes for nevow/twistedweb2 was quite high?). In fact it does say in the book that ..if you are really interested in building a web application you should be using nevow.. (paraphrased). Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Is Python good for web crawlers?
Tempo wrote: Does a web crawler have to download an entire page if it only needs to check if the product is in stock on a page? Or if it just needs to search for one match of a certain word on a page? Typically you would download the whole html file and then perform any analysis on this. It is possible to parse the stream of characters as they come back from the server but this would statistically only reduce the download time by a half (presuming the item you want is of a single byte in length and can appear anywhere in the html). In reality, unless the pages you are requesting are very large (200k+) or your bandwidth very expensive (in time and/or capacity) then it is probably easier for you to just download the whole file. I would recommend that you use BeautifulSoup to parse badly formatted html documents (which is most of the web). (google 'beautiful soup' and you should find it easily). Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Is Python good for web crawlers?
Tempo wrote: I took your advice and got a copy of BeautifulSoup, but I am having trouble installing the module. Any advice? I noticed that I just can't put it into the 'lib' directory of python to install it. Just save the file in the same directory as your project then you should be able to use the sample code. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: python success story
Alex Martelli wrote: Max M. Stalnaker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I urged a friend from Boeing to use python on a personal project. He liked it and repeatedly urged a Boeing developer to use it. Python is on the list of approved languages at Boeing. The developer wrote a thousand line enterprise level program in Python. He reports that it would have take ten times the lines of code in another language. Great! Now if this could be contributed as an article for pythonology.org, it would be preserved for posterity...!-) I don't mind writing it up and formattng it, if we can get in touch with the person at boeing. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: beta.python.org content
Magnus Lycka wrote: ... I don't like anyone to hand me different texts based on whom I say I am. I want to know what the texts are about and decide for myself where to go. These are texts, not dressing rooms! Unfortunately most people do.. That's why there are beginners books, business books, advanced books etc.. So, describe the content of each page instead of saying If you're this kind of guy, we think you should read this page. It's great to take different actors into account, but that should not be the public labels on the web site. It's like the desk for dissatisfied customers in a department store. The sign on the outside says complaints or something like that. The stupid customers sign has to be on the inside. That's not what you present to the stupid customers... Perhaps the About Section should look like this? Introduction -What is Python [short summary] -Getting started[a.k.a. for beginners/programmers, how to d/l etc] -Why Python?[a.k.a. for business] -Success Stories -Quotes Looks good.. I'll have a bit more of a think about it, perhaps the getting started and why python pages could have sections within them (headers) for if you are new to programming and Should I use python in my business. I don't quite understand why there is a PSF entry here. If I went to the Python web site actively looking for info about PSF, I would not look under the introductory About menu, but rather under community. If I'm new to Python, I'd probably ignore that meaningless acronym. Please move to Community and make a link from Why Python in a sentence describing how using Python avoids vendor lock in. OK.. I'll put it up as a ticket and try to change it around at the weekend. Thanks for the feedback. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Who is www.python.org for? (was Re: New Python.org website ?)
Terry Hancock wrote: On 22 Jan 2006 14:18:18 -0800 *I* don't want a slick brochure for Python as the website. For all the commercial value in Python (and there is plenty, I am sure), it's not Java, and I don't want it to be. I'm cool with suits loving it too, but I don't want to have to put on a suit to play. Python is an absolutely top-notch free software language for free software developers, not least of which are the amateurs, who program for love, not money. I hesitate to express this opinion, because I don't want to seem intolerant (and I'm going to use whatever site there is), but if the suits can get their own place and leave me alone, I'm for that. ;-) Cool!... I think thats exactly what we are after also. Only the home page plus a handful of interior pages (in the about section) will be targeted at businessmesn, developers and users. The rest of the site will stay pretty much untouched (albeit cleaning up the html, ensuring accessibility also adding consistent navigation to aid usability) For me, the most important function of the python.org site is as a quick-reference to deeper documentation that I actually need in the process of writing Python code. All of these functions will still be in place. I don't really know if I'm the market for this site. I'm already sold on Python, after all, I just want something useful that I can use to stay up-to-date, and to find other Python resources if they move, get created, or if I just lose track of the URLs. you shouldn't have a problem at all then. Developers are the primary marketing for the site. The home page is the only one that needs to server multiple purposes and we're trying to balance those multiple purposes between developers who come to the python site for the first time and business people who come to python for the first time. The homepage isn't very often used by people who are already developing or using python, apart from to view news and to use the navigation to find deeper content. What I'd like is to add a 'developer homepage' that includes lots of rss feeds from python related sites, cheeseshop announcements, etc, etc. Then the majority of developers can bookmark a really useful page. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: converting wiki markup to html (or xml)
Jarek Zgoda wrote: Tim Parkin napisa�(a): I'm trying to convert fragments of wiki markup into fragments of html (specifically using moinmoin markup). I've managed to do this with MoinMoin but I've had to create a data directory, config file and underlay. Does anybody know if there a sane way of doing this without the extra baggage? If you consider docutils, markdown or textile (or whatever markup your Wiki uses) an extra baggage, then answer is no. The extra baggage I was referring to was the config files, data directory, underlay, requestCLI, etc. I've looked in vain for a way to do this from MoinMoin import moinToHtml moinFormattedText = == Some Moin Formatted Text == Para One Para Two html = moinToHtml(moinFormattedText) I could even live with passing some extra parameters to moinToHtml in order to configure it. I could even live with having to use StringIO to convince it it's writing to files if necessary. Having to install a wiki in order to do this seems excessive. If anybody has done something similar I'd love to know. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
� wrote: Steve Holden wrote: Tim Golden wrote: [Steve Holden] | https://svn.python.org/www/trunk/beta.python.org | but I don't know whether anonymous access is enabled. Maybe you can let |me know ... Doesn't look like it. Asking me for authentication. I've finally gotten to install pyramid and build the very small and outdated subset of the beta pydotorg site. Obviously, I'd like to have access to the real data in the python.org SVN. Rats, thanks for letting me know. As a first step I'd like to open up anonymous access to both the content and the site generation software, so that people can experiment with local content generation. Then once someone knows how to use the system they can get a login for the SVN system and start editing site content. I'll get back to the list with instructions ASAP. It may take a while due to inter-continental time differences and general overwork. Hi, I'm hopefully catching up with Andrew Kuchling today who can set up the anonymous access for the data repo. Thanks for installing pyramid! Can you give me any feedback on what parts of the install process were painful.. I'm trying my best to improve the help text and make changes to readme's etc. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Gerhard Häring wrote:
The other part of my experiment was a stupid build system that
recursively looks for KID files in a directory tree and renders them to
HTML.
My idea is that for each KID file there would be a corresponding
content.xml file that would come from the MoinMoin dump-to-XHTML (*).
As for the navigation, my solution would look like this:
- each KID file uses a master KID template
- the normal KID files do look about like this:
html py:extends='templates/layout.kid'
xmlns:py=http://purl.org/kid/ns#;
head
titleThe page title/title
/head
body
div py:replace=document('src/content.xml') /
/body
/html
i. e. all they do is define the page title, and include the content
XML file created from MoinMoin.
- the make-like generator script will give each template its name as
a parameter, so that the template (and in particular the master
template) know what the current path is. Using this information, it can
render the left-side navigation bar appropriately.
- If there really is a need to, additional processing instructions can
be put as comments in MoinMoin at the top of a wiki page, like:
## RENDER hideNav(/dev); expandNav(/about)
As we also have access to the dumped raw MoinMoin sources, we could
parse these comments and handle them while rendering the KID templates.
IMO this system would be flexible enough to do all that the current one
can do, and integrate nicely with MoinMoin.
It would be not *ALL* dynamic via MoinMoin, but at least the contents
can be editied through a Wiki. Site structure would still be editied via
the filesystem.
What do you think of an approach like this?
-- Gerhard
(*) MoinMoin dumps do not always produce valid XHTML, so eventually I
still need a cleanup step.
It sounds very similar to what we have already built!! What we have also
parses yaml files, rest files, inline rest content, has special
renderers for navigation and breadcrumbs and handles cacheing of built
data to speed generation. It also keeps the format of all original
documents intact and can handle the differences in encodings that exist
in the current content. It will also include static html files (such as
some of the summaries and a lot of the pycon content), data structures
(the sigs and some other sections of the site), custom functionality
needed to remove emails from certain documents and the render some
custom data elements (peps) and the ability to add custom sidebar
elements. It also retains the ability to render complex page layouts on
the occasion they are needed. There is also a module being added that
will parse the current docs and rerender them within the site framework
adding a hierarchical navigation system.
With regards to integrating wiki content, it also has a beta directive
to include content from a wiki so there could be a good overlap here
between keeping the data stored in text files in subversion (a
requirement) and using moinmoin to help manage the content.
The goal will be to add a wiki-like rest editor that could also handle
the non-wiki/non-rest like content (such as sigs, peps, mirrors,
donations, jobs, members, psf meeting minutes, etc).
Tim
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Fredrik Lundh wrote: Tim Parkin wrote: It sounds very similar to what we have already built!! What we have also parses yaml files, rest files, inline rest content, has special renderers for navigation and breadcrumbs and handles cacheing of built data to speed generation. except that it isn't: you're talking about a modernized version of the current HT2HTML/make system, we're talking about a purely wiki-driven system. Fred, It's not a updated ht2html, just as it's not a web framework and it's also not a database backed content management system. It is what it is, text files with content on disk that get delivered as flat css/xhtml files (via a simple xml based templating system) and stored in a subversion repository. The way people edit content can be via any tool capable of editing text files. That includes, but is not limited to, textareas (via a wiki if you will) or gedit or vim or notepad. I would like your help, if you are willing, to suggest ways of parsing wiki markup into valid, semantic html that can be used on the website. I would also like you help in integrating the documentation into the website. If you want to help, send me an email, if you don't want to help but would like to continue the discussion, I'm happy to do so in private and then we can both come back and post our conclusions on the mailing list. Thanks Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
converting wiki markup to html (or xml)
I'm trying to convert fragments of wiki markup into fragments of html (specifically using moinmoin markup). I've managed to do this with MoinMoin but I've had to create a data directory, config file and underlay. Does anybody know if there a sane way of doing this without the extra baggage? Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Fredrik Lundh wrote: What puzzles me (and scares me) is that some people seem to think that anyone would go to python.org and expect a corporate fluff site. It's like when I asked a suit friend with long industry experience to check the python marketing list; his spontaneous reaction after reading some of the we must do this because non-programmers think like this discussion was one big WTF-are-these-guys-talking-about-why-do-they-hate-python ? If you'd followed the conversation, we actually asked a sample of non-programmers and a few company decision makers what there expectations were.. You may have seen a few ill informed comments on the python list (but tell me what list you can go on that doesn't). The current site needs an incremental style overhaul, a less cluttered front page, and some signs that python.org's actually using modern Python tools for the site. And it needs to be more alive, both style-wise and content- wise. Thats what we've done. It does not need to treat its target audience (be it developers nor managers) as simpletons. Companies in the Python space don't do that, so why should python.org ? I haven't got a clue what you are on about with the simpleton thing.. Is this related to another conversation it's the kind of tools that people built around then: a bunch of text files, and a make-style build templating system. to use the tools, you log in to the web server via a back channel. In most circles it is considered a 'good thing' that data is stored in a format that can be edited by hand. Of course we could have stuffed it all in a database or stored it as xml.. would this have been more 2006. anything that supports edit-though-the-web and does the final composition by composing HTML information sets would be more 2006. the easiest way to get there would be to use a MoinMoin instance to maintain the content, and a separate renderer to generate static pages for the main site (possibly using Cheetah or Kid as templateanguages). It would be apparent to you if you'd read around (even within this list) that the website is ultimately intended to have 'through the web' editing tools. You'd also know that one of the biggest acheivements so far is the separation of template from data from content so that 'information sets' actually exist in the first place. This also means that when someone designs a better template (as they may well do) it can be easily changed in the future. We also don't really want to have a proliferation of text formats and as a lot of the website is already written using restructured text, this is the format thats been recommended. A wiki is not a website and to try to shoehorn a wiki into a content management system is not a good final goal. We are adding facilities to use the wiki to manage some pages in near future as part of migration. However, the priority was to do certain things first. 1) Separate content from data from presentation is as complete a way as possible (for which nevow templates, which contain no programmatic componenets are suitable). 2) Ensure that the system is usable using basic text editing tools 3) Build the website using the latest techniques ensuring accessibility and usability. The site is XHTML and uses CSS for layout. It also offers legacy style sheets for netscape and has been tested in speech readers and text browsers. how quaint.. 4) Needed someone to actually do something The last item seems to be the one that has hit the most hurdles. As I remember you were a member of the marketing list and have had many opportunities to contribute constructively at planning time. If you could choose to be constructive in either offering useful changes that would make sense at this point in time or offereing to provide help that would be greatly appreciated. I'm afraid I won't be able to respond at length to any more posts.. There is still a lot of work to be done to get the website live. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Fredrik Lundh wrote: Steve Holden wrote: This critique is all very well, but it tends to rely rather heavily on the words I think. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but please don't think that this new design was created on a whim. you keep saying that, but whenever the analysis that led up to the suggested approach (which is broken in multiple ways) was made, it wasn't very recently. what makes you so sure that what was perceived as correct among a small group of self-selected python marketers in 2002-2003 is still the best way to handle Python's most valuable web asset ? We're not but they were the only people that were bothered to do anything.. If I remember, you were one of the people that had an opportunity to contribute but didn't... As for self selected, anybody was free to join and help and it was even posted to the mailing list and mentioned on numerous blogs. How about designing a website and showing us what you think would be a good idea? Or suggesting some way of managing all of the content and building the system. Or taking a screenshot of what is there and modifying it to show how you would like it changed. You are coming across has having a chip on your shoulder about something but you are not being clear exactly what it is? Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Fredrik Lundh wrote: Steve Holden wrote As you indicated, there are other priorities just at the moment. you're complaining about the lack of manpower, and still think that lowering the threshold for contributions is not a priority ? at this point, this should be your *only* priority. If you want to contribute, then do so.. If we had more people offering to contribute then this would be a priority. However despite trying to get people to contribute for over two years, I still ended up doing pretty much everything myself. And despite continued calls for people to help and offers of optimising the install process and writing additional documentation if they wanted to, we've only had four offers of help, of which only myself, Steve Holden and Andrew Kuchling have been doing anything significant. It would be loveley to have a large team of volunteers producing a consensus on approach to the website build. It would also be greate to have lots of people to put the effort into it. I think the same can be said for any open source project. However, just like open source projects, you have to choose based more on who is willing to do anything than on who is offering the ideal solution. (there are normally a lot more of the latter than of the former) I mean, getting this from a long-time python contributor that decided to help out My first attempt ended almost immediately. Too much software to download and install for anything like casual use. should be a rather strong indicator that the project isn't on the right track. I think the follow on post saying maybe I misread the directions and the fact that you can edit/contribute content without having to use the full build tool should be noted (you can use a text editor if you like... how 1976). The project is on the right track as it's the only track that anybody was bothered to lay. (and it sure isn't the only indicator; I still claim that the analysis is flawed, and that the www.python.org front-page asset shouldn't be reserved for a target audience that doesn't exist. but that's a separate problem; if you solve the threshold problem, we can deal with that later. if you don't, we might get stuck with the new design for as long as we've had the old one). I don't think the front page is reserved for an audience that doesn't exist. The front page is trying to serve many purposes for many audiences. If you had read the documents that had been available online during the extensive initial discussions, you would know what the estimated split in the audience was and also know why the balance of content on the home page is the way it is. The 'threshold problem' I think you are talking about (it would help if you could be more specific about what a 'threshold problem' really is) is more relevant to managing content than design and templating. Once the new documentation site is up and running, that is :-) that's an interesting comparision: it took me about 30 minutes to convert 10+ megabytes of reference material into a usable (X)HTML infoset (that is, with isolated content and structural information derived from the source material), and a few hours to get old source-new source-render tool- chain to a state where most conversion bugs turns out to be typos in the original documents (aka the 80% of the remaining 20% level). if converting the old content is and has been the biggest problem in the beta.python.org project, it seems to me as if you might not be doing things in the easiest possible way... Good and congratulations, it shows that the source code is well formatted/consistent - I wish the rest of the website html/data were so. If you are suggesting that your skills can do this with the rest of the site content then please, please help!! In fact I will ask you now, publicly, if you are willing to offer your services to help convert the documentation and exsiting content over to the new website? If you are then your services will be greatly appreciated and I'm sure we can take the discussion of the balance of the home page and future web based management of the content elsewhere and invite anyone who wishes to participate to join us. We can then post our conclusions once we've reached some consensus. If we can get the rest of the content (which doesn't include fancy pictures) over to the new site then we'll have a great foundation for making further additions and I'd really like a few more people to help get us there. I really can't afford a lot of time to discuss issues that have already been discussed far too many times. If we can get down to specifics of what you are offering and what you expect other people to do to help you, then we should be able to keep conversations a lot shorter. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Fredrik Lundh wrote: Good and congratulations, it shows that the source code is well formatted/consistent - I wish the rest of the website html/data were so. If you are suggesting that your skills can do this with the rest of the site content then please, please help!! In fact I will ask you now, publicly, if you are willing to offer your services to help convert the documentation and exsiting content over to the new website? to what target environment? a wiki? sure. the current homebrewn solution? probably not; way too much new technology to learn, and absolutely nothing that I'm likely to end up using in any other context. OK... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Shalabh Chaturvedi wrote: Hm. Am I the only one not particularly impressed? Sure the front page is 'slick' but a few clicks reveal a fairly shallow facade of marketing material, with no real content. In general gives the impression of 'phony' company trying to make a big impression. Most good non-tech managers are very wary of such organizations/companies. Well apart from the front page and a couple of pages providing content specific to different types of usersm the whole site is the same as it was before. Do you have a problem with marketing python or with the content of the python site? Could you expand on why you think the beta site looks 'phony'? My gripes with the whole thing: 1. Learn why.., Learn why.., Learn more..? Unless each one takes you directly to a great success story, these should be removed. These will link directly to success stories. 2. There is no (published) Python success story for Google. So link to google.com looks phony. What does 'Google written in Python' mean anyway? The google.com server is Python? One backend script is in Python? Without more information, this just seems likes a shameless attempt to create credibility. (Sure I know Google uses Python extensively, but I'm not the one who needs to be sold on Python). Python has been an important part of Google since the beginning, and remains so as the system grows and evolves. Today dozens of Google engineers use Python, and we're looking for more people with skills in this language. said Peter Norvig, director of search quality at Google, Inc. thats what it says on the old site right at the top of the page... 3. What is PyXP? Windows XP? Extreme Programming? Again, there is nothing underneath. Where is the NASA success story? That particular graphic will probably be updated. The Nasa success story is at http://www.python.org/Quotes.html 4. I have a lot of respect for GvR, but there ought to be more advertising of the fact that the language is not supported by just one person. There is an great dev team behind it and a stable PSF organization. Anyone reading 'developed by one person' is not left with the fuzzy feeling of a mature, well-supported product that is here to stay. So you think we should add some copy that creates a more positive impression of python? Thanks for your suggestion to rewrite the copy regarding the team behind python. Could you come up with some alternative for this? 5. A 'more..' link under Written in Python is sorely missing. It appears only 5-6 apps are written in Python. Where is a link to the cheese shop? Yep... at the moment content is being migrated across. If you want to add your assistance it would be of great benefit. Managers are looking for maturity, stability, support and unique strengths, not coolness or flashy sites (though presentation definitely helps). Could you tell me what about the site makes you think it looks 'cool' or 'flashy'? Hopefully most of these will get fixed as people 'convert' the site and fill in content. I would urge people to do some 'user' testing - get persons not very familiar with Python and get their honest opinion on the site. We have done... The feedback was that some pictures would help engage people who view the website for the first time. This was especially true of non-programmers who may be assessing python as part of a business decition (who will probably not get further than the home page). Most developers tended to want to jump straight into bookmarked parts of the site or just check the updated news. People wanting to learn about python would try to find a 'for beginners' link (hence the prominence of this). Currently, it is more important to get existing copy across than create the few new pages that are needed to support the home page. If we had more volunteers then we could write this new content sooner. A summary of questions whose answers may help us: Do you have a problem with the way we are trying to 'market' python? Which content in particular do you have an objection to? Could you expand on why you think the beta site looks 'phony'? Could you tell me what about the site makes you think it looks 'cool' or 'flashy'? Could you come up with some alternative for the intro copy about python? Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Tim N. van der Leeuw wrote: Shalabh, You've managed very well to express the same things I feel about the new Python website. What I especially dislike about the new website are the flashy pictures on the front-page with no content and no purpose -- purely boasting but nothing to back up your claims. Thats because the content hasn't been written yet. We're concentrating on getting the existing copy over first. (I wouldn't mind some sleek pictures there if they weren't desperatly trying to advertise success-stories but instead would link to real content!) I do like to overall look-and-feel of the beta site but I hope the bad bits get fixed before launch! Can you give me a list of bad bits to fix (or you could add them to the trac site at psf.pollenation.net) Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Roel Schroeven wrote: Tim N. van der Leeuw schreef: Shalabh, You've managed very well to express the same things I feel about the new Python website. FWIW, I don't like the new site at all. It tries to look slick (but fails to do so in my opinion), and buries the useful information in all kinds of misplaced eye candy. In fact I like the old one better: short, clear and to the point. Can you make some specific comments about which 'eye candy' that you find objectionable and which parts of the navigation structure you find confusing? Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Tim N. van der Leeuw wrote: Steve, My apologies if this apppeared to be 'slagging'. I was trying to give some feedback but I do realize that I don't have anything better to offer yet to replace the pictures I dislike. Perhaps I should have withheld my criticisms until I could offer an alternative. (Still thinking about what could be there instead of those 3 pictures. But I'd like there to be some actual real Python content, or links to events from the Python Events Calender; or perhaps links to large python projects like Zope -- something that links to the major parts of Python. Perhaps 1 picture that links to Python Web Development including things like Zope, Django, etc; another picture that links to a page giving overview of major IDEs for Python; and 3d picture that links to page with Python Event calender... Something along those lines. But I don't have any graphics for you.) That sounds fine.. I think having a link to a high profile user of python would be very useful though. I agree the XP link is a bit shite. Hopefully we'd get the photos and links to success stories/events/software changing every now and again.. how about 1) High profile user of Python 2) Link to upcoming python event 3) Link to web development uses of python the only problem is 1) people will argue over which user of python to put up 2) This will probably just be pycon and europython.. which is no bad thing.. until we get more than two conferences at similar times.. which one should we show? 3) python isn't just about web development.. Suffice it to say we'll have some content and the example images will change every now and again. btw do you have a problem with using nasa or astrazeneca as example high profile users? Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Leeuw van der, Tim wrote: I think that in general, I don't like the fact that links to high-profile users are featured so prominently. That row of pictures there looks good to me 'as such' but linking there to 'success stories' feels, dunno, perhaps a bit cheesy to me. (That might be just my dutch upbringing) I would certainly want to see such links somewhere on the front page, just not so prominently. Possibly so... however in my experience, selling python to people is made a lot easier by being able to say 'look these guys are using it'. This may not help sell it to programmers, but as a businessman trying to sell my programming services, it's exceptionally important. btw do you have a problem with using nasa or astrazeneca as example high profile users? As I said, I don't like them. We're not a commercial company trying to promote itself to potential buyers. But that's too a large degree a matter of taste. Well I'd have to disagree with yout on one point.. 'We' may not be a commercial company (when you talk about python as a singular unit) but as python developers, we should be in the process of trying to 'sell' python wherever we can. Because we aren't a commercial company, our only 'sales' channels are the website and the developers/consultants that use python. (I'm talking about selling in the terms of 'promoting' or trying to persuade someone that using python is a good thing). I do actually think, though, that if the Python website *is* going to feature such big names with such prominence, some sort of approval from these organizations should be requested? That they don't mind being used a a Python reference story? The approval is already there (see pythonology success stories). About what could be there... Link to the even calender, or recent/upcoming event.. That is one to stay, I think. I think it would be good to have a link there too development environments that can be used for Python: editors, debuggers, IDEs / IDE extenstions, etc It's difficult to summarise this in a single image. The XP image was intended as a 'catch all' for the development environment. A different image and title would probably achieve better results but coming up with one or two words to sumarise that list is quite difficult. A third item could perhaps be a link to the Python Package Index -- another thing that Python developers are likely to need. The home page isn't intended to target existing python users.. and the home page photos are mostly targetted at the sort of people that respond well to photos. It's a dilemma that the home page has to serve two masters, however if we have a 'developer home page' which can be dedicated to development issues, news, planetpython links, package libraries etc, we would have a single page that developers could bookmark. The only alternative was to create a separate 'marketing python' website but it would just get ignored, especially by the people we really need to see the 'marketing' content. These things are, of course, rather developer-centered (well, Python-user centered...) Being a software developer that uses Python, I wouldn't really know what else to put there ;-) But many people might have other things they wish to put in the centre of atte Yep, Thats probably why a dedicated page for developers would make more sense. Tim p.s. thanks for the comments btw.. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Tim Golden wrote: [Shalabh Chaturvedi] | Hm. Am I the only one not particularly impressed? Sure the | front page is | 'slick' but a few clicks reveal a fairly shallow facade of marketing | material, with no real content. In general gives the impression of | 'phony' company trying to make a big impression. Most good non-tech | managers are very wary of such organizations/companies. [... snip similar stuff highlighting the relative lightweightness of the content ...] Ummm. I might have missed the point, and certainly what I'm about to say is based on no more than my reading between the lines of Steve's original announcement, but... I see the current beta site as a layout/display/look-and-feel beta, *not* a content beta, at least no more than is absolutely necessary to support the look-and-feel. Hi Tim, Yep, the most effort has gone into deciding what level of change is really necessary . Which is not a lot. The navigation has been rearranged very slightly so that there is a consistent left hand navigation throughout the site. The layout of the site has been changed from table based to css based. The templates should be valid xhtml. etc. As I've mentioned, new content needs writing and some content needs updating but the biggest job is migrating the old content over. We'd also like to get content from the wiki into the website (so it can be mirrored). Now I might be wrong, in which case your comments are pretty much justified. But it looks to me as though most of the content was banged in a year or so ago (or more, maybe) to give a this-kind-of-blurb feel, some or all of which would be replaced with current and agreed blurb before the thing went live. Most of the content that is currently on beta.python.org was added in the last three months. Most of the top level content is about 9 months old. You might argue that the beta shouldn't have been unveiled without suitable text etc. But I would say: well done to the people who've made the effort and put the beta together. It's been mentioned that the whole thing is downloadable and open to contributions, so maybe that's the way forward for you: make or implement your suggestions and send them back to the maintainers. If we never put it up as a beta, I would have had to finish the whole job on my own (which is a bit tough whilst trying to run my own company, although the psf have helped out in this). I'm looking forward to getting the current content over and then helping contribute to the content more... Thanks for the comments.. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
JW wrote: Tim the Taller (I presume he's taller; he's Dutch) and the other critics fail to realize is that no one reads content. I'm assured that in print ads the only content anyone reads is in picture captions, and you damn well better make sure your message is conveyed there. Any other content only wastes space. I see no reason to think that a web page should be designed using any other assumption. If anything, Tim the Shorter (I presume he's shorter; he's not Dutch) has too much content and too few images. The beta page is a great improvement over the current content-intensive page. Yep, unfortunately the majority of people consider 'looks' important (even when they say they think they don't) and judge a page before they've read a single word. A recent article concluded that it can sometimes take less than a tenth of a second for form a lasting opinion. http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/01/17/canada.websites.reut/index.html But obviously the site has also got to contain relevant content and be attractive to the majority of developers also. I recommend David Ogilvy's Ogilvy on Advertising for a enthusiastic but somewhat cynical view of the subject. It is a very old book, but nothing about human nature has changed since it was written. It's a very good book and still as relevant today as ever (I wish I had my original copy.. altough it's still in print in multiple versions.) Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
JW wrote: On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 22:19:37 +, Tim Parkin wrote: http://pyyaml.org/downloads/masterhtml/ Feedback appreciated ... Many thanks Again, with FF 1.0.7 (on FC4 Linux BTW), the left column no longer violates the right. However, ViewPage Stylelarge text makes the button annotation smaller than ViewPage StyleBasic Page Style. Please understand, web programming is not my main axe. I'm in no way asserting my observations are meaningful ;). Yep... I haven't tweaked that one yet :-) good to know it's not breaking though, many thanks for the feedback. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Tim Chase wrote: The nav styles have crept back in sync with the rest of the site.. ;-) can you check again and tell me if it looks ok (and if not get me another screenie?) Sorry it took so long to get back to you. It looked fine from home, but the originals were snapped back at work (where my configuration is diff.) With the regular style, they don't overlap, but they look cramped: http://tim.thechases.com/pythonbeta/pythonbeta3moz.gif With the large text page style, the original problem returns: http://tim.thechases.com/pythonbeta/pythonbeta3mozLP.gif Both shots are from Mozilla Suite 1.7, but they look about the same in FF. Thanks Tim!! If it works with the regular styles then we're onto a winner (I'd not changed the large styles one... one step at a time at the moment). It seems to be a font-size issue. When I crank the font rather small (using ctrl+plus and ctrl+minus), the overlap becomes pretty bad. When I crank the font-size up larger, it seems to make the problem go away (except for the fact I end up with fonts that can be read across the room ;) This symptom is worse in FF than in MozSuite, though I might not have fonts set the same way (one may have a minimum-allowed font size, while the other may not, or something like that). Yeah, the min font size is causing the problems.. the basefont size of the body is larger than the basefont size of the menu. Hence the min font size affects the menu first (which means they don't match). I'll post again when I've updated the main site. Cheers!! Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Martin Maney wrote: Nah, it's very simple, if you can let go of the wrong-headed notion that the web is just like print media. Of course that means you're unlikely to win any design awards, or even get a lot of commecnts about how spiffy your web site looks, because all the design geeks will judge you by the inapproriate standards of print media. You may, however, get pats on the back from people who actually use the site, and appreciate a readable, logical layout far more than design school gloss (and fonts too small to be easily read by many; no, Aahz, IMO your solution throws out far too much along with the bath water, though I have to agree that the font size problem vanishes if one uses a text-mode browser grin). Fortunately, what you are asking for is to be provided just the plain text information with sufficient semantic markup to indicate logical groupings of text such as headers, lists, etc. You've got that with the new website, just disable your styles sheet. From a quick look, the beta appears to commit the same error as every design (as opposed to usability) driven web site in the world: it makes the running text smaller than the user's default. It's as if they care more about how it looks than whether I can read it (as far as I can tell, that's exactly the case, though it may just be that few are willing to admit that the designs that they've learned to make, and that do work well in high-resolution print, just suck on the web where a high resolution screen is coarser than a bad fax. bad artists, the lot of them, who persist in ignoring the characteristics of the medium they're working in). Absolute nonsense, would you prefer we take our cue from. Just for your information, I've never worked in print design in my life. People tend to have a 'preferred' font size for working in. This is normally smaller than the standard font that is delivered on the standard system running a standard browser. For this vast majority, it aids usability for them to have a smaller than normal body font. Possibly in an ideal world, all websites would not set a body copy font size and it would make sense for each user to pick the one that most suited them. Unfortunatley, if we do that, the majority of sites break so whatever we do is a *compromise*. I'd like to live in the world where we don't have to do this. As a matter of interest are you a professional design, web architect, empassioned ameuter web designer or just an observer making casual comments? (it's just that if you're a professional or empassioned amateur, I'd like to know how you managed to deal with the same balance and which group of users you would choose to cater for more) It's otherwise nice, and I didn't see any problems with overlapping texts (in Firefox, etc.) at any halfway reasonable window size, but perhaps that was corrected already. The name of the city in Sweden is mangled in every encoding I've tried - the headline is proper UTF-8, but the mention in the paragraph is weird. Yep.. it's just a double encoding problem.. the source was iso8859-1 and it got reprocessed as utf8. And thanks for the feedback.. it all gets listened to. (btw, we're also adding supplementary style sheets for different purposes - one for a larger text size for instance - a beta of the large text style on is available on the beta site at the moment, it still needs a couple of tweaks with the menu) Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: JW wrote: On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:00:05 -0600, Tim Chase wrote: http://tim.thechases.com/pythonbeta/pythonbeta.html Very strange. With FF 1.0.7, I can just get the buttons to violate the next column if I ViewPage StyleLarge Text, but I wouldn't have noticed it unless Tim had pointed it out. Tim's gifs are much worse than what I see. WIth ViewPage StyleBasic Page Style, it looks really good. Mine looks like Tim's gifs, with Basic Page Style. Hi, I've got an old copy of the html and tried to fix the general problem. It's currently on another website http://pyyaml.org/downloads/masterhtml/ Feedback appreciated (it's just the left hand nav width I'm concerned about, all the other html and some styles are probably old). I've tried this with 'min font size' adjustments and it doesn't seem to break. If I don't get any bad feedback I'll roll the changes out. Many thanks Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Fuzzyman wrote: Tim Parkin wrote: [snip..] Hi Fuzzyman, Thanks for the feedback and volunteering to contribue... The list of already built sections is not really up to date but I have added a few tickets to the trac on some sections of content that need working on. If Great - can you provide a URL please ? I had a browse through the tickets, and dumb old me couldn';t find them. I'd be well pleased to be able to help. Thanks Fuzzyman http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/index.shtml Have a look at the tockets on http://psf.pollenation.net there are a couple of content tickets.. if you put your name down (or just add a comment that you are working on them) then there won't be a problem. There are only a couple of people working on the content at the moment so the more the merrier.. email me when you fancy doing something and I'll try to make myself available on IRC or something similar. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Mike Meyer wrote: Stefan Rank [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Very nice! Just wanted to note that the content area and the menu area overlap (leaving some content unreadable) in Opera 8.51 / WinXP Ditto for Opera 8.51 / OSX, and for Safari. It's a problem with not handling users who need large fonts. I recreated it in Mozilla by changing the minimum font size setting from None to 20 (just a value I chose at random). I use Opera and Safari on a day-to-day basis, and probably configured them appropriately for my aging eyes. Yep... The problem at the moment is that we're trying to (correctly IMO) use relative font sizing for both fonts and layout.. The problem I'm hitting is that layout widths/heights are based on the basefont size. So if my basefont size 89% and I've size my fonts at 84%, the fonts get affected by the applied minimum font before the layout, causing the menu items to expand before the actual menu container. There is a fix for this problem already as it also exhibits itself on the gecko platform (hopefully that will be up on beta. in the next few days) Of course, this is typical on the web: Works in IE really means works in IE in the configurations we tested it for, and usually means works in our favorite configuration. Actually the site has been tested on every browser listed on http://www.browsercam.com/Features.aspx and a few extras... Whilst it doesn't work on ie4 (although it is readable) it does work on netscape 4.x (albeit with a much simpler css layout dedicated for just this browser) and it has also been optimised to work in lynx/links and has been partially tested in some speech readers.. However, since this testing there has been some changes made and instead of continually testing across all configurations, we're planning on running another browser check soon. In particular, creating a good-looking design that remains readable in all possible browser configurations is impossible. Getting one that is readable in all reasonable browser configurations is hard, unless you make your definition of reasonable very narrow. Not quite impossible but I agree it's pretty hard, especially using css for layout and trying to follow w3c guidelines (e.g. the relative font sizing thing)... However our aim is to make the site readable in all browsers in the majority of normal configurations. Thanks for the feedback.. Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
rzed wrote: So what's the character encoding? I haven't found (WinXP Firefox) that displays that city in Sweden without a paragraph symbol or worse. It's going to be utf8 hopefully but we're just fighting with conversions from existing content which I'd wrongly assumed was already iso8859-1 Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: New Python.org website ?
Fuzzyman wrote: Steve Holden wrote: Fuzzyman wrote: Now that is a very cool site. I'm not very good with HTML - but can write content... I might see if there is something I can do. All the best, Fuzzyman http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/index.shtml (and yes I do get referrals from these links...) Please note that one major rationale behind the new design is precisely becuase relatively few people *are* good with HTML. Consequently Tim Parkin, the principal designer of the new architecture, has gone to great lengths to design a scheme that allows most of the authoring to be done in REstructured Text. It's quite an legenat design, and if all you want to do is edit content rather than change layout it's *very* easy to use. Climb aboard! Seriously though... I've downloaded the whole shooting match. It's not *obvious* from trac what needs doing or who's working on what (although I have yet to trawl through the SVN checkout). I'd hate to start working on something, only to discover someone else was already doing it... All the best, Fuzzyman Hi Fuzzyman, Thanks for the feedback and volunteering to contribue... The list of already built sections is not really up to date but I have added a few tickets to the trac on some sections of content that need working on. If you want to add a comment to one of these or assign yourself to a ticket please help yourself. I'm on hand most of the time to help with teething problems etc. Also, beta.python.org has been configured to rebuild itself once content has been checked in. If you haven't got an svn account and want to contribute, you can send it to me and I'll add it for your. Cheers Tim Parkin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Web Framework Reviews
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
One remark regarding stan. For me it is inconceivable that one would
build (and debug) any complicated webpage as stan does it, one element
at a time:
docFactory = loaders.stan(
t.html[t.head[t.title[Session example]],
t.body[display_session]]
)
The pages that I have to build invariably contain multiple nested html
tables etc. I shudder to think that I would ever have to build them
like that. I know you have an inverse ZPT like templates those are a
lot friendlier on the eyes. For someone who is does not know what Nevow
is seeing an example of Stan is very scary because IMO it does not
scale at all. This again is just an opinion.
Firstly, I don't know of anyone who has built whole sites out of stan
(it's not what it was created for). Although if built in a modular
fashion I don't see why this would have problems 'scaling' or would be
more difficult to visualise than a the equivalent tag soup html.
Also it depends on what you mean by scale. We built a site for one of
the biggest rugby sites in the world (over 300 requests per second).
This uses a combination of stan and xhtml templates. Before we rebuilt
the site using CSS layout (which you really should be looking at using
to avoid the multiple nested tables you mention - which I presume are
layout related) we were using client supplied html which was nested more
than 10 levels deep.
Most of this we were able to leave in the html and allow the client to
manage via ftp. The bits that were dynamic were 'templated up' by
putting slots and renderers. Nevow avoids any programmatic logic in the
templates which means that all logic is directly in your python code
(avoiding one of templating languages biggest faults - that of
implementing *another* language just for templates).
Templates now become a repository of html which is marked up with insert
points, replacement points, patterns to reuse, etc. Sometimes you need
to generate some dynamic html that won't easily and clearly fit into
this 'extract patterns, replace sections, etc' pattern. When this
happens you can either include bits of html as strings (yeuch!) *or* use
stan.
Stan enables you to create small sections of dynamic html without
recourse to templating languages or marking up tiny fragments of html
for re-use.
This section of code from the nevow forms library (this is a widget for
file uploads).
if name:
if self.preview == 'image':
yield T.p[value,T.img(src=self.fileHandler.getUrlForFile(value))]
else:
yield T.p[value]
else:
yield T.p[T.strong['nothing uploaded']]
yield T.input(name=namer('value'),value=value,type='hidden')
yield T.input(name=key, id=keytocssid(ctx.key),type='file')
In other systems, this would have to be part of the template (via inline
python or some alternative programming syntax), marked up as html in
string elements (liable to validation errors and difficult to manage) or
small fragments of html would have to be marked up as patterns and then
manipulated in some fashion. The last is possible using nevow and the
manipulation can be done directly on the produced html -- or via stan!!
(think of manipulating a dom'ish like object).
Tim Parkin
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Textual markup languages (was Re: What YAML engine do you use?)
On Sun, 2005-01-23 at 13:41 +0100, Fredrik Lundh wrote: Alan Kennedy wrote: If I can't find such a markup language, then I might instead end up using a WYSIWYG editing component that gives the user a GUI and generates (x)html. htmlArea: http://www.htmlarea.com/ Editlet: http://www.editlet.com/ But I'd prefer a markup solution. some of these are amazingly usable. have you asked your users what they prefer? (or maybe you are your user? ;-) Most users prefer to write documents in word and then paste them into textareas. Not surprisingly means no semantic content, little chance of restyling, horrible encoding problems and far too long spent on the phone trying to explain why it's not a good idea. Giving users a wysiwyg textarea creates the problems that users start to spend time trying to create a 'styled' document, inevitably sacrificing semantics (many is the user that has applied a header style to make things bold or a quote sytle to indent a paragraph). Using text based layouts reinforces the perception that you aren't creating a styled document and that the semantic structure is important. People who have used non-wysiwyg editors have found that their initial reticence has been quickly overtaken by their joy at not having to fight with 'style' and the reassurance that their content is now 'redesign proof'. Tim Parkin http://www.pollenation.net -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What YAML engine do you use?
Doug Holton wrote: That is exactly why YAML can be improved. But XML proves that getting it right for developers has little to do with getting it right for users (or for saving bandwidth). What's right for developers is what requires the least amount of work. The problem is, that's what is right for end-users, too. Having spent some time with YAML and it's implementations (at least pyyaml and the ruby/python versions of syck), I thought I should comment. The only problems with syck we've encountered have been to do with the python wrapper rather than syck itself. Syck seems to be used widely without problems within the Ruby community and if anybody has evidence of issues with it I'd really like to know about them. PyYAML is a little inactive and doesn't conform to the spec in many ways and, as such, we prefer the syck implementation. In my opinion there have been some bad decisions made whilst creating YAML, but for me they are acceptable given the advantages of a data format that is simple to read and write. Perhaps judging the utility of a project on it's documentation is one of the problems, as most people who have 'just used it' seem to be happy enough. These people include non-technical clients of ours who manage some of their websites by editing YAML files directly. That said, I don't think it would be the best way to enter data for a life support machine, but I wouldn't like to do that with XML either ;-) One thing that should be pointed out is that there are no parsers available that are built directly on the YAML pseudo BNF. Such work is in progress in two different forms but don't expect anything soon. As I understand it, Syck has been built to pass tests rather than conform to a constantly changing BNF and it seems to have few warts. Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
