Mailing List Archive

Marco Mariani <m.mariani@imola.nettuno.it> writes:

-> I'm new to python - new and committed, and not "committed" as in MS speak.
-> I've known I'm here to stay since day 1. The only thing about Python I wish
-> would be better is Mark's book - I would settle for something easier to
-> find things in, I use the index too often. But, sure, I would have
-> bought it had it been printed pure ASCII on a dot matrix printer.

I recently finished reading the Python tutorial and am now working on
the library reference. I am very impressed with the online
documentaton that came with the Python that SuSE 6.0 included
(1.5.1).

It looks to be a very nice, easy language. I am considering using it
as an extension/scripting language for a project I am designing. This
is after eliminating Perl, ECMAScript, and ANSI Common Lisp.

Did this thread start out as a troll? I rather get the impression
that Python will be a language that will enjoy a growing user base as
more people become aware of it. I'll take it over VBScript any day.
Just don't take my Perl away :-).

--
David Steuber
http://www.david-steuber.com

s/trashcan/david/ to reply by mail
If you don't, I won't see it.

If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
-- Graham Summer

> | I never understood how people can actually read programming books.
> | A very basic tutorial can teach the syntax, and after that all you
> | need is a library reference and a news group...
>
> As long as the language is relatively similar to the ones you already
> know this approach works fine. But if you only know, say, Algol-like
> languages and C, try learning Lisp, Standard ML or BETA from a very
> basic tutorial. I would not recommend it. :)

Smile. Maybe that's my problem... I know Scheme and Red Code as well...

> --Lars M.

--
Evan ~ThunderFoot~ Gibson ~ nihil mutatem, omni deletum ~
May the machines watch over you with loving grace.

On Wed, 31 Mar 1999 16:45:04 GMT,
Christian Tismer, in the persona of <tismer@appliedbiometrics.com>,
brought forth the following words...:

>
>
>aaron_watters@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>>
>> > > K&R is one of the best programming books I have read. A Python equivalent
>> > > would be nice.
>>
>> I think the Python equivalent are Guido's tutorial and reference
>> manual. He did such a good job that all other books had to add
>> a lot more stuff in order to not be totally redundant. Note that
>> there is no K&R equivalent of the library ref unless you consider
>> Unix man pages [3].
>>
>> Sorry you can't get them in bound form and put them on your shelf.
>> -- Aaron Watters
>
>Well, isn't that an idea?
>If somebody (which needn't be Guido himself) just takes
>the standard documentation, does some touch-up of the layout,
>and turns it into a printable book?
>
>The "GvR Official Python Library and Reference Book" would appear
>with every new release of Python. I could imagine this would
>sell good, for Guido and the publisher.
>At least I would love to have that on my desk, hard-covered
>and bound, not just in electronic form or printed by myself.
>
>ciao - chris

I used mpage to condense them down to 2 pages per 8x11 sheet, and
then printed odd/even, cycled the paper throgh the laser printer twice,
bound them with those little springy plastic spiral things, and
viola, a 5x8, Reference with the tutorial, the api, &etc all at once.
Took something a little over 100 pages. I would have printed 4 to a page
but I couldn't figure how to make mpage do the registering properly for
2 stage double sided printing.

--
Jim Richardson
www.eskimo.com/~warlock
All hail Eris
"Linux, because a cpu is a terrible thing to waste."

Sidebar: you have to be careful with amazon's numbers,
because they tend to change too fast to be very useful.
I've seen Programming Python go from #500 to #5000 in
a day or two; Learning Python changes just as fast (in
fact, it was ranked #409 as I wrote this).

Their numbers are probably okay as a quick-and-dirty
estimate; but for a better picture, you'd have to take
an average over a long period of time, and then take
into consideration that their numbers are skewed towards
online shopper's interests. Publishers get much more
useful sales information from the big distributors.

OTOH, I wouldn't mind seeing Python in the top 100 ;-).

--Mark Lutz (http://rmi.net/~lutz)


Jeremy Hylton wrote in message
<14085.18282.936883.727575@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>...
>This is really useless information, but I guess I along with most
>other people are fascinated by top ten lists and movie grosses and
>... Amazon.com sales ranks.
>
>Title Amazon.com Sales Rank
>Learning Python 1,570
>Programming Python 1,685
>Python : Pocket Reference 3,218
>Internet Programming With Python 8,720
>Mastering Regular Expressions 931
>Programming Perl, 2nd ed. 81
>Perl Cookbook 136
>The C Programming Language 478
>The C++ Programming Language 1,003
>Tcl and the Tk Toolkit 3,362
>
>Learning Python seems to be selling well for a book that hasn't been
>shipped. :-)

Jim Richardson wrote:

[about printed Python docs]

> I used mpage to condense them down to 2 pages per 8x11 sheet, and
> then printed odd/even, cycled the paper throgh the laser printer twice,
> bound them with those little springy plastic spiral things, and
> viola, a 5x8, Reference with the tutorial, the api, &etc all at once.
> Took something a little over 100 pages. I would have printed 4 to a page
> but I couldn't figure how to make mpage do the registering properly for
> 2 stage double sided printing.

Well, not bad. :-)
4 to a page would be a mess for my eyes, BTW.

I printed the manuals once when 1.4 was out, then never again.
But I would buy it as a book if it were available.
Therefore, I decided to take this as a toy project,
and to turn this all into a real book, with Framemaker.
I'm currently seeking for a publisher who wants it,
and I will prepare a book with the Python docs around
July (being occupied before).
I hope that this will be already for Python 1.6.

cheers - chris

--
Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:tismer@appliedbiometrics.com>
Applied Biometrics GmbH : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101 : *Starship* http://starship.python.net
10553 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
PGP Fingerprint E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15 D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF
we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home

On 4 Apr 1999 17:45:54 GMT, Jim Richardson <warlock@eskimo.com> wrote:
> I would have printed 4 to a page
>but I couldn't figure how to make mpage do the registering properly for
>2 stage double sided printing.
Tried psnup or psbook?
Bernhard

On 01 Apr 1999 14:56:28 +0200, Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@ifi.uio.no> wrote:
>* Fredrik Lundh
>| He's not alone: according to an article I just read, anything that
>| is not written in SGML will disappear within 50 years.
>
>Fredrik, can you read your word processing documents from 1986 today?
>I can't. And yet SGML would present no problem today, at least not
>after 30 minutes of DSSSL hacking.

.dvi and text sources work just fine.

Bernhard

On 2 Apr 1999 05:17:59 GMT, Jonathon <jblake@eskimo.com> wrote:
> 5: O'Reilly is _not_ the only publisher of computer
> books. Find a publisher of either popular
> "easy" computer books, or one who likes niche
> markets. _An Idiot's Guide To Python_ would
> satisfy the first one.

You cannot teach idiots programming.
I refuse buying any idiot's or for dummies guide, because
what can a book be good for that treats you as a dummy or idiot?

Justmy 0.02 Euros
Bernhard

Hardly. Until about a year and a half ago, there were no mentions in
Dr. Dobb's Journal of Python (that I noticed). Since then, it has
appeared in several articles. Some non-obvious examples:

1998 Dec page 101 in article on XLink: references to resources includes
several documents, Visual Basic application, Java application, and two!
python items - Garshol's XPointer implementation
<http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/download/python/xml/xptr.html>
and Meginnson's (spelling correct?) Document Architecture processor.
(url given in DD incorrect or obsolete).

1999 Jan page 94 in article on Matlab: reference to three Matlab-like
languages - Octave, SciLab, and NumPy.

TJR

According to Jeremy Hylton <jeremy@cnri.reston.va.us>:
:This is really useless information, but I guess I along with most

:Title Amazon.com Sales Rank
:Learning Python 1,570
:Programming Python 1,685
:Python : Pocket Reference 3,218
:Internet Programming With Python 8,720
:Mastering Regular Expressions 931
:Programming Perl, 2nd ed. 81
:Perl Cookbook 136
:The C Programming Language 478
:The C++ Programming Language 1,003
:Tcl and the Tk Toolkit 3,362


Elsewhere in this thread there have been discussions regarding the fact
that it's been several years since the last major Python book was released.
However, notice that the C Programming Language book is in the top 500 and
it is quite a few years old! Same for the Tcl and the Tk Toolkit book -
that reflects Tcl 7.3 (5 or so yrs ago) and people are still buying it...
--
<URL: mailto:lvirden@cas.org> Quote: Saving the world before bedtime.
<*> O- <URL: http://www.purl.org/NET/lvirden/>
Unless explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting
should be construed as representing my employer's opinions.

>
> Elsewhere in this thread there have been discussions regarding the fact
> that it's been several years since the last major Python book was
released.

Now that you mentioned it, I remember hearing that someone was writeing
a Python TKinter book......what the hell ever happened to that?!?!


Tom

TM:
|> Elsewhere in this thread there have been discussions regarding the fact
|>that it's been several years since the last major Python book was
|>released.
|
|Now that you mentioned it, I remember hearing that someone was writeing
|a Python TKinter book......what the hell ever happened to that?!?!

I believe that was Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@pythonware.com>.

In shopping for Python books late last month, I happened upon his announced
plan to write a Tkinter book. So I slipped him an e-mail query asking how
the book was going and if he had an estimated timeframe (in case it was
close to market), but I haven't received a response. I assume he's just
busy like the rest of us.

Draft two of his Intro to Tkinter appeared on his pages in Feb:
http://www.pythonware.com/fredrik/tkdraft/

Randall

On 4 Apr 1999 17:45:54 GMT, warlock@eskimo.com (Jim Richardson) wrote:

If it can help (I use it to print almost everythings).

#!/bin/sh
case $1 in
# quarta e prima
f) psbook $2 | mpage -bA4 -o -2 -dp | psselect -o -r | lpr ;;
# seconda e terza
r) psbook $2 | mpage -bA4 -o -2 -dp | psselect -e | lpr ;;
# comando errato
*) cat << EOF
libretto (c) 1999 Salmaso Raffaele
usage: libretto f/r file.ps
f print even page
r print odd page

EOF
;;
esac

--
(o- T | Unix is simple and coherent , but it takes a genius to understand
//\ U | and appreciate its simplicity .
V_/_ X | Dennis Ritchie .
email: r.salmaso (at) flashnet.it | salmaso.raffaele (at) iname.com

| Now that you mentioned it, I remember hearing that someone was
| writeing a Python TKinter book......what the hell ever happened to
|that?!?!

I don't know about *that* one, but I can say there are two new Python
books on the way from Manning Publications.

Ken MacDonald's "The Quick Python Book" has been through its reviews and
has been revised. Right now it is in final technical review and once
complete the Publisher will begin production.

I reviewed the ms and can say that it will be a great book for
programmers new to Python. The first part illustrates the key features
of Python with some good examples. Then, it goes on to demonstrate how
to build meaningful applications, including Tkinter GUIs, Windows/COM
and interfacing Python and Java. You can get some more details at
http://www.manning.com.

I'm at various stages of completion of chapters for "Python and Tkinter
Programming", which has just completed a review of the partial
manuscript. This book is intended for experienced programmers, who
probably are getting to know Python pretty well (or have read "Quick
Python"!), and have a need to build applications or prototypes in Python
and Tkinter.

P+TkP starts with some introductions to Python and Tkinter to give
context and then documents Tkinter widgets and functions, using some
(hopefully) realistic examples. Creating many types of GUI's, front
panels and machines, interfacing TCP/IP, ODBC and CORBA, graphic design
and many other topics are illustrated with full examples, with detailed
explanation of the key points of the code. In fact, the
longer-than-usual examples are a key feature of the book; this is
intended to provide the reader with some concrete examples that might be
useful as templates for their own prototypes and applications.

As an appendix, there is a complete Tk to Tkinter mapping, intended to
allow Tcl/Tk programmers to make use of Tkinter (!) and to enable
Tkinter programmers to make better use of the Tk man pages. Also Pmw
widgets feature prominently in the examples.

So, Is Python dying?

... not a chance!

Randall Hopper wrote:

> I believe that was Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@pythonware.com>.
>
> In shopping for Python books late last month, I happened upon his announced
> plan to write a Tkinter book. So I slipped him an e-mail query asking how
> the book was going and if he had an estimated timeframe (in case it was
> close to market), but I haven't received a response. I assume he's just
> busy like the rest of us.

for what it's worth, fredrik has never replied to any of the mail i've
sent him.
your mileage may vary.

--
Garry Hodgson seven times down
garry@sage.att.com eight times up
Software Innovation Services
AT&T Labs - zen proverb

John Grayson wrote:

> I don't know about *that* one, but I can say there are two new Python
> books on the way from Manning Publications.
>
> Ken MacDonald's "The Quick Python Book" has been through its reviews and
> has been revised. Right now it is in final technical review and once
> complete the Publisher will begin production...
...
> I'm at various stages of completion of chapters for "Python and Tkinter
> Programming", which has just completed a review of the partial
> manuscript...

is there a timeline for either of these release yet?

--
Garry Hodgson seven times down
garry@sage.att.com eight times up
Software Innovation Services
AT&T Labs - zen proverb