I was recently asked to convert a few hundred images into PDF pages. A friend of mine draws comics and my brother wanted to be able to read them on a tablet. Alas, if you had a bunch of files named something like this:


'Jia_01.Jpg', 'Jia_02.Jpg', 'Jia_09.Jpg', 'Jia_10.Jpg', 'Jia_11.Jpg', 'Jia_101.Jpg'


the Android tablet would reorder them into something like this:


'Jia_01.Jpg', 'Jia_02.Jpg', 'Jia_09.Jpg', 'Jia_10.Jpg', 'Jia_101.Jpg', 'Jia_11.Jpg'


And it got pretty confusing the more files you had that were out of order. Sadly, even Python sorts files this way. I tried using the glob module on the directly and then sorting the result and got the exact same issue. So the first thing I had to do was find some kind of sorting algorithm that could sort them correctly. It should be noted that Windows 7 can sort the files correctly in its file system, even though Python cannot.

After a little searching on Google, I found the following script on StackOverflow:

import re
 
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
def sorted_nicely( l ):
    """
    Sort the given iterable in the way that humans expect.
    """
    convert = lambda text: int(text) if text.isdigit() else text
    alphanum_key = lambda key: [ convert(c) for c in re.split('([0-9]+)', key) ]
    return sorted(l, key = alphanum_key)

That worked perfectly! Now I just had to find a way to put each comic page on their own PDF page. Fortunately, the reportlab library makes this pretty easy to accomplish. You just need to iterate over the images and insert them one at a time onto a page. It’s easier to just look at the code, so let’s do that:

import glob
import os
import re
 
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Image, PageBreak
from reportlab.lib.units import inch
 
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
def sorted_nicely( l ):
    """
    # http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2669059/how-to-sort-alpha-numeric-set-in-python
 
    Sort the given iterable in the way that humans expect.
    """
    convert = lambda text: int(text) if text.isdigit() else text
    alphanum_key = lambda key: [ convert(c) for c in re.split('([0-9]+)', key) ]
    return sorted(l, key = alphanum_key)
 
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
def create_comic(fname, front_cover, back_cover, path):
    """"""
    filename = os.path.join(path, fname + ".pdf")
    doc = SimpleDocTemplate(filename,pagesize=letter,
                            rightMargin=72,leftMargin=72,
                            topMargin=72,bottomMargin=18)
    Story=[]
    width = 7.5*inch
    height = 9.5*inch
 
    pictures = sorted_nicely(glob.glob(path + "\\%s*" % fname))
 
    Story.append(Image(front_cover, width, height))
    Story.append(PageBreak())
 
    x = 0
    page_nums = {100:'%s_101-200.pdf', 200:'%s_201-300.pdf',
                 300:'%s_301-400.pdf', 400:'%s_401-500.pdf',
                 500:'%s_end.pdf'}
    for pic in pictures:
        parts = pic.split("\\")
        p = parts[-1].split("%s" % fname)
        page_num = int(p[-1].split(".")[0])
        print "page_num => ", page_num
 
        im = Image(pic, width, height)
        Story.append(im)
        Story.append(PageBreak())
 
        if page_num in page_nums.keys():
            print "%s created" % filename
            doc.build(Story)
            filename = os.path.join(path, page_nums[page_num] % fname)
            doc = SimpleDocTemplate(filename,
                                    pagesize=letter,
                                    rightMargin=72,leftMargin=72,
                                    topMargin=72,bottomMargin=18)
            Story=[]
        print pic
        x += 1
 
    Story.append(Image(back_cover, width, height))
    doc.build(Story)
    print "%s created" % filename
 
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
if __name__ == "__main__":
    path = r"C:\Users\Mike\Desktop\Sam's Comics"
    front_cover = os.path.join(path, "FrontCover.jpg")
    back_cover = os.path.join(path, "BackCover2.jpg")
    create_comic("Jia_", front_cover, back_cover, path)

Let’s break this down a bit. As usual, you have some necessary imports that are required for this code to work. You’ll note we also have that sorted_nicely function that we talked about earlier is in this code too. The main function is called create_comic and takes four arguments: fname, front_cover, back_cover, path. If you have used the reportlab toolkit before, then you’ll recognize the SimpleDocTemplate and the Story list as they’re straight out of the reportlab tutorial.

Anyway, you loop over the sorted pictures and add the image to the Story along with a PageBreak object. The reason there’s a conditional in the loop is because I discovered that if I tried to build the PDF with all 400+ images, I would run into a memory error. So I broke it up into a series of PDF documents that were 100 pages or less. At the end of the document, you have to call the doc object’s build method to actually create the PDF document.

Now you know how I ended up writing a whole slew of images into multiple PDF documents. Theoretically, you could use PyPdf to knit all the resulting PDFs together into one PDF, but I didn’t try it. You might end up with another memory error. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Source Code

• comic_maker.zip
• comic_maker.tar

Last Thursday (the 5th) I attended Pyowa, the local Iowa Python Users group I founded a few years ago. We had Scott Peterson from Principal Financial Group come and talk to us about Library Gadget, a cool Django-based website he created to track what library books his family has checked out. Now he has lots of users using his website. It not only tracks the books you have borrowed, but it’ll auto-renew them if it can and let you know if you’re books are overdue.

He spent most of his time talking about the backend stuff behind the website though. Such as why he chose Amazon Web Services, how he uses Puppet, Vagrant and Fabric to manage his server’s settings and back them up.

The second talk was done by myself and I spoke on my MediaLocker project, an open source wxPython application that is supposed to help you track your media library. Most of my time was spent telling the story behind the project and showing a demo. Then I took some questions.

Overall, I’d say that we had a really good meeting with 10 people showing up. Next month, on February 2nd, we’re bringing in the BIG guns though. We have Doug Hellman and Steve Holden scheduled to Skype in and talk to us.

Doug Hellman is the author of The Python Standard Library By Example, is a senior developer with Racemi, Inc., and communications director of the Python Software Foundation. He has programmed with Python since version 1.4, and has worked on multiple platforms in mapping, medical publishing, banking, and data center automation. Hellmann was previously columnist and editor-in-chief for Python Magazine and, since 2007, has blogged the popular Python Module of the Week

Steve Holden is chairman of the Python Software Foundation and author of Python Web Programming. He owns Python consulting business and does Python training.

Everyone likes retrospective articles. I’m not sure why, but lists just pull people in. Last year, my top ten list was pretty popular, so this year I’m going to do it again. This year I hit 247,901 visits and 345,452 page views over the course of the year compared with 137,727 visits and 213,814 page views last year.

1. A Simple Step-by-Step Reportlab Tutorial

with 16,378 page views, posted 03/08/2010

2. How to Send Email with Python with 11,459 page views, posted 05/14/2010
3. A cx_Freeze Tutorial – Build a Binary Series! with 9,735 page views, posted 08/12/2010
4. Python and Microsoft Office – Using PyWin32 with 9,336 page views, posted 07/16/2010
5. Another Step-by-Step SqlAlchemy Tutorial (part 1 of 2) with 7,990 page views, posted 02/03/2010
6. Python: Parsing XML with minidom with 7,900 page views, posted 11/12/2010
7. Manipulating PDFs with Python and pyPdf with 7,304 page views, posted 05/15/2010
8. wxPython: wx.ListCtrl Tips and Tricks with 7,265 page views, posted 01/04/2011
9. Reportlab Tables – Creating Tables in PDFs with Python with 6,634 page views, posted 09/21/2010
10. Python 101: How to Open a File or Program with 6,440 page views, posted 09/04/2010

Last time, I thought I’d get some articles written about other GUI toolkits during 2011, but I never really got into any. Instead, I wrote a lot of wxPython articles. As you can tell from the list above, they weren’t super popular with only one making the top ten. Maybe this year I’ll spread out a bit and actually look at some of the other GUI toolkits. I’m also planning to write more on the topics that made it into my top ten list two years running such as reportlab and SqlAlchemy. If you can think of anything involving those 3 topics that you’d like to know more about, feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll consider writing about it.

I hope you’re ready for another rocking year of Python programming. I know I am!

I was reading the Python blog feed yesterday and stumbled on Tarek Ziade’s Python Meme article. I thought it sounded like a fun idea, so here’s my answers to his questions.

1. What’s the coolest Python application, framework or library you have discovered in 2011?

I can’t think of anything new that I’ve really used this year. However, this was the year that I started using the ObjectListView widget in wxPython pretty extensively. It’s a great wrapper around the wx.ListCtrl that just makes it super easy to use. This is also the year that I started working on a big TurboGears 2 project, but I haven’t decided if it’s my favorite yet.

2. What new programming technique did you learn in 2011?

Lately I’ve taken to keeping my code more organized and structured than I have in the past, splitting my components into different modules, refactoring a lot more, trying to follow the Model-View-Controller schema more, etc. I have also started using Mercurial source control and BitBucket much more this year. I’m still not an expert in using them, but I know enough to keep my source mostly safe.

3. What’s the name of the open source project you contributed the most in 2011? What did you do?

wxPython. I write a lot of documentation for it on my wiki and I help lots of people with understanding it on the wxPython mailing list and on StackOverflow.

4. What was the Python blog or website you read the most in 2011?

Umm, this is a tough one. I read Tim Golden’s a lot with a dash of Jesse Noller and Doug Hellman. I like David Beazley too, but he doesn’t write much.

5. What are the three top things you want to learn in 2012?

I need to get a better handle on Mercurial branching and merging. Learning more TurboGears and maybe another Python web framework. Testing (I know some, but not enough, especially as related to GUIs).

6. What are the top software, app or lib you wish someone would write in 2012?

I wish there was a better eBay wrapper. I’d like to write my own sniper script. Another nice one would be some kind of all-in-one script that could create my bit.ly link for my blog post and then submit it to the various major tech sites for me.

Want to do your own list? here’s how:

• copy-paste the questions and answer to them in your blog
• tweet it with the #2012pythonmeme hashtag

Have you ever wondered how to create those little status icons in the Windows System Tray that usually appear on the lower right of your screen? The wxPython toolkit provides a pretty simple way to do just that and this article will walk you through the process.

Working the Code

For reasons I don’t quite understand, the wx component we want is wx.TaskBarIcon. I assume it’s called that because the System Tray is part of the TaskBar or maybe they don’t differentiate between the TaskBar and the tray area in other operating systems. Anyway, first you need an icon to use. You can get your image wherever you like. In this example, we’re going to use an an “envelope” image that I turned into Python code using wxPython’s handy img2py utility. When you run an image through img2py, you’ll end up with something like this:

#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# This file was generated by img2py.py
#
from wx import ImageFromStream, BitmapFromImage
from wx import EmptyIcon
import cStringIO, zlib
 
 
def getData():
    return zlib.decompress(
'x\xda\x01\x86\x01y\xfe\x89PNG\r\n\x1a\n\x00\x00\x00\rIHDR\x00\x00\x00 \x00\
\x00\x00 \x08\x06\x00\x00\x00szz\xf4\x00\x00\x00\x04sBIT\x08\x08\x08\x08|\
\x08d\x88\x00\x00\x01=IDATX\x85\xed\x97[\x9a\x83 \x0c\x85Ol\xf7\x1566#\xec\
\xac,\xace\x1e\xe4b \xfa\xa9\xa3\xe5\xc5<\x15$9\x7fO\xc0\x0b\xd1\xf0@\xcf\
\x18\xba\xaa\xdf\x007\x00\x80g\xfa1\xfe\xfe\x84o\x89ZkA\xc3\x83\x04\x00\x00\
\x8c\xe3x\xa1,\x01\x08p\xce\x89Y\xd1\x82\xfa\xe2y\xc2P\xc5\x1b\x00c\xcc\x05\
\x10Sg\x9ds0\xc6\xac\x030\xf3\x05\x10\x94\xc5\x99y\x1d\xe0\\\x88\xc9z\xe7l\
\x147\xea*\xf5\x18\xfe\x0fB\xf6\xbc\xfcs\xfd\x90-\xde\x07\x8eC\xc8\x9e\x17\
\xdbI]\xbdz#:\x06Q\xf7\xbc8\xb2\x1b`\x1f\xc4R\xcf\x83\xb8\xbe\x1b %\x16\x08\
\x12\xf3Z\xcfu\xe1\xdd\x0eL\x89\xde\xbf\xc0\xcc3\'lU\xb0=\xe7\xcc\x0c\xef\
\xfd\x02\x88\x8c\xa7:\x1b\x13\xbd\xf7\xd1\xca\x90\x0b\'\xb1:\x8a\xf8\xb4>A\
\x94|\xdd\x81E\x80)y~|(\x17\xd6\xa2\x15"0\x87\xe8`\xc9\xdf\x00@\xd9v\x19\xb2\
\xf0|}-<\x1f3\x9bXo\xe3\x1e(\xe2u\xcf\xea\xcd\xb4},\xf7\xc4\n@\xb1\xfd\x98\
\xd0\xdax\t\xa2y\x18\xb5q\x1e\xc8\xa6\x87\xd1\x99\xd6\xeb\xe3\xaaz\xfa0\xe9\
\xf5J\x96\x01\xc2\xe7\xfd5\x00\x00-@\xaf\xe8\xfeZ~\x03t\x07\xf8\x03\x82\xac\
\xa4VT\xfd\xcd\xa3\x00\x00\x00\x00IEND\xaeB`\x82\n\xa7\xa9\xa8' )
 
def getBitmap():
    return BitmapFromImage(getImage())
 
def getImage():
    stream = cStringIO.StringIO(getData())
    return ImageFromStream(stream)
 
def getIcon():
    icon = EmptyIcon()
    icon.CopyFromBitmap(getBitmap())
    return icon

The image data is all in the getData function. I am going to call this file “email_ico.py”. We’ll import it into our main program and call its getIcon method to acquire the icon we want to use. Let’s take a look at the main application now:

import wx
from mail_ico import getIcon
 
########################################################################
class MailIcon(wx.TaskBarIcon):
    TBMENU_RESTORE = wx.NewId()
    TBMENU_CLOSE   = wx.NewId()
    TBMENU_CHANGE  = wx.NewId()
    TBMENU_REMOVE  = wx.NewId()
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self, frame):
        wx.TaskBarIcon.__init__(self)
        self.frame = frame
 
        # Set the image
        self.tbIcon = getIcon()
 
        self.SetIcon(self.tbIcon, "Test")
 
        # bind some events
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_MENU, self.OnTaskBarClose, id=self.TBMENU_CLOSE)
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_TASKBAR_LEFT_DOWN, self.OnTaskBarLeftClick)
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def CreatePopupMenu(self, evt=None):
        """
        This method is called by the base class when it needs to popup
        the menu for the default EVT_RIGHT_DOWN event.  Just create
        the menu how you want it and return it from this function,
        the base class takes care of the rest.
        """
        menu = wx.Menu()
        menu.Append(self.TBMENU_RESTORE, "Open Program")
        menu.Append(self.TBMENU_CHANGE, "Show all the Items")
        menu.AppendSeparator()
        menu.Append(self.TBMENU_CLOSE,   "Exit Program")
        return menu
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def OnTaskBarActivate(self, evt):
        """"""
        pass
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def OnTaskBarClose(self, evt):
        """
        Destroy the taskbar icon and frame from the taskbar icon itself
        """
        self.frame.Close()
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def OnTaskBarLeftClick(self, evt):
        """
        Create the right-click menu
        """
        menu = self.tbIcon.CreatePopupMenu()
        self.PopupMenu(menu)
        menu.Destroy()
 
########################################################################
class MyForm(wx.Frame):
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, None, wx.ID_ANY, "Tutorial", size=(500,500))
        panel = wx.Panel(self)
        self.tbIcon = MailIcon(self)
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_CLOSE, self.onClose)
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def onClose(self, evt):
        """
        Destroy the taskbar icon and the frame
        """
        self.tbIcon.RemoveIcon()
        self.tbIcon.Destroy()
        self.Destroy()
 
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Run the program
if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = wx.App(False)
    frame = MyForm().Show()
    app.MainLoop()

The first class is basically copied straight out of the wxPython demo and simplified slightly. You can look there if you need a more complete example. Anyway, we bind a couple events in our sub-classed TaskBarIcon that allow us to close the application and show a menu, respectively. You will also note that we set the icon we created in the __init__ simply by calling its SetIcon method and passing in a string for its tooltip.

In the close method, we call the frame directly that we want it to close. A better method would be to use pubsub here. If you want to pause a moment and read about pubsub, I’ve written a little post about it too. The rest of the code is pretty self-explanatory.

Now we can move on to the wx.Frame sub-class. Here we basically just instantiate the TaskBarIcon class that we created earlier and we bind the frame to EVT_CLOSE. You might wonder about this. There are some got’chas with using the TaskBarIcon on Windows. If I just tell the frame to close, it closes just fine, but the icon remains and Python just kind of hangs in lala land. If you only allow the user to close using the task bar icon’s right-click menu, then you could just add a RemoveIcon method and a self.Destroy() there and you’d be good to go (for some reason, RemoveIcon isn’t enough to get rid of the TaskBarIcon, so you also need to tell it to Destroy itself too) But if you allow the user to press the little “x” in the upper right-hand corner, then you’ll need to catch EVT_CLOSE and deal with it appropriately. When you do catch this event, you can NOT just call self.Close() or you’ll end up in an infinite loop, which is why we call self.Destroy() instead.

Wrapping Up

Now you should be able to create your own TaskBarIcon application. I highly recommend looking at the wxPython demo to see what else you can do with it. I think adding an icon can add a bit of polish to your application, especially if you need to have it running hidden for a while and then make it pop-up at the user’s command.

Further Reading

• Create a Flashing TaskBarIcon
• Another blog’s take on this subject
• The TaskBarIcon documentation

Source

• TBI_src.tar
• TBI_src.zip

The 2012 Python Conference USA opened Registration today. The official announcement doesn’t mention it, but I’m pretty sure there’s an attendance cap on this conference too of 1500 just like last year. You should sign up early not only because of the limited attendance, but because there are “Early Bird” rates which are cheaper!

The complete schedule isn’t done yet, but you can whet your appetite by checking out the list of tutorials that were released last week.

I have enjoyed all the PyCons I’ve attended so far. They are a great place to learn new things, show others your talent, network with like-minded people and just relax too. This year, the conference will be in Santa Clara, California. If you can’t afford to go, they even offer Financial Assistance. So why are you waiting?

The Linux Journal readers have good taste. This is the 3rd year that they have voted Python as the Best Programming Language. Oddly enough, C++ is the runner-up. I personally liked C++ when I was in school, but the two languages are quite different. On the other hand, Python interfaces with C/C++ pretty well, so maybe the readers of that magazine like to do mash-ups with the two languages. You will also note that they voted Python as the Best Scripting Language too.

Congrats to the Python community and the PSF too!

Hat-tip to Steve Holden who mentioned this on Python.org’s news feed.

Python is pretty easy to install on Windows, but sometimes you need to do a few extra tweaks to really get the most our your development environment. In this article, we will try to cover all the common things you might want to do or install to get an ideal Python Windows development workspace set up. Some of you might think that all you need to do is install Python and you’re done, but if you’re going to do Windows development, then you’ll need a few other packages to make it nicer.

Installing and Configuring Python

Download Python and run the installer. Make sure you got the version you want (i.e. Python 2.7 or 3.x). You’ll also want to make sure you get the bit type you want as there’s a 32-bit and a 64-bit version. Note: The 32-bit Python will run just fine on a 64-bit system, but not vice versa! Once you’ve got that installed, we’ll move on.

Now we’re going to make sure Python is set up right. Open a command window by going to Start –> Run and then typing “cmd” and pressing enter or return. Try typing “python” (without the quotes) in there and hitting your enter key. If you see the Python shell, then we’re halfway there. It should look something like this:

If you don’t, then we need to modify some settings.

Modifying Your Path

On Windows, it can help a LOT to modify your Path settings by adding your Python path and the path to the Scripts folder to your System Path. Here’s one way that you can do it:

1. Right-Click “My Computer” and choose Properties (Windows XP) or you may have to go digging in Control Panel on Windows 7 and do a “Show All Control Panel Items” from the path bar and look for System. You should see something like this:

   

2. Go to the Advanced tab and press the Environmental Variable button to see something like the following:

   

3. You will see two types of variables here. In the bottom section are System Variables. Scroll down to the one labeled Path and at the end of that, add the following two lines: ;C:\Python26;C:\Python26\Scripts (adjust as necessary according to your version of Python and its location) Note that each entry is separated by a semi-colon, so make sure you do that too or this will not work!

Now you should be able to run Python from the command line. Not only that, you’ll also be able to run the special scripts that were in Python’s Scripts folder. Why would you care? Well, if you install easy_install / SetupTools or pip, they will install stuff in the Scripts folder that you can run. Speaking of which, since you now have a brand new installation of Python, let’s take a moment to show you how to install a 3rd party package.

How to Install a Package on Windows

We will use pip as our example. It is used for the easy installation of Python packages from the Python Packages Index (PyPI, not to be confused with PyPy). Anyway, you’ll need to go here to download it. The pip package is in a tarred and gzipped download at the bottom of the page. You’ll probably need something like IZArc or Filzip to unzip it since Windows doesn’t unzip tar files natively.

Open up a command line window as you did before. Now you will need to use the “cd” command to change directories to the location that you unzipped the files to. This can take some practice. On my machine, I usually unzip to my desktop and just cd there and then into the unzipped package. Once you’re in the folder that has the setup.py file in it, all you need to do to install it is to type the following:


python setup.py install


Most of the time, this works great and the package is installed correctly. Occasionally, you will run into certain packages that complain that they need a compiler. If you don’t have one installed (like Visual Studio or MingW), then you won’t be able to install the package this way. You will have to find a pre-packaged installer for it. On my machine, I usually have easy_install installed too. For some reason, the package is called SetupTools . Anyway, the main reason that you used to need easy_install was that it was the defacto standard for install Python Eggs, which you can read about here or here. Now you can use pip or distribute to do the same thing. All three can also install packages that are in compressed archives. Normally, all you have to do to install a package with one of these utilities is something like this:


easy_install PackageName
pip install PackageName


Read their respective docs for more information though.

Other Handy Packages for Windows Developers

If you are a serious Windows developer who will need access to Windows APIs, then you will require the PyWin32 package. You’ll want to become familiar with ctypes too, but that’s been included with Python since version 2.5. PyWin32 is a lightweight wrapper around the Windows APIs. You can actually look on MSDN for the API documentation and almost directly translate it into Python. The ctypes package put on an even lower level and can be used to interact with DLLs directly, among many other things.

Another common need when programming on Windows is access to Window Management Instrumentation (WMI). Fortunately, Tim Golden has written a nice wmi module. You can usually get the same information using PyWin32, but it’s more convoluted than just using WMI. Tim Golden has also written several other utilities:

• WinSys – Python tools for the Windows Administrator
• winshell – a utility for getting Windows paths easily
• An Active Directory wrapper

You should also check out his awesome “How Do I” series of tutorials.

Finally, Python includes a module called _winreg that you can use to gain access to the Windows Registry. It’s a very powerful tool that’s very useful if you do a lot of administrative scripting on Windows.

Other Python Installations for Windows

The comments section started filling up with people mentioning the special Python installations you can get that actually include PyWin32 and other packages all wrapped up in one installer. That is also an option. Here are a few of those:

• PythonXY – This one includes a TON of other packages, including PyWin32, SciPy, wxPython, NumPy and dozens of others. It looks like a jack of all trades. I have not used this one, but it sounds interesting.
• The Enthought Python Distribution – That link is their paid version, but there’s also a lightweight free version available too.
• ActivePython from ActiveState – this one has been around for a long time and includes the PyWin32 documentation and various other tools.

Wrapping Up

You should now have all the tools you need to be an effective Windows developer with Python. If you need help, the PyWin32 and ctypes mailing lists are active and they have experts there that can answer just about anything you’d want to know about those packages.

Further Reading

• A Python Windows Registry tutorial
• Some other article on MvP about Windows and Python
• Official Python documentation on Windows
• Another tutorial on Python on Windows
• PyWin32 documentation from ActiveState

Recently, I was linked to the Python Forum because one of my friends on the wxPython IRC channel said that Packt was trying to find reviewers for their new book, Numpy 1.5 Beginner’s Guide by Ivan Idris. I doubt they’re going to find many people on that website though. I’ve certainly never heard of it. Anyway, Packt was kind enough to give me a copy of it as an ebook, so I’ll be reading it over the next couple of weeks so I can review it for this website.

I haven’t used NumPy before, but I hear about it from time to time on the wxPython mailing list and I thought it sounded interesting. So I am glad that there’s a new beginner’s book on the topic. I hope it’s a good one. In the meantime, Packt gave me a link to chapter 3, so you can read that while you wait for my review. It looks like Doug Finke will also be doing a review of this book too, so you may want to keep an eye on his blog to see what he thinks too.

Numpy 1.5 Beginner’s Guide By Ivan Idris Amazon Packt

Last night, Andrea Gavana released his new Namespace Diff Tool (NDT) to the world. I got his permission to reprint his announcement here for all those people who don’t follow the wxPython mailing list. I think it sounds like a really cool tool. You should check it out and see what you think. Here is the announcement:

Description
===========

If you stumble upon a bug (which is highly probable), please do let me
know. But most importantly, please do try and make an effort to create a
patch for the bug.

According to the thread, some bugs were already found and fixed.