> 'Saturn': ['Pan','Atlas','Prometheus','Pandora', > 'Epimetheus','Janus','Mimas','Enceladus', > 'Tethys','Telesto','Calypso','Dione', > 'Helene','Rhea','Titan','Hyperion', > 'Iapetus','Phoebe'], > 'Uranus': ['Cordelia','Ophelia','Bianca','Cressida', > 'Desdemonia','Juliet','Portia','Rosalind', > 'Belinda','Puck' >
We might further enrich this module with additional lookup tables. Now that we know how to get the moons of Saturn i.e. solarsystem.moons['Saturn'] -- case sensitive -- we could consult a lookup table of URIs: >>> solarsystem.getlookuptable('moonurls')['Mimas'] # function returns dict 'http://ksiezyce.republika.pl/saturn/mimas_en.html' We might then invoke the Standard Library to pull down actual source HTML and/or embedded images (if any). We could use the pictures in later exercises. Or maybe not. Lots of ways to go. One module could be about solar system data structures. All these nested objects, maybe with numerical data involving diameters, distances, periods of orbit and rotation, average surface temperatures -- there's no upper limit on how detailed one might want to get. But for ordinary classroom use, there's no need to parse through a whole gigabyte of solar system data structures, as we still have mammals and species of phytoplankton to consider. So I imagine CDs with tons of already defined rich data structures, in the form of Python modules, plus other languages could do it too. The CDs would be a convenience for when you're not on the web, but would mirror content at websites. This way, tutorial writers, book authors, could reference these standard in-common data sources, even while doing original writing for compensation, i.e. here's a mix of for-profit and in-common code. And profiteers give back to the in-commons, having seen how useful it's been. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig