ANN: SciPy 2009 conference schedule posted

[Jarrod Millman]

The SciPy conference committee is pleased to announce the schedule of
the conference:

http://conference.scipy.org/schedule

This year’s program is very rich. In order to limit the number of
interesting talks that we had to turn down, we decided to reduce the
length of talks. Although this results in many short talks, we hope
that it will foster discussions, and give new ideas. Many subjects are
covered, both varying technical subject in the scientific computing
spectrum, and covering a lot of different research areas.

I would personally like to thank the members of the program committee,
who spent time reviewing the proposed abstracts and giving the chairs
feedback.

Fernando Perez and the tutorial presenters are hard at work finishing
planning all the details of the two-day tutorial session that will
precede the conference. An introduction tutorial track and an advanced
tutorial track, both covering various aspect of scientific computing
in Python, presented by experts in the field, should help many people
getting up to speed on the amazing technology driving this community.

The SciPy 2009 program committee

* Co-Chair Gaël Varoquaux, Applied Mathematics and Neuroscience,
Neurospin, CEA - INRIA Saclay (France)
* Co-Chair Stéfan van der Walt, Applied Mathematics, University of
Stellenbosch (South Africa)
* Michael Aivazis, Center for Advanced Computing Research,
California Institute of Technology (USA)
* Brian Granger, Physics Department, California Polytechnic State
University, San Luis Obispo (USA)
* Aric Hagberg, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA)
* Konrad Hinsen, Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire, CNRS Orléans (France)
* Randall LeVeque, Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle (USA)
* Travis Oliphant, Enthought (USA)
* Prabhu Ramachandran, Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT
Bombay (India)
* Raphael Ritz, International Neuroinformatics Coordinating
Facility (Sweden)
* William Stein, Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle (USA)

Conference Chair: Jarrod Millman, Neuroscience Institute, UC Berkeley (USA)
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ANN: gensei-2009.2 released

[Robert Cimrman]

I am pleased to announce release 2009.2 of gensei (generator of serial
images).

http://code.google.com/p/gensei/

What does it do?


The code generates images corresponding to slices of a block
specimen filled with ellipsoids of known geometrical properties such
as the volume fraction within the block, dimensions, volumes of
individual ellipsoids, a length-to-width ratio and number.

Why?


Its purpose is to verify results, obtained by various software for
reconstructing 3D data (e.g. a living tissue microstructure) given a
set of 2D slices using usually stereological methods, on a dataset
with well-defined and known properties.

Release notes
-

This is the first public release.

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Enthought Tool Suite (ETS) 3.3.0 released

[Dave Peterson]

Hello,

I'm pleased to announce that Enthought Tool Suite (ETS) version 3.3.0 
has been tagged and released!  Please see below for a partial list of 
changes for this release.


PyPi has been updated with the release, including the availability of 
both Windows binaries (.egg) and source distributions (.tar.gz).  A full 
install of ETS can be done using a command like:

   easy_install -U "ETS[nonets] == 3.3.0"

HOWEVER, it is important to note that there are still package 
dependencies that are outside the scope of easy_install.  Therefore, we 
recommend that you have the following installed prior to installing ETS:

   setuptools: minimum version 0.6c9
   VTK: minimum version 5.0, recommended 5.2 or later
And at least one of:
   wxPython: minimum version 2.8.7.1
   PyQt: minimum version 4.4

For additional installation information, see:
   https://svn.enthought.com/enthought/wiki/Install



What Is ETS?
===

The Enthought Tool Suite (ETS) is a collection of components developed 
by Enthought and the open-source community, which we use every day to 
construct scientific applications. It includes a wide variety of 
components, including:

 * an extensible application framework
 * application building blocks
 * 2-D and 3-D graphics libraries
 * scientific and math libraries
 * developer tools
The cornerstone on which these tools rest is the Traits package, which 
provides explicit type declarations in Python; its features include 
initialization, validation, delegation, notification, and visualization 
of typed attributes.


More information on ETS is available from the development home page:
   http://code.enthought.com/projects/index.php

ETS 3.3.0 is a feature-added update to ETS 3.2.0, including numerous 
bug-fixes. Some of the notable changes include (sub-projects listed in 
alphabetical order):



Chaco 3.2.0 (July 15, 2009)
===

Enhancements


 * Bounded grids - Horizontal and Vertical grid line start and end 
points can now be set to a fixed value in data space, or to be the 
return value of an arbitrary callable.  The start and end tick can also 
be configured via the data_min and data_max traits.


 * Added dictionary interface to ArrayPlotData

 * Added a Traits UI view to the ScalesAxis

 * Added a new chaco.overlays subpackage and a new overlay, the DataBox.

 * Improved appearance of PlotToolbar

 * Changed add_default_axis() in the plot_factory module to take an 
axis class as a keyword argument.


 * Refactored contour plots into a common base class and implemented 
proper event handling when their colormaps or data ranges change.


 * Changed default colormap on img_plot() and contour_plot() method of 
Plot to be Spectral instead of Jet.


 * Added two more color palettes to the auto color palette, and created 
a default_colors module.


 * Added CandlePlot renderer

 * Changed Plot Labels to able to display inside the plot area, instead 
of only on the outside


 * Added optional title attribute to plot legends

 * Updated all containers to respect and use the new 
fixed_preferred_size trait on enable.Component


 * New Examples:
   * Interval trait editor as a Chaco example (from Stefan van der Walt)
   * embedding an interactive Chaco plot inside a VTK RenderWindow 
using the new Enable VTK backend

   * lasso tool on an image plot
   * bounded grid
   * candle plot


Fixes
-

 * Fixed call signature of ShowAllTickGenerator.get_ticks()

 * Plot.title_font is now a delegate to the underlying PlotLabel object 
(from Chris Colbert)


 * Fixed mouse event handling bug in RangeSelection (from Stefan van 
der Walt)


 * ImagePlots now redraw when their input data changes.

 * Fixed cached image invalidation in colormapped image plots

 * Optimized ScatterPlot.map_index() when index_only is True and the 
index data is sorted


 * Changed ColormappedScatterPlot to no longer incorrectly apply the 
fill_alpha to the outline color


 * Improved date ticking heuristics in chaco.scales subpackage, 
specifically eliminating the bug where all times between, midnight and 
1am would be formatted at too course of a time resolution.


 * Cleanup of various examples (titles, appearance)

 * The spectrum.py (audio spectrograph) example now properly closes the 
audio stream.




Enable 3.2.0 (July 15th, 2009)
==

enthought.enable Enhancements
-

* Added Slider and Compass widgets

* Added an OverlayContainer (almost identical to the one in Chaco)

* Added ImageGraphicsContextEnable class so that one can always import 
a Kiva Image backend-based GraphicsContextEnable


* renaming marker_trait to MarkerTrait (the old name is still permitted 
for backwards compatibility, but should be avoided)


* Moved the scatter_markers module from Chaco to Enable, so that Enable 
components can use MarkerTrait


* Added an experimental VTK backend for Enable, along with an example

* Changed SVGButtonEditor toggle to draw

TkDocs: new tutorial and resources for TkInter/ttk

[Mark Roseman]

TkDocs is a language-neutral resource for developers who are interested 
in using Tk as their GUI.  The highlight is an extensive tutorial that 
illustrates how to use the newest generation of Tk features and best 
practices to create modern and attractive user interfaces.  

I'm pleased to announce that the tutorial and other parts of the site 
has been updated with the latest Python-oriented Tk material, 
corresponding to tkinter and ttk from Python 3.1.  You'll now find all 
the examples and code snippets available in Python (and also Tcl, Ruby 
and Perl for those so inclined).

Please visit the site at http://www.tkdocs.com

I hope this site is valuable for both new and existing Python GUI 
developers; for the latter group it will help you upgrade away from all 
the outdated ugly constructs that Tk is so famous for.  ;-)  I'd greatly 
appreciate any feedback, corrections or suggestions on the site.

Thanks
Mark
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ANN: gnupg v0.2.0 released

[Vinay Sajip]

A new version of the Python module which wraps GnuPG has been
released.

What Changed?
=
The module was refactored slightly to support Python 3.0.

The current version now passes all tests on Windows (Python 2.4, 2.5)
and Ubuntu (Python 2.4, 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0).

What Does It Do?

The gnupg module allows Python programs to make use of the
functionality provided by the Gnu Privacy Guard (abbreviated GPG or
GnuPG). Using this module, Python programs can encrypt and decrypt
data, digitally sign documents and verify digital signatures, manage
(generate, list and delete) encryption keys, using proven Public Key
Infrastructure (PKI) encryption technology based on OpenPGP.

This module is expected to be used with Python versions >= 2.4, as it
makes use of the subprocess module which appeared in that version of
Python. This module is a newer version derived from earlier work by
Andrew Kuchling, Richard Jones and Steve Traugott.

A test suite using unittest is included with the source distribution.

Simple usage:

>>> import gnupg
>>> gpg = gnupg.GPG(gnupghome='/path/to/keyring/directory')
>>> gpg.list_keys()
[{
  ...
  'fingerprint': 'F819EE7705497D73E3CCEE65197D5DAC68F1AAB2',
  'keyid': '197D5DAC68F1AAB2',
  'length': '1024',
  'type': 'pub',
  'uids': ['', 'Gary Gross (A test user) ']},
 {
  ...
  'fingerprint': '37F24DD4B918CC264D4F31D60C5FEFA7A921FC4A',
  'keyid': '0C5FEFA7A921FC4A',
  'length': '1024',
  ...
  'uids': ['', 'Danny Davis (A test user) ']}]
>>> encrypted = gpg.encrypt("Hello, world!", ['0C5FEFA7A921FC4A'])
>>> str(encrypted)
'-BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-\nVersion: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)\n
\nhQIOA/6NHMDTXUwcEAf
...
-END PGP MESSAGE-\n'
>>> decrypted = gpg.decrypt(str(encrypted), passphrase='secret')
>>> str(decrypted)
'Hello, world!'
>>> signed = gpg.sign("Goodbye, world!", passphrase='secret')
>>> verified = verified = gpg.verify(str(signed))
>>> print "Verified" if verified else "Not verified"
'Verified'

For more information, visit http://code.google.com/p/python-gnupg/ -
as always, your feedback is most welcome (especially bug reports,
patches and suggestions for improvement). Enjoy!

Cheers

Vinay Sajip
Red Dove Consultants Ltd.
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ANN: psyco V2

[Christian Tismer]

Announcing Psyco V2 source release
--

This is the long awaited announcement of Psyco V2.

Psyco V2 is a continuation of the well-known psyco project,
which was called finished and was dis-continued by its author
Armin Rigo in 2005, in favor of the PyPy project.

This is a new project, using Psyco's code base with permission
of Armin. Questions aqnd complaints should go to me
(tis...@stackless.com) or the mailing list
(psyco-de...@lists.sourceforge.net);
Armin is explicitly not in charge of (t)his project any longer!

As one of the founders and an active member of the PyPy
project, I was very happy to be invited to work on Psyco
V2, by FATTOC, LLC. Psyco V2 tries to extend on the original Psyco
approach "an extension module that just makes Python faster".

Psyco is a just-in-time compiler that accelerates arbitrary
Python code by specialization. We believe that Psyco's approach
can be carried out much further than it was tried so far, when
it's first version was abandoned.

This first V2 release is source-only. There is no web-site, yet,
and there are no binaries for download. These will be available
in a few days on http://www.psyco.org .

For the time being, please stick with subversion access,
building the extension module from source code. The repository
is here:

http://codespeak.net/svn/psyco/v2/dist

Check-out the repository, and run the setup.py script,
given that you have access to a C compiler.

Psyco V2 will run on X86 based 32 bit Linux, 32 bit Windows,
and Mac OS X. Psyco is not supporting 64 bit, yet. But it
is well being considered.

The current improvements are, shortly:

  - Support for Python 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6
  - a lot of new builtins
  - generators, fast and fully supported.

More information is coming soon on http://www.psyco.org .

This is the beginning of a series of new Psyco versions.
Many more improvements are prepared and about to be published,
soon, starting with the current version 2.0.0 .

Stay tuned, this is just the beginning of psyco's re-birth!

For questions about Psyco V2, please join the mailing list

psyco-de...@lists.sourceforge.net

or contact me on IRC:

#psyco on irc.freenode.net .

Psyco V2 is fundamentally supported by FATTOC, LLC.
See http://www.fattoc.com .

Without their continuous support, this work would not have
been possible at all. I wish to express my deepest thanks
to FATTOC, for allowing me to continue on Psyco with all the
energy that this ambitious project needs, and will need.

Further special thanks are going to
Armin Rigo, John Benediktsson, David Salomon, Miki Tebeka,
Raymond Hettinger, Fabrizio Milo, Michael Foord,
Dinu Gherman, Stephan Diehl, Laura Creighton and Andrea Tismer,
for all the support and discussions.

Looking forward to a great future of Psyco!

July 17, 2009
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