(10) Wed Feb 01 2006 12:07 Guido and XML:

I think Guido's post on XML is a good occasion to point again to my rant about the disdain for XML among Python programmers, posted almost exactly a year ago on this blog.

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(2) Fri Feb 24 2006 10:23 lxml and (c)ElementTree:

I saw a blog entry by Julien Anguenot praising the ElementTree+ (and cElementTree in particular) XML processing library, and also contrasted it with lxml, as in "why didn't I use lxml?". Since I created lxml, I thought I'd chip in and give my perspective on how it relates to ElementTree, and also give some context around Julien's statements about lxml in his blog entry.

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(2) Thu Apr 06 2006 19:04 lxml 0.9.1 released!:

A bit late, but still worth a blog entry: lxml 0.9.1 was released last week! This is a bugfix release following up on the great 0.9 release done a bit before.

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(33) Wed Apr 12 2006 19:30 Ruby misconceptions about Python:

I just ran into a rather misleading article claiming to compare Ruby and Python. Let's please be done with some of these misconceptions:

• Python 1.5.2 was released in april 1999. Talking about supposed design flaws in a version released in 1999 is a bit misleading. We're seven years past april 1999. Maybe the referenced article was written in 2000, in which case it's somewhat more understandable. I do not believe it was, as it talks about Python's support for sets, which was added later.

• the opinion sketched about booleans is an opinion. Python did add an explicit True and False quite recently, in Python 2.3 I believe (we're at 2.4 now), but 0 is still considered to be False (try bool(0)).

• Yes, empty sets, like other empty sequences, are False in Python. Sets are built-in in Python 2.4, and were a library in Python 2.3, and empty sets are False in both. I happen to like empty sequences being False, but this particular opinion has the benefit in at least being original. :)

• Let's please cut the crap about OO being a bolt-on in Python. This is FUD. It's probable that many people who repeat this meme are not even aware of enough deep OO issues to ever have to care even if it were true.

• Python's OO implementation has indeed been improved in version 2.0 (released in 2001). That doesn't mean we haven't been happily using multiple inheritance in Python 1.5.2; the notion that it was critically flawed is rather exaggarated. I think this needs to be said to back up the OO bolted-on FUD. Like, "if OO in Python is bolted on, why has Python had multiple inheritance support since forever and Ruby doesn't?" Advocate's answer: "Well, that's because that multiple inheritance was critically flawed in versions as recent as 1.5.2!"

• You can add and remove methods from classes in Python. This has been possible for years and years (including Python 1.5.2):

  class Foo(object):
     pass
  def mymethod(self):
     print "hello world"
  foo = Foo()
  Foo.mymethod = mymethod
  foo.mymethod()
  

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(1) Fri Aug 25 2006 11:58 the Infrae OAI-PMH components:

Since these components are little known I'd like to give a brief introduction of the great set of open source OAI-PMH components that Infrae has developed.

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(2) Mon Sep 18 2006 22:11 DZUG keynote:

I was honoured to be asked to give a keynote talk at the recent DZUG conference in Sankt Augustin near Bonn, Germany. Even though DZUG is the German speaking Zope User Group, I was allowed to speak in English. :) My talk was titled "Zope in Perspective". Christian Scholz was kind enough to film it, also wrote a blog entry about , and put the video online! This way I could see all my mistakes, but overall it went well. If you're interested in the history of Zope, where we are now, and a chuckle or two, you might want to take a look at the video. Enjoy!

(24) Sun Sep 24 2006 16:54 Jean-Marc's implications:

Jean-Marc Orliaguet is rewriting CPSSkins again, this time in Java, as Nuxeo is switching their CPS platform from Python and Zope to the Java language . The reasons for this switch are detailed in the FAQ. I'm not going to debate them here.

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Wed Sep 27 2006 18:06 Zope 3.3 released!:

Zope 3.3 is released!

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(3) Tue Oct 03 2006 15:13 A buildout for lxml:

I've created what's called a "buildout" for lxml, and I figured I'd let everybody know how cool that is.

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(19) Thu Nov 09 2006 23:21 Grok: or what I did on my holiday:

I will use this blog entry to talk talk a bit about my holiday in Germany a few weeks ago. I went to a mini sprint at Gocept, in Halle. I had a great time! (yes, I am a geek) This sprint showed that good sprints aren't necessarily the ones with many people participating; we just had 4 sprinters (and less much of the time), and this was one of the most productive sprints I've been at for years. I left the sprint energized and excited. Thanks to Gocept for organizing this, it was awesome!

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(7) Wed Nov 29 2006 23:15 Grok, CherryPy, WSGI and Zope 3:

Yesterday night I experimented with getting Zope 3/Grok to work CherryPy, through WSGI. This led to all kinds of interesting adventures and opportunities. Follow the path I took:

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