May 31, 2007 · Filed under News, Python
I can confirm it now, this second week of coding was even better. It
was harder on my brain cells, though. I am mostly done with the
StringIO merge. I now have working implementations in C of the BytesIO
and the StringIO objects. The only thing remaining to do, for these
two modules, is polishing the unit tests. And that shouldn’t that me
very long to do. So, in basically one week of work, I completed the
merge of cStringIO. I am certainly proud of that.
Now, I will need to attack the cPickle and cProfile modules. I don’t
know yet which I work on first. cPickle still seems very scary to me,
and unlike cStringIO it’s huge. It’s about five or six times bigger.
cProfile, on the other hand, is about the same size of cStringIO and
well documented. I even wonder if I need to code anything for
cProfile. It will be a piece of cake to merge. Now, one question
remains: should I take the cake now, or keep it for the end?
May 24, 2007 · Filed under News, Python
During this summer, I will post each week a short summary of what I
did, the challenges I encountered and what I learned during
my Summer of Code project. I am doing this for helping me to keep track of my
progresses.
So how was my first week? It was great. I don’t know why but I
love programming in C. It is just plain fun. I thought learning Python
C API was going to be hard, but it is quite easy after all. I just read the
code in Python itself and check the reference manual for the things
I don’t know. My biggest surprise, this week, was really learning how to do
subclassable types. It is strikingly easy, however it’s quite verbose.
You can look at my scratch extension module, if you want a minimal
working example.
Other than learning the C API, I started working on the
cStringIO/StringIO merge. My current plan is to separate the cStringIO
module into two private submodules, _bytes_io
and _string_io
. One will
be for bytes literals (ASCII), and the other for Unicode.
This will reflect the changes made to the I/O subsystem in Python 3000.
These two submodules will provide optional implementations for the
speed-critical methods, like .read()
and .write()
.
One the best things, of this week, was the great feedback I got
from other Python developers, and particularly from my mentor Brett
Cannon, who cheerfully answers all my questions. Now, I just hope the
following week will be as fun, or even more, as this one.
May 11, 2007 · Filed under Emacs, Web
This is my first blog entry with my brand new toy, the weblogging
mode for Emacs. It uses the XML-RPC interface of your favorite
blogging platform to manage your blog. In other words, it transformes
Emacs into a thermonuclear blog editor.
Even better, the installation is simple and easy. Here’s the instructions
how to get it working. First, check out
the source code of weblogger into your .emacs.d
directory:
cd ~/.emacs.d/
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.nongnu.org:/sources/emacsweblogs \
co -d weblogger weblogger/lisp
Then, make Emacs load this mode on startup by adding these two lines to your
.emacs
configuration:
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/weblogger")
(require 'weblogger)
Now, you probably want to reload your configuration with M-x
eval-buffer
(assuming your .emacs
is still open). Finally, setup
weblogger for your blog with M-x weblogger-setup-weblog
. This
command will ask you a few simple questions, like your username and
password for your blog. It will also ask you for the location of the
XML-RPC interface of your blog. If you’re using WordPress, it will be
somewhere like http://example.com/blog/xmlrpc.php
. If you’re using
another blog publishing platform like Blogger or MovableType, it will
be somewhere else, so check your documentation.
And you’re done! You can now start new a new post with M-x
weblogger-start-entry
. Weblogger also includes a whole set of other
commands for managing your blog. Look them up, with C-h a weblogger
RET
. Happy blogging!
May 10, 2007 · Filed under News, Ubuntu
May 3, 2007 · Filed under Web
Quick hack: here a script
for Greasemonkey that changes the default proportional font to fixed
font on Gmail. I was tired reading distorted PEP, and code patches. And since Gmail
doesn’t allow changing the font style, I had to write this simple script. Enjoy!
May 3, 2007 · Filed under Me, News
Bird are singing; the Sun is rising; and rivers are flowing again. In
short, another beautiful summer is coming. To me that means the end of
classes, and a wave of exams which will crush me for a week. But after,
I will be free to do what I love — i.e. coding on open-source
software, writing, and enjoying the weather while playing sports with
my friends. Anyway, enough dreaming for today, I got some news.
I just finished the facelift to my blog’s layout. The new layout still
keeps its original simplicity, while being more colorful and
appealing. Personally, I am quite satisfied with the result. And thanks to
two Firefox add-ons, called Firebug and
Web Developer, the
whole process was a breeze (and fun too). While I am at it, I would
like to also thanks Becca Wei for the initial
theme, Almost Spring,
on which I built my theme upon. Feel free to comment about what you
like or dislike. Since it’s you after all, who will use it (unless,
of course, you’re using a feed reader).
A few longer posts will be coming up after I passed through my
exams sessions. Plus, there will a weekly post about the status of my
Google Summer of Code project. Thanks for reading!