Python Magazine wish-list

Brian and I have been compiling a list of topics we would like to have covered in the magazine. Since we’re just starting, the field is really wide-open for anything, but sometimes it is easier to solicit articles about specific topics instead of just saying, “Write for us!”

A few of my personal wishes:

We have had a couple of PyGTK articles submitted already, but nothing for any of the other toolkits. Whenever I see the question “Which GUI toolkit should I use?” there are always a lot of responses for wxWindows and quite a few for Qt. We haven’t had any submissions for articles on either yet, so if you use them and want to talk about it, yours might be the first.

I’m aware of several ORM-related books in the works right now, but that’s another area where a short article (4000 words) on a focused aspect would be useful. Not all queries are equal (even if the result sets are), so how about a discussion of SQL optimization with your favorite ORM? Or how about adapting an ORM to an existing database? And my favorite topic: How the heck am I supposed to upgrade my schema when I make changes?

I need to write a trac plugin, but haven’t had the time to figure out where to start. Will you write an article to show me how?

The List:

We’ll be updating this list and will eventually post it online somewhere, but until we decide on the best way to do that, here is the “full” wish-list we have put together for now, in no specific order. Do not interpret the absence of a topic as lack of interest; we just haven’t added it to the list, yet!

If you are interested in writing about these or other topics, contact us through the web site and let us know.

# High Performance Computing (HPC)

* Parallel Python (pp) module
* PyMOL
* VTK
* SciPy

# Browser

* Django
* Writing a django app
* TurboGears
* CherryPy
* Zope
* Writing a Zope product
* Plone
* Writing a plugin for trac

# Web Services

* XMLRPC
o simplexmlrpcserver
o xmlrpclib
* SOAP
* Flickr (Beej’s API?)
* Google Calendar/GData (w/ ElementTree)
* Amazon
* Yahoo

# System Administration

* SNMP
* LDAP
o python-ldap
o Luma (extending?)
* User/Group management

# GUI Frameworks

* wxPython
* PyQT
* PyGTK


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  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/11564565376040472149 Ralf Schoenian

    Hi,

    nice list, but please don’t be to python centric. I would also like to read some general articles about software development and book reviews. Would be interesting to read every month about a disgn pattern.

    Ralf Schoenian

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/05374932396732856455 SteveLee

    You might like to add Open Source GUI accessibility programming as Python is becoming the language of choice here, at least on the Assistive Technology side. For example in Gnome we have the Orca screen reader, accerciser accessibility explorer and I’m writing Jambu alternative access in Python.

    The new pyatspi api for accessing application accessibility utilises some clever runtime mixin code to make access from python really easy. This can be explored in accerciser’s ipython console. In addition the Dogtail UI testing framework is being rewritten to use pyatspi. There are also ideas for converting GOK to python.

    Over on Windows the NVDA screen reader is python using comtypes to access various windows apis including MSAA.

    In fact I made a tentative start on an article when flying back from this year’s accessibility summits after reading your issue #1. If you’re interested I can finish it however I’d like to keep it CC so it can act as an introduction to GNOME accessibility programming (perhaps you could email me as I’m unlikely to track this post)

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/01892352754222143463 Doug

    @ralf – It is “Python Magazine” after all. :-) But you do make a good point: The articles don’t all have to be about Python internals, or technologies/libraries not available for other languages. Any development related topic could be a candidate, as long as the sample code is in Python or the subject matter can be considered to have some tie-in to Python.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/01892352754222143463 Doug

    @stevelee: Great idea! We’ve been looking for a good UI testing framework at my day job, and I know there are a lot of new options out there. Accessibility in general doesn’t receive as much coverage as it should.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/15638990267984508198 Edomaur

    I would to add some topics to your list…

    * PyProtocols, RuleDispatch
    * PEAK-Trellis
    * parley
    * aspect oriented programming with Python
    * zope interfaces
    * snakefood
    * Twisted

    My English and my Python are not good enough to write about these…

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/01892352754222143463 Doug

    @edomaur: Thanks for the ideas. I need to look into a few of those topics to see what they are. :-)

    As far as English goes, if you have any interest in writing we can work with you on the language — that’s what editors are for, after all!

  • Anonymous

    testing?

    Web testing
    unit testing
    code coverage analysis
    continuous integration

    ;)

  • Anonymous

    Getting started with working on CPython (contributing to the development of the language, as opposed to developing in the language).

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/02475335739134506765 kib2

    Best practices on how to :

    - write plugins/mixins for a given application;

    - play with standard libs like elementtree, regexps, etc.

    Some general theory articles :

    - parsers/lexers and how they are implemented;

    - design patterns;

    Tools for Python :

    - IDE/editors/IPython/consoles/…

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/15638990267984508198 Edomaur

    oh ! I forgot this one :

    * setuptools and eggs
    * ByteCodeAssembler

    … well, in fact I’d appreciate any article about anything written by PJE. This guy produce some of the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in computer science (but I’m somewhat lost when it come to use them in a project)

  • Anonymous

    Something about ironPython would be great.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/01892352754222143463 Doug

    Thanks for the great feedback, everyone! I’ll definitely add these ideas to the list.

    @anonymous (1): Hacking on the C implementation of the interpreter is a great topic. Maybe someone who has implemented a language feature recently would be interested in writing about the experience?

    @kib2: I plan to do a survey of development tools in my column, soon. When you say plugins, did you have any particular apps in mind?

    @anonymous (2): Regarding IronPython, I would like to see a comparison of the features of the various interpreter implementations. What language version, restrictions, benefits, etc. each has.