Announcing The Second Python Workshop

Michael McLay (mclay@eeel.nist.gov)
Wed, 22 Mar 95 16:10:28 EST

Time to sign up for the second workshop. Seating at the facility is
limited, so please let us know as soon as possible if you would like
to attend. Updates to the shedule will be posted to URL:

http://www.cminds.com/python/misc/workshop2announce.html

-- 
Michael J. McLay
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Bld 220 Rm A357 (office), Bld 220 Rm B344 (mail)
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, (301)975-4099

<--- From URL: http://www.cminds.com/python/misc/workshop2announce.html ---->

The Second Python Workshop **************************

Workshop Announcement The Second Python Workshop is scheduled for May 22, 23, 24, and 25. It will be held in Menlo Park, CA at the U.S.G.S. facility. (Thanks go to Jim Fulton for making arrangements for the facility.) Call for Papers and for Volunteers Like the last workshop, we would like to have facilitators assigned to the different topic areas and position papers or white papers written prior to the meeting. As we did at the last workshop, all the proceedings will be put on the WWW. Please send papers to mclay@eeel.nist.gov to have them included in the proceedings. You do not have to attend the workshop to submit a paper and you don't have to submit a paper to attend the workshop. DEADLINES: It's the Web so there is no deadline. Please send in a title and abstract as soon as you can. We can always change them at a later date. Papers can also be sent in at any time. Workshop Fee This second workshop will not have a fee. Donations to cover the cost of a refreshments may be collected at the meeting.

We are fortunate in that this second meeting will be another freebee. In the future we expect it will be necessary to charge a fee for the workshops. Based on the typical IETF meeting charge, it will probably be between $100 and $150. Signing up for the Workshop To sign up to attend send an email to mclay@eeel.nist.gov. If you are planning on volunteering to lead a session, please indicate what sessions you would be interested in leading. Workshop Location

U.S. Geological Survey 345 Middlefield Road, Building 7 Menlo Park, California 94025-3591 (about 15-minutes south of the San Francisco airport)

The Workshop Agenda *******************

The Workshop dates will not change, but just about everything else on the schedule is still under discussion. A final schedule will be release after April 15th.

May 22 ++++++

PSA Steering Committee Meeting ==============================

The Python Software Association Steering Committee will meet at 6:00 PM on May 22 to discuss the formation of the PSA. If you are not on the Steering Committee and would like more information contact paul@cminds.com.

May 23, 24, and 25 ++++++++++++++++++

Workshop Sessions =================

The sessions will run from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM all three days. Donuts, Spam, and coffee will be available starting at 8:30. A detailed agenda will be posted sometime after April 15th.

We will need volunteers to chair each of the major topic areas. Facilitators will also be needed for each of the sub topic areas. Please don't be shy about volunteering.

Administrative Topics and Introductions =======================================

Moderator - Paul Everitt

o Welcome and introductions. (Michael McLay) o Discussion of meeting agenda. (??) o Python organizational issues. o Python Software Association status. - Report on the steering committee meeting. (Paul Everitt) o Business use of Python - Don't read too much into this. Python will remain freely available over the net. (Paul Everitt) o Participant presentations o Position papers - published on web page, brief 5 minute presentations the first morning. (Michael McLay) o Works in progress - sequence of compact sessions, 10 to 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for questions, to give people chance to present interesting works-in-progress. (Michael McLay)

Distributed Computing =====================

Moderator - ??

o Panel on Distributed Object Systems o ILU (Bill Janssen, or someone like him) o OpenDoc (Jed Harris, or someone like him) o CORBA (Mark Linton, or someone like him) o OLE (?? volunteers) o Objects on the net - pickle, shelf, remote import, safe Python (Guido?)

Extension Modules and Basic Applications ========================================

Moderator - ??

This is session is open. If you have an interesting extension or application you'd like to discuss, please speak up!

o Python and the web - (Paul Everitt) o Network security - authentication and cryptography (??) o Develop a core extension list (GUI, persistence, etc.)? (??) o User contributed

Graphical User Interfaces =========================

Moderator - ??

o Plurality of options - MFC wrapper, Fresco, wxPython, MacApp, etc. (??) o Tkinter - status of Tk 4.0. (??) o Microsoft Foundation Classes. (Mark Hammond and Sam Rushing) o Pesto. (Mark Linton, or someone like him) o Visual Python. (??) o A standard API and functional portability. (??)

Python Core ===========

Moderator - ??

o What's new in 1.2. (??) o Safe python. (??) o The python object/C/C++ API developments. (??) o Abstract objects layer. (Jim Fulton) o Overall framework - multiple layers - discussion of Guido / Mark Lutz / Jim Fulton's proposals. (??) o Extensible compound statements. (Jim Fulton) o Optimizations project. (??) o What's next. o Plans for releases 1.3, and 2.0. (??) o Wish list and futurism. o Proposal for a generic object API. (Jim Fulton) o Ideas on calling Python from an embedding environment. (??) o Proposals for optimizing function calls. (Jim Roskind) o Ideas on explicit preservation and context-style swapping of global interpreter state as a mechanism for maintaining multiple interpreters. (Gudio)

Software Management ===================

Moderator - ??

o Developments out of last workshop - docstrings, import. (??) o Where next - object discovery, environment browsers, what's most needed, and who's working on what? (??)