For a couple years now myself and a few others have been hinting that a totally new way to develop wxPython is possible and is just over the horizon. I'm happy to announce that the project is finally moving beyond the pie-in-the-sky stage and that development of the tools has begun. More details are available in the wxPython wiki, and you can join the discussion about the project in the wxPython-dev mail list.
The 2.9.1.1 release of wxPython is now available for download at http://wxpython.org/download.php. This is the first official release in the 2.9 development release series. There are lots and lots of new widgets and other awesome stuff that have been added since the 2.8 series, with more to come in future releases. A list of changes can be seen at http://wxpython.org/recentchanges.php. Also new with this release is a build for Mac OSX and Python 2.7 that uses the Cocoa API and supports the 64-bit architecture on OSX 10.5 and 10.6.
Various binaries are available for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and also for OSX using the Carbon and Cocoa APIs, for Python 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7. And source code is also available at http://wxpython.org/download.php of course, for building your own.
Whyteboard, a useful application written using wxPython for the GUI, was just noticed over at SourceForge. Congrats Sproaty!
The best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us, may be the first tothrow the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads.
The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer. He will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings, and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.
If fortune drives the master forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.
George Graham Vest, 1870
This announcement from the PLplot project, and this report about it from Slashdot tout the ten thousandth commit to PLplot's source repository. My response? "Big deal!" Both the Python and wxWidgets projects are about the same age as PLplot and the wx repository currently has almost 61,000 commits, and the Python repository has over 73,000 commits. While those numbers are impressive considering that they represent mostly volunteer unpaid time from dozens of developers, they still pale compared to other projects.
On the other hand, the number of commits is really a very poor metric to measure open source projects by. Much more impressive is the number of users who would rather be using the software than anything else that could compete with it.
Ever have one of those moments when you see some product or service and you think, "Doh! I should have thought of that!" because it is something that makes so much sense to you that you can't believe that you hadn't invented it yourself long before? Well I had one of those moments today with Dropbox. Dropbox is a cool service that integrates versioned shared storage on a centralized server with your Mac, Windows or Linux desktops. Syncronizing files between your computers, whereever they are located, is as simple as dragging the files into your dropbox. New or changed files are automatically replicated to your dropbox on the other computers. If existing files are changed then only the deltas are transported across the wire, in a rsync-like fashion.
Besides the simple file sharing among your own computers, there are some other nice features there too. Files are private by default, but there is a Public folder where you can put files you want to share with others, and you can easily get a public URL for them to paste into emails or IM messages. You can also create a shared folder that you share with other Dropbox users. Any changes you make in your shared folder are instantly updated to the other users' copy of the shared folder, and their changes are replicated back to you. In addition to all of that, you can easily get back to prior versions of changed files, and you can undelete files that have been deleted. And as if that wasn't enough, there is another special folder type that is an automatic photo gallery, you just need to drag the photos you want to share to a Photos folder and the rest is automatic.
You get 2GB of space for free, and you can get up to 50GB for $10 per month or $99 per year. If you sign up with this referal link then you and I will both get an extra 250MB.
Finally, here is the real kicker: The Dropbox user interface (setup wizard, preferences dialog, task bar icon, etc.) is written in wxPython! If the user ID I saw when I signed up is related in some way to the number of users (it is just a number so that may be possible) then that means that there are about three quarters of a million users running a wxPython application on their computers and they may not even know it. Good job guys, I'm impressed!
A number of people have asked me about it and so I finally decided that it is high time that I give the whole twitter thing a try. Of course I've gotten into it late enough that my usual user name, RobinD is already taken, although that page returns an error. (I suspect that somebody got their account suspended...) Strangely enough somebody has already registered the wxPython name, although they haven't tweeted anything since last July... Anyway, if you'd like to follow me or send me messages on twitter I am known there as RobinD42. Bear with me while I take my first steps in this new environment...