07/19/2000,
8:45am
to 10:15am
in Serra I & II
The personal computer revolution was initially driven by enthusiasts, propelled by their idealism and passion . My talk will compare the early days of the personal computer industry with the current situation of the open source movement. It will focus on my experiences at Apple, describing some of the key people at Apple and how their personalities worked their way into their products, especially dwelling on the development of the Macintosh computer. The talk will discuss the structural problems that ensnared the personal computer industry in the 1980s and articulate how the open source movement can help to resolve them. Finally, it will look at the challenges that lie ahead for the open source movement, emphasizing the crucial issue of usability, discussing what the community can do to make open source software easier to use for mainstream users.
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07/19/2000,
10:45am
to 12:15pm
in San Carlos III
Discover wxPython, a GUI toolkit for Python that is implemented as a wrapper around the open Source wxWindows cross-platform C++ class library (see http://www.wxwindows.org/). You'll come away from this introduction to wxPython with an overview of the commonly used classes, an understanding of the event system and how to use it, and window layout techniques. We'll conclude with a discussion of the resources available to the wxPython programmer.
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07/19/2000,
1:30pm
to 3:00pm
in San Carlos III
The Zope Object Database (ZODB) provides an object database for Python, including distributed databases using Zope Enterprise Objects (ZEO). Applications can use object database features with little change to application logic. In this presentation, usage of the database is described and illustrated with an example. Features such as a plug-able storage interface, rich transaction support, undo, the object cache, and client-server operation are discussed.
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07/19/2000,
3:30pm
to 5:00pm
in San Carlos III
The Department of Energy has provided a grant of $860,000 to fund development of
easier-to-use software engineering tools. All of the work will be Open Source,
and have a strong emphasis on design, testing, and documentation. The first
phase of the project is a two-round design competition with four categories:
Learn what it takes to get a nuclear weapons research laboratory to agree to do
Open Source work. In this session we will discuss the project's background and
goals as well as some of the most interesting entries received to date.
For more information, please see the announcement and FAQ at www.software-carpentry.com.
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07/20/2000,
8:45am
to 10:15am
in Serra I & II
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07/20/2000,
10:45am
to 12:15pm
in San Carlos III
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07/20/2000,
1:30pm
to 3:00pm
in San Carlos III
"Plug In Drawing, Does Little Else" ("PIDDLE") is a library for platform-independent vector graphics in Python. It can output drawings to Bitmap Images (via Python Imaging Library), PDF (via ReportLab), PostScript, Tkinter, wxPython, MacOS, OpenGL and a variety of other formats. This library is very important for anyone building GUI applications or outputting for both web and print. The session will cover how it works on various platforms, how to draw with PIDDLE, and charting libraries which can work with it, such as GRAPHITE and SNOW.
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07/20/2000,
3:30pm
to 5:00pm
in San Carlos III
Python threads are incredibly easy to use. In this demo session you'll learn how to use threads to pull down Web pages in parallel; the techniques are easily generalized to other kinds of I/O operations. You'll need a strong beginner knowledge of Python, and familiarity with urllib and HTMLlib would also be helpful.
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Session room assignments are subject to change.