Python library ideas

Suggestions that involve working on various third-party libraries that aren't part of the Python source tree.

• Create a Pythonic auto-upgrade framework to allow scripts to update themselves to newer versions.

• Add EPS import to ReportLab PDF library

  • http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.reportlab.user/4052

• make [http://www.spread.org/ Spread] Python Binding compile with Python 2.4 on win32 (and possibly other major platforms)

• Revive the code or idea from [http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python_gui/ PyGUI] or [http://anygui.sourceforge.net/ Anygui]

  • These are Python-level cross-toolkit compatibility libraries for GUI work. Currently there is a "live" project called [http://developer.berlios.de/projects/cimarron/ Cimarron] along these lines. (PyGUI is not a dead project, however Anygui is)

• NotebookInterfaceForIpython

• ../PygameOnCtypes

• Develop the Visual Designer and help update the documentation of [http://dabodev.com/ Dabo].

  • Dabo is a framework for creating 3-tier desktop applications. The UI tier is a wrapper around [http://www.wxpython.org/ wxPython] that greatly streamlines and simplifies the wxPython API, and the Designer is a RAD tool for visually developing UI interfaces.

• Psyco for MacOSX. PPC, and universal binary versions. (Note: unlikely to find a mentor)
• Create a bunch of modules like what Squeak has for 3D modeling, events etc. (the exact list may be somewhat different, I haven't researched this in any depth). This is inspired by a recommendation from Alan Kay made at the Shuttleworth workshop. (Would the (GPL) soya3D projects be relevant here?)

• Design and implement an interface for manipulating both [http://www.openoffice.org/product/calc.html Calc] and [http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/ Gnumeric] spreadsheets (in the same way that DB-API allows programs to interact with a variety of databases).

• Write an IPC or RPC package to allow for concurrent Python execution. Compare with http://rpyc.sourceforge.net

• Implement ctypes support for GCC ARM platforms. The underlying issue is lack of closure API support for ARM in libffi. A patch available at http://handhelds.org/~pb/arm-libffi.dpatch, that should be hopefully a good starting point. ctypes CVS has a libffi_arm_wince directory, which also seems to support closure API.

• Create a Python web app server, synthesized from the many options already available, with an eye towards the total developer experience.

• Integrate a Javascript interpreter with Python. [http://webcleaner.sourceforge.net/ WebCleaner] has some initial work; so extracting, documenting, and refining that code would be in order. The whole spec is probably too much, but you could focus on langauge support, or on "what typical web pages actually need".

• Implement [http://www.ieee802.org/1/pages/802.1x.html IEEE Std 802.1X] Authenticator for wired networks,with one of the low-level python networking libraries: [http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/ scapy],[http://twistedmatrix.comTwisted.Pair],[http://pycap.sourceforge.net/ pycap] or maybe something else.Probably some python firewall bindings will be needed too.

• PyGame Projects

  • Implement CodingProjectIdeas/PygameOnCtypes

  • Make a pygame plugin for IE, netscape. CodingProjectIdeas/PythonWebPlugin

  • ../PygameGui

  • ./SimpleNetworkingForPygame

• Data mining in Python (e.g., adding a new data mining algorithm or tool to the Orange data mining suite, develop a new widget for text mining or 3-D data visualization, develop Orange interface to R or alike, port Orange to Mac OS X, [http://www.ailab.si/orange])

• Add a wxPython/wax based object browser to the ipipe module which will be part of the next release of [http://ipython.scipy.org/ IPython] (more info on the [http://projects.scipy.org/ipython/ipython/wiki/GoogleSommerOfCode2006 IPython wiki]).

• Implement a pure python library that handles unicode [http://www.unicode.org/cldr/ CLDR]. (like ICU?)

• Take an existing set of sources for M2Crypto and build a robust distribution from it. This should include comprehensive API documentation, a full test suite, and providing a better Python interface, not just a light wrapper around openssl, for many of the functions like X.509 certificates that are not currently exposed.

• Work on [http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ SAGE], which is a Python-based free open source computer algebra system. SAGE is the algebraic analogue of [http://www.scipy.org scipy]---it incorporates and "glues together" a wide range of existing open-source mathematics packages such as Maxima, Matplotlib, and GAP. Here's a [http://sage.scipy.org/sage/projects list of projects] and an [mailto:wstein@gmail.com email contact].

• Conduct a review of one chunk of functionality in [http://www.scipy.org scipy] similar to the one currently in progress about [http://projects.scipy.org/scipy/scipy/wiki/StatisticsReview the statistics package]. Alternatively, add a chunk of functionality to scipy. Recently discussed requests have been bindings to [http://www.llnl.gov/casc/sundials/ SUNDIALS], sparse matrices in [http://www.netlib.org/lapack/lug/node121.html LAPACK packed storage formats], 3-D Delaunay tetrahedralization and natural neighbour interpolation, and porting the [http://www.ncrg.aston.ac.uk/netlab/index.php Netlab] neural network code to scipy.

• Add more plot types to the recently refactored [http://code.enthought.com/chaco/ Chaco] plotting library ([mailto:robert.kern@enthought.com contact]).

• Make [http://code.enthought.com/traits/ Traits UI] available to Qt, Tk, or GTK applications ([mailto:robert.kern@enthought.com contact]).

• Help make [http://ipython.scipy.org/ IPython's] capabilities available inside a wxPython application.

• Use [http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/constraints/cassowary/ Cassowary] or some other constraint solving library to implement automatic, "nice" GUI layout.

• Write general [http://pango.org/ Pango] bindings that can be used by Python libraries to do general text layout outside of PyGTK and pycairo.

• Help merge the codebases of [http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net matplotlib] and [http://code.enthought.com/chaco/ Chaco] ([mailto:jdhunter@nitace.bsd.uchicago.edu contact], [mailto:robert.kern@enthought.com contact]).

• Implement mathematical formula typesetting using TeX algorithms and TeX fonts but without needing a TeX installation.

• [http://www.soya3d.org/wiki/Soya Soya3d] Projects

  • add multi-texture support (bump/normals mapping, etc)
  • verse support for shapes and materials
  • improved exporters/importers (blender, etc)
  • cal3d per-bone and morph animations
  • improved ode integration
  • api reference and improved examples/tutorials

• Improve [http://yaml.org/ YAML] [http://pyyaml.org/ support in Python], e.g.,

  • make [http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PySyck Python support in Syck] (C extension) as complete as Ruby's

  • make [http://whytheluckystiff.net/syck/ Syck] support Unicode

  • contribute to [http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PyYAML PyYAML] (pure Python version)

• Review and consolidate libraries/ modules for, e.g., file metadata reading and writing (MS Word doc, PDF, GIF, MP3/ ID3)

• Choose some common modules and [http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/PythonEggs eggsify] them; write about it to promote more eggsification

• Extend the CodeCoverage module to extend into os.fork() and os.exec('python') calls. Fix Nose to facilitate this.

• Write a [http://www.scipy.org scipy] module that implements black-box, [http://statistik.wu-wien.ac.at/projects/arvag/index.html automatic random number generation] algorithms for the numerous probability distributions defined in [http://www.scipy.org/doc/api_docs/scipy.stats.distributions.html scipy.stats] ([mailto:robert.kern@enthought.com contact]).

• A more complete CD interface. [http://www.gnu.org/software/libcdio libcdio] is a library for Platform-dependent control and reading of a CD device. There is also some support for reading CD images (BIN/CUE CDRDAO, ISO) as though they were real devices. [http://freshmeat.net/projects/libcdio/?branch_id=62870 Some work] has been done to extend the API to Python, via SWIG. However this OO wrapping is not complete. In particular handling MMC (Multi-media) commands is missing and a CD-Paranoia interface (OO or not) is missing. All of the OO API's are fairly new, so if you feel you want to improve on the API, that's okay too.

• A python interface to [http://www.rabbitmq.com/ rabbitmq]. They have a java interface right now (the engine itself is written in erlang) so you could use it for "inspiration".

• Convince/help Trevor Perrin to make a full ssl interface (i.e., make [http://sourceforge.net/projects/tlslite tlslite] feature complete).

• Implement [http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlenc-core/ Xml Encryption] and [http://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/ Xml Signature] using lxml

  • First iterate on a "pure" python prototype (using tlslite or whatever) to create a clean API, and after that use pyrex to bind directly against Aleskey's xmlsec package for better performance (maybe both implementations could live together, a la ElementTree/cElementTree and StringIO/cStringIO). Another option is to use something from the [http://xmlsig.sourceforge.net/ xmlsig project].

  • Another try on the quest for a clean API: Use [http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=105 jsr105] and [http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=106 jsr106] for a reference (obviously using python idioms instead of the java ones).

Less fleshed-out ideas:

• An educational programming environment similar to [http://dewey.soe.berkeley.edu/boxer.html/index.html Boxer] for Python

  • Kind of a visual programming environment, where blocks are translated into "boxes" (along with a few other select ideas). One of the more conservative visual programming environments, and it seems very translatable to Python. Or maybe work on a decent programming environment for [http://pylogo.org PyLogo]. Boxer isn't a programming environment. I think this idea isn't fleshed out enough.

    • Having something similar to Simulink would be VERY useful in regards to the visual programming environment.

• A more complete version of Modelica in Python would also be useful http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw36/ernst.html or http://moncs.cs.mcgill.ca/people/ffan/report.dtml