[BioPython] Europython 2002

[Jeffrey Chang]

Thanks a lot!  This is very useful.

Jeff


On Sat, Jun 29, 2002 at 03:18:00PM +0200, Thomas Hamelryck wrote:
> 
> Hi Bio-pythoneers,
> 
> I thought a small report on the Europython meeting (Charleroi, Belgium, so 
> close to home for me) with a focus on the bio-talks (and talks that were for 
> some reason of special interest) would be interesting for you.... 
> 
> Yair Benita gave a nice and very understandable overview of Biopython. There 
> were quite some questions afterwards as well. Good job, Yair!
> 
> Alexander Fayolle (Logilab, Inc.) gave a talk on python & XML. He e.g. 
> described the differences between the different XML modules out there (speed, 
> API, etc.). XML is of course ideal to store configuration info. BTW, does 
> Biopython use XML somewhere?
> 
> Paul Dubois (Numerical python) gave a very general talk on steering compiled
> code with python. He emphasized design-by-contract using assert in python, 
> and advised everybody to read the classic article on eiffel.com.
> 
> Konrad Hinsen (the author of MMTK) gave a very nice talk. Main topic for me 
> was paralelization of python code using the BSP approach (which basically 
> completely decouples communication between nodes & computation). He gave some 
> code examples that looked _very_ cool and simple to use. 
> 
> Martin von Loewis talked about memory management in python 2.3. I was pretty 
> surprised (and I was not the only one - some big shots jumped up as well) to 
> hear that you have to add some special code to your C modules to make sure 
> that cyclic references get recycled in python 2.2 and up. 
> 
> Andy Robinson gave a very impressive talk on ReportLab. It seems to be a 
> great tool to create all kinds of scientific reports, and can create PDF 
> files. I believe Biopython uses Reportlab's stuff somewhere...
> 
> Bernhard Herzog gave a talk on Sketch, a vector drawing pacakage. It is 
> completely extensible in python, and you can use Sktech as a library as well 
> I gather. It looks very impressive and fast. 
> 
> Dinu Gherman gave a talk on python & SVG (scalable vector graphics). Again, 
> this seems to be very suitable to create all kinds of diagrams and drawings.
> 
> All in all it was a nice meeting.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -Thomas
>   
> ---
> Thomas Hamelryck      Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
> Intitute for Molecular Biology           ULTR Department
> Paardenstraat 65   1640 Sint-Gensius-Rode    Belgium
>               http://ultr.vub.ac.be/~thomas
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