Rst2pdf 0.16 is out!

2010-10-06 21:39

Finally, a new release of rst2pdf!

You can get it at its site: http://rst2pdf.googlecode.com

rst2pdf is a tool to convert restructured text (a light, cool markup language) to PDF using reportlab instead of LaTeX.

It has been used for many things, from books, to magazines, to brochures, to manuals, to websites and has lots of features:

Font embedding (TTF or Type1 fonts)
Cascading Stylesheets
Extremely flexible plugin architecture (you can do things like render the headings from arbitrary SVG files!)
Sphinx integration.
Configurable page layouts
Custom cover pages via templates
And much, much more...

The biggest change in 0.16 is surely the improved support for Sphinx 1.0.x so if you are using Sphinx, you really want this version.

Also, it has a ton of bugfixes, and a few minor but useful new features.

Here's the whole changelog if you don't believe me:

Fixed Issue 343: Plugged memory leak in the RSON parser.
Fix for Issue 287: there is still a corner case if you have two sections with the same title, at the same level, in the same page, in different files where the links will break.
Fixed Issue 367: german-localized dates are MM. DD. YYYY so when used in sphinx's template cover they appeared weird, like a list item. Fixed with a minor workaround in the template.
Fixed Issue 366: links to "#" make no sense on a PDF file
Made definitions from definition lists more stylable.
Moved definition lists to SplitTables, so you can have very long definitions.
Fixed Issue 318: Implemented Domain specific indexes for Sphinx 1.0.x
Fixed Index links when using Sphinx/pdfbuilder.
Fixed Issue 360: Set literal.wordWrap to None by default so it doesn't inherit wordWrap CJK when you use the otherwise correct japanese settings. In any case, literal blocks are not supposed to wrap at all.
Switched pdfbuilder to use SplitTables by default (it made no sense not to do it)
Fixed Issue 365: some TTF fonts don't validate but they work anyway.
Set a valid default baseurl for Sphinx (makes it much faster!)
New feature: --use-numbered-links to show section numbers in links to sections, like "See section 2.3 Termination"
Added stylesheets for landscape paper sizes (i.e: a4-landscape.style)
Fixed Issue 364: Some options not respected when passed in per-doc options in sphinx.
Fixed Issue 361: multiple linebreaks in line blocks were collapsed.
Fixed Issue 363: strange characters in some cases in math directive.
Fixed Issue 362: Smarter auto-enclosing of equations in $...$
Fixed Issue 358: --real--footnotes defaults to False, but help text indicates default is True
Fixed Issue 359: Wrong --fit-background-mode help string
Fixed Issue 356: missing cells if a cell spawns rows and columns.
Fixed Issue 349: Work correctly with languages that are available in form aa_bb and not aa (example: zh_cn)
Fixed Issue 345: give file/line info when there is an error in a raw PDF directive.
Fixed Issue 336: JPEG images should work even without PIL (but give a warning because sizes will probably be wrong)
Fixed Issue 351: footnote/citation references were generated incorrectly, which caused problems if there was a citation with the same text as a heading.
Fixed Issue 353: better handling of graphviz, so that it works without vectorpdf but gives a warning about it.
Fixed Issue 354: make todo_node from sphinx customizable.
Fixed bug where nested lists broke page layout if the page was small.
Smarter --inline-links option
New extension: fancytitles, see //ralsina.me/weblog/posts/BB906.html
New feature: tab-width option in code-block directive (defaults to 8).
Fixed Issue 340: endnotes/footnotes were not styled.
Fixed Issue 339: class names using _ were not usable.
Fixed Issue 335: ugly crash when using images in some specific places (looks like a reportlab bug)
Fixed Issue 329: make the figure alignment/class attributes work more like LaTeX than HTML.
Fixed Issue 328: list item styles were being ignored.
Fixed Issue 186: new --use-floating-images makes images with :align: set work like in HTML, with the next flowable flowing beside it.
Fixed Issue 307: header/footer from stylesheet now supports inline rest markup and substitutions defined in the main document.
New pdf_toc_depth option for Sphinx/pdfbuilder
New pdf_use_toc option for Sphinx/pdfbuilder
Fixed Issue 308: compatibility with reportlab from SVN
Fixed Issue 323: errors in the config.sample made it work weird.
Fixed Issue 322: Image substitutions didn't work in document title.
Implemented Issue 321: underline and strikethrough available in stylesheet.
Fixed Issue 317: Ugly error message when file does not exist

People believe anything on the Internet.

2010-10-06 13:21

I just saw this on a place I won't bother linking:

This october has 5 fridays, 5 saturdays and 5 sundays. This happens only every 823 years. And I am grounded all month!

Really, it's not worth linking to because it's everywhere

There are variations, of course, 5 sunday/monday/tuesdays, different months, etc.

But why are people falling for that? I mean, it's pretty obvious if you think 2 minutes that there's no way it can be true!

The length of october is fixed (31 days).
Since weeks are 7 days, you have 4 weeks + 3 days in october.
If october starts on a friday, those last three days are going to be friday/saturday/sunday.

So, for this thing to be true, October 1st would have to be a friday only once every 823 years. Sounds pretty stupid when you say it that way, right?

I really have no idea how anyone with half a brain can fall for it, but I have seen people I know have a functional cortex do it. Comments encouraged :-)

Como ser un nerd en argentina y no morir en el intento

2010-10-04 20:45

This is a spanish-only post, it makes no sense for any english-readers: it's about how to buy electronics in Argentina.

Intro

Ser un nerd en Argentina tiene muchos problemas. Uno de ellos es que los precios que nos quieren cobrar por casi cualquier chiche electrónico es ridículo.

Otro de los problemas es que el 99% de la gente no sabe como hacer para que no les afanen de esa manera. Y ojo, no hablo de contrabandear, hablo de usar tus derechos y tus recursos legales. Aclaro: no soy abogado, si siguiendo estos consejos vas preso, es cosa tuya, yo digo lo que creo que está bien nomás.

Así que estimados lectores, acá está mi guía para comprar chiches sin tener que empeñar un riñón (que también es ilegal, ya que estamos).

Lo primero que necesitás es paciencia. Algunos de los mecanismos que te voy a contar llevan uno o dos meses, o requieren colaboración de terceros. Pero bueno, somos nerds, resolver problemas es lo nuestro.

Chucherías Chinas

Tengo un bonito microscopio de bolsillo de 80x que me compró mi esposa. Costo? $90. Es un juguete buenísimo, re educativo, y cuando tenía 6 años hubiera dado la figurita difícil (era la tarántula) por uno de estos.

Costo en china? U$S 9.39, con envío gratis

O sea, la mitad. Y como sale menos de U$S 25, de hecho es legal traerlo por correo y no pagás tasa de aduana.

De todas formas, probablemente no tengas que ir a la aduana porque....

Pero ponéle que pagás la tasa. Con tasa y todo, son U$S 15, o sea $60. Si pasás por la aduana a veces y no te molesta hacer cola un rato (llevate un libro)....

Pero es aún mejor. Porque en http://DealExtreme.com tenés un modelo de 150x por U$S 12! De hecho, tenés 36 modelos de microscopios!

Por ejemplo, en http://alibaba.com hay algo así como 35000 vendedores de tablets con Android. Alguna te va a servir ;-)

Ahora bien, supongamos que te decidiste y te encargaste algo de China o similar, qué tenés que saber:

Guardá la "factura" que te dá el sitio, y la URL del producto.

La factura suele ser un HTML, imprimílo. Cuando retirás en Aduana lo necesitás. No lo muestres de entrada! Sólo si te lo piden.
Andá dispuesto a pagar. Es al cuete discutir. Tené en cuenta que aún con lo de la aduana es barato, y no te hagas mala sangre.
Si vas tipo 10:30 suele haber poca gente.
Andá tranquilo, llevate algo para entretenerte porque en una de esas lleva un rato. Igual hay sillas, que se yó, no es la muerte de nadie.

Cómo Pagar

La más fácil es PayPal. Si tenés tarjeta de crédito es trivial.

El amigo que viene de afuera

Sí tenés un conocido que viaja al exterior con regularidad:

Podés comprar en USA y que te reciba y traiga las cosas.
Hasta U$S 300 (si el que viaja es argentino) no se paga aduana. Se paga el 50% por encima de esa cifra.
Si es un extranjero que trae una cosa propia "en uso" y te la vende acá, no creo que tengas que pagar importación (no estoy seguro)

Veamos un ejemplo!

Una HP mini comprada acá: $1999, o U$S 500
Comprada en USA: U$S 329.
- Pagando aduana con franquicia: U$S 345
- Pagando aduana full: U$S 495 (ahí no conviene ;-)

Pero que te parecería tener la misma netbook por U$S 180?

Bueno, resulta que HP (y todas las empresas) venden productos "refurbished" o sea reacondicionados. Normalmente no te vas a dar cuenta de nada, tienen un rayón mínimo, o algo así. Hoy la misma netbook estaba a U$S 179.90. Normalmente salen más o menos la mitad. Y vienen con garantía.

Y fijáte que la HP mini por U$S 180, pagando la aduana full... cuesta el 54% de lo que sale la nueva acá. Eso es negocio.

Alternativamente, Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) está muy cerca de Argentina. Y es muy barato comprar electrónicos ahí. Y tenés los U$S 300 de franquicia.

Pero hay más! Un ciudadano paraguayo que visita argentina puede traer ciertas cosas con ciertos límites. Hay que hablar con él y coordinar!

Si no conocés a nadie... bueno, andá de paseo a cataratas! Pasala bien! Y comprate una cámara o lo que sea en la excursión a Ciudad del Este.

Accesorios

No compres accesorios originales. Por ejemplo: la batería original de repuesto de mi eeePC 701? U$S 110, 3 elementos. La "trucha" de 6 elementos? U$S 40.

Conclusión

Ojalá sirva de algo, si tenés más tips ponelos en los comentarios!

Eric (Discworld, #9; Rincewind, #4)

2010-10-03 12:14

Author: Terry Pratchett
Rating: ★ ★ ★
See in goodreads

Review:

Clearly one of the lighter books in the series so far.

Making your app modular: Yapsy

2010-10-01 15:12

That a plugin architecture for a complex app is a good idea is one of those things that most people kinda agree on. One thing we don't quite agree is how the heck are we going to make out app modular?

One way to do it (if you are coding python) is using Yapsy.

Yapsy is awesome. Also, yapsy is a bit underdocumented. Let's see if this post fixes that a bit and leaves just the awesome.

Update: I had not seen the new Yapsy docs, released a few days ago. They are much better than what was there before :-)

Here's the general idea behind yapsy:

You create a Plugin Manager that can find and load plugins from a list of places (for example, from ["/usr/share/appname/plugins", "~/.appname/plugins"]).
A plugin category is a class.
There is a mapping between category names and category classes.
A plugin is a module and a metadata file. The module defines a class that inherits from a category class, and belongs to that category.

The metadata file has stuff like the plugin's name, description, URL, version, etc.

One of the great things about Yapsy is that it doesn't specify too much. A plugin will be just a python object, you can put whatever you want there, or you can narrow it down by specifying the category class.

In fact, the way I have been doing the category classes is:

Start with an empty class
Implement two plugins of that category
If there is a chunk that's much alike in both, move it into the category class.

But trust me, this will all be clearer with an example :-)

I will be doing it with a graphical PyQt app, but Yapsy works just as well for headless of CLI apps.

Let's start with a simple app: an HTML editor with a preview widget.

//ralsina.me/static/yapsy/editor1.jpeg — A simple editor with preview

Here's the code for the app, which is really simple (it doesn't save or do anything, really, it's just an example):

editor1.py

from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui, QtWebKit
import os, sys

class Main(QtGui.QWidget):
    def __init__(self):
        QtGui.QWidget.__init__(self)
        self.layout = QtGui.QVBoxLayout()
        self.editor = QtGui.QPlainTextEdit()
        self.preview = QtWebKit.QWebView()
        self.layout.addWidget(self.editor)
        self.layout.addWidget(self.preview)
        self.editor.textChanged.connect(self.updatePreview)
        self.setLayout(self.layout)

    def updatePreview(self):
        self.preview.setHtml(self.editor.toPlainText())

def main():
    # Again, this is boilerplate, it's going to be the same on
    # almost every app you write
    app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
    window=Main()
    window.show()
    # It's exec_ because exec is a reserved word in Python
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

But this application has an obvious limit: you have to type HTML in it. Why not type python code in it and have it convert to HTML for display? Or Wiki markup, or restructured text?

You could, in principle, just implement all those modes, but then you are assuming the responsability of supporting every thing-that-can-be-turned-into-HTML. Your app would be a monolith. That's where yapsy enters the scene.

So, let's create a plugin category, called "Formatter" which takes plain text and returns HTML. Then we add stuff in the UI so the user can choose what formatter he wants, and implement two of those.

Here's our plugin category class:

Of course what good is a plugin architecture without any plugins for it? So, let's create two plugins.

First: a plugin that takes python code and returns HTML, thanks to pygments.

See how it goes into a plugins folder? Later on we will tell yapsy to search there for plugins.

To be recognized as a plugin, it needs a metadata file, too:

And really, that's all there is to making a plugin. Here's another one for comparison, which uses docutils to format reStructured Text:

And here they are in action:

//ralsina.me/static/yapsy/editor2.jpeg — reSt mode

//ralsina.me/static/yapsy/editor3.jpeg — Python mode

Of course using categories you can do things like a "Tools" category, where the plugins get added to a Tools menu, too.

And here's the application code:

editor2.py

from categories import Formatter
from yapsy.PluginManager import PluginManager

class Main(QtGui.QWidget):
    def __init__(self):
        QtGui.QWidget.__init__(self)
        self.layout = QtGui.QVBoxLayout()
        self.formattersCombo = QtGui.QComboBox()
        self.editor = QtGui.QPlainTextEdit()
        self.preview = QtWebKit.QWebView()

        self.layout.addWidget(self.formattersCombo)
        self.layout.addWidget(self.editor)
        self.layout.addWidget(self.preview)

        self.editor.textChanged.connect(self.updatePreview)
        self.setLayout(self.layout)

        # Create plugin manager
        self.manager = PluginManager(categories_filter={ "Formatters": Formatter})
        self.manager.setPluginPlaces(["plugins"])

        # Load plugins
        self.manager.locatePlugins()
        self.manager.loadPlugins()

        # A do-nothing formatter by default
        self.formattersCombo.addItem("None")
        self.formatters = {}
        print self.manager.getPluginsOfCategory("Formatters")
        for plugin in self.manager.getPluginsOfCategory("Formatters"):
            print  "XXX"
            # plugin.plugin_object is an instance of the plugin
            self.formattersCombo.addItem(plugin.plugin_object.name)
            self.formatters[plugin.plugin_object.name] = plugin.plugin_object

    def updatePreview(self):
        # Check what the current formatter is
        name =  unicode(self.formattersCombo.currentText())
        text = unicode(self.editor.toPlainText())
        if name in self.formatters:
            text = self.formatters[name].formatText(text)
        self.preview.setHtml(text)

In short: this is easy to do, and it leads to fixing your application's internal structure, so it helps you write better code.

Full source code for everything.

Ralsina.Me — Roberto Alsina's website

Intro

Chucherías Chinas

Cómo Pagar

El amigo que viene de afuera

Accesorios

Conclusión

Review: