Questions about python

[Linda Seltzer]

Dear Friends,

Some members of this list have recommended python.  I downloaded it and
have some questions.
(1) I downloaded the version for Windows.  The installer made what seem to
be two executable files, python and pythonw.  What is the difference?
(2) The documentation talks about ttys and interactive programming.  Is
there an IDE for python, with a debugger.  (I don't see the advantage of
python if there is no IDE / workspace and debugger.)

Thank you for any information.

Linda Seltzer
lseltzer@...
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[Michael Gogins]

Python comes with an IDE with basic symbolic debugging called Idle.

python.exe is a console application in which one can interact with Python
(it also can be used as a debugger, but not as easily as can Idle).

pythonw.exe runs Python scripts without printing any messages. This is
commonly used for executing Python programs that have event-driven graphical
user interfaces.

Emacs has a Python mode.

There are number of 3rd party IDEs for Python, including some commercial
ones.

As for me, I use either the open source text editor SciTE (also has a Python
mode) or Idle.

Even without a debugger, Python would be easier than most other languages.
You just put in print statements and take them out. There is no compile and
link cycle so that is just about as fast, perhaps even faster, than using
the debugger. I hardly ever use the debugger but I do use lots of print
statements.

Hope this helps,
Mike

----- Original Message -----
From: "Linda Seltzer" <lseltzer@...>
To: <music-dsp@...>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 9:35 PM
Subject: [music-dsp] Questions about python


Dear Friends,

Some members of this list have recommended python.  I downloaded it and
have some questions.
(1) I downloaded the version for Windows.  The installer made what seem to
be two executable files, python and pythonw.  What is the difference?
(2) The documentation talks about ttys and interactive programming.  Is
there an IDE for python, with a debugger.  (I don't see the advantage of
python if there is no IDE / workspace and debugger.)

Thank you for any information.

Linda Seltzer
lseltzer@...
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[Georg Holzmann-2]

Hallo!

> (2) The documentation talks about ttys and interactive programming.  Is
> there an IDE for python, with a debugger.  (I don't see the advantage of
> python if there is no IDE / workspace and debugger.)

You can use Eclipse as an IDE/debugger.
But if you work in the dsp world you will also want to install numpy,
scipy, matplotlib and so on ... so recently there was an annoucement of
an distribution of all that packages (including ecpilse) for windows:
   http://www.pythonxy.com/
There you should find most of the things you will need.

LG
Georg
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[Victor Lazzarini]

If you are into 'interactive' scripting, then I would recommend ipython,
which is a much improved interpreter. It is an excellent companion to
scipy/numpy/matplotlib. I am using this now for my work, as I never
liked matlab/octave as a language (and thus never learned it properly).
I think it is a good alternative to it, because Python is IMHO a really
good scripting language.

Victor

----- Original Message -----
From: "Linda Seltzer" <lseltzer@...>
To: <music-dsp@...>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 2:35 AM
Subject: [music-dsp] Questions about python


Dear Friends,

Some members of this list have recommended python.  I downloaded it and
have some questions.
(1) I downloaded the version for Windows.  The installer made what seem to
be two executable files, python and pythonw.  What is the difference?
(2) The documentation talks about ttys and interactive programming.  Is
there an IDE for python, with a debugger.  (I don't see the advantage of
python if there is no IDE / workspace and debugger.)

Thank you for any information.

Linda Seltzer
lseltzer@...
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[Georg Holzmann-2]

Hallo!

> If you are into 'interactive' scripting, then I would recommend ipython,
> which is a much improved interpreter. It is an excellent companion to
> scipy/numpy/matplotlib. I am using this now for my work, as I never
> liked matlab/octave as a language (and thus never learned it properly).

yes, me too ;)
BTW: ipython is also included in the pythonxy disctribution ...

If there are now some audio+DSP people starting to use python instead of
matlab, a portal for sharing scripts would be quite nice (like e.g.
Matlabs central file exchange -
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange).
I wrote quite some scripts for my thesis which could be useful for
others too - or are there other places for that ?

LG
Georg
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[David Cournapeau]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 5:46 PM, Georg Holzmann <grh@...> wrote:
>
>  If there are now some audio+DSP people starting to use python instead of
> matlab,

I think a lot of people use the python + ipython + numpy/scipy +
matplotlib stack as a replacement to matlab. Many people who are now
significant contributors to some parts of this stack came from matlab.
I did :)

>  I wrote quite some scripts for my thesis which could be useful for others
> too - or are there other places for that ?

If the code is good enough, it can be included in scipy or scikits
(depending on the intent, license, etc...). Just send a message to the
scipy-dev mailing list, and I am sure you will get some feedback on
the best way to do things.

cheers,

David
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[Georg Holzmann-2]

Hallo!

>>  I wrote quite some scripts for my thesis which could be useful for others
>> too - or are there other places for that ?
>
> If the code is good enough, it can be included in scipy or scikits
> (depending on the intent, license, etc...). Just send a message to the
> scipy-dev mailing list, and I am sure you will get some feedback on
> the best way to do things.

Yes I know, but I think not all the scripts are good enough for scikits,
some are just some quick hacks but still could be useful for others ...
hm ...

LG
Georg
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[Conor J Curran]

Hi Linda

I use Python alot for my work both commercial and musical. With the use
of the command line interpreter debugging code is not so essential. Have
you come from a compiled language hence the need for debugging? What are
you intending to use it for ? i.e. what type of apps do you want to
write.

There are other more in vogue scripting languages around like Ruby. Ruby
as a language has some very nice features but does not have half the
available libraries for it as Python does. If you work in PD you could
use Pyex to use python to write externals ! Works nicely for simple
stuff but  can lock up PD due to threading issues.
http://grrrr.org/ext/py/
Many other dsp libraries have python interfaces - SndObj etc...
Twisted - a very nice asyncrhonous networking library. I use it all the
time at work and its very stable.


best of luck

Conor
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[Brett g Porter]

This was also posted to comp.lang.python in the last day or so, perhaps
of interest here:

Hi,

this might be of interest for people who are look for practical
information on
doing real-time signal processing, possibly using multiple CPUs, and
wonder
whether it's possible to use Python for audio-type worst case
latencies (around 25 ms).
I've done that in my PhD work, both with real-time requirements on
dual-CPU
64 bit platforms, and with very complex algorithms running on
multicomputers.

What I found is that numerical Python is a great environment for such
tasks. I've used it as well for massively parallel algorithms
(particle filters) for simulations of auditory scene analysis. What is
a very
special advantage is that if you get faster hardware, you can simply
copy your algorithms to a new system and compile - even if
it has a different CPU!

I've documented the approach in my PhD thesis, in Appendix A,
starting with some thoughts on developments in signal processing
in the last years. This piece is available online. Title and abstract
of that
chapter read as follows:

--------------------------------------------------------------
A real-time, script-based, multiprocessing Solution for experimental
Development of Signal Processing Algorithms

Evaluation of audio signal processing algorithms on real-time
platforms has
unique advantages. However, such environments also used to have the
disadvantage
of requiring expensive hardware, and tedious work to set them up,
while providing only a short useful life. This report proposes to
exploit advances
in hardware and software development by integrating real-time
processing
with script-based explorative development and use of multiprocessing
hardware.
The concept was implemented based on standard hardware and open
source software, and its realization and characteristics are presented
here. Applications
of the system for algorithm development and evaluation are described
briefly.

--------------------------------------------------------------


Here is the download link for several paper formats:

http://medi.uni-oldenburg.de/members/jnix/index.html#thesisdownload

Alternatively, for ISO A4 paper, use one of these two URLs:

http://medi.uni-oldenburg.de/download/paper/Nix,Johannes-PhDthesis-2005-ISO-A4-format.pdf
http://docserver.bis.uni-oldenburg.de/publikationen/dissertation/2006/nixloc05/nixloc05.html
(for that paper size, this are the PDF pages 155 - 163)



If you want to cite the chapter, e.g. when doing advocacy for
scientific
computing using SciPy, please do this as follows:

Nix, Johannes (2005), "A real-time, script-based, multiprocessing
Solution for experimental
Development of Signal Processing Algorithms", in: Localization and
Separation of Concurrent Talkers Based on Principles of Auditory Scene
Analysis and Multi-Dimensional Statistical Methods, Appendix A, Ph.D.
thesis, Universität Oldenburg, Germany.


Also, I am currently looking for interesting further work
opportunities
or contracts in the domain of scientific computing and statistical
estimation.
If you know some interesting position, don't hesistate to contact me.

Kind regards,

Johannes


--
Dr. Johannes Nix

Energy & Meteo Systems GmbH
Research & Development of windpower forecasts
Bremen, Germany
Phone: + 49 421 8963914



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[Victor Lazzarini]

and you can do plenty of Csound from Python too, both from
inside (python opcodes, like PD pyex) and from the outside, using
the csound API from Python.

Victor

At 12:40 29/04/2008, you wrote:

>Hi Linda
>
>I use Python alot for my work both commercial and musical. With the use
>of the command line interpreter debugging code is not so essential. Have
>you come from a compiled language hence the need for debugging? What are
>you intending to use it for ? i.e. what type of apps do you want to
>write.
>
>There are other more in vogue scripting languages around like Ruby. Ruby
>as a language has some very nice features but does not have half the
>available libraries for it as Python does. If you work in PD you could
>use Pyex to use python to write externals ! Works nicely for simple
>stuff but  can lock up PD due to threading issues.
>http://grrrr.org/ext/py/
>Many other dsp libraries have python interfaces - SndObj etc...
>Twisted - a very nice asyncrhonous networking library. I use it all the
>time at work and its very stable.
>
>
>best of luck
>
>Conor
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>dsp links
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Victor Lazzarini
Music Technology Laboratory
Music Department
National University of Ireland, Maynooth

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[Brad Garton-2]

There is also an option to compile Python as the front-end scripting
interface for RTcmix (http://rtcmix.org).  I haven't used it myself, but
a number of people have.

brad
http://music.columbia.edu/~brad


On Apr 29, 2008, at 12:14 PM, Victor Lazzarini wrote:

> and you can do plenty of Csound from Python too, both from
> inside (python opcodes, like PD pyex) and from the outside, using
> the csound API from Python.
>
> Victor
>
> At 12:40 29/04/2008, you wrote:
>> Hi Linda
>>
>> I use Python alot for my work both commercial and musical. With  
>> the use
>> of the command line interpreter debugging code is not so  
>> essential. Have
>> you come from a compiled language hence the need for debugging?  
>> What are
>> you intending to use it for ? i.e. what type of apps do you want to
>> write.
>>
>> There are other more in vogue scripting languages around like  
>> Ruby. Ruby
>> as a language has some very nice features but does not have half the
>> available libraries for it as Python does. If you work in PD you  
>> could
>> use Pyex to use python to write externals ! Works nicely for simple
>> stuff but  can lock up PD due to threading issues.
>> http://grrrr.org/ext/py/
>> Many other dsp libraries have python interfaces - SndObj etc...
>> Twisted - a very nice asyncrhonous networking library. I use it  
>> all the
>> time at work and its very stable.
>>
>>
>> best of luck
>>
>> Conor
>> --
>> dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website:
>> subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book  
>> reviews, dsp links
>> http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp
>> http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
>
> Victor Lazzarini
> Music Technology Laboratory
> Music Department
> National University of Ireland, Maynooth
>
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> links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://
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[Russell Borogove]

It's non-free, but I've used the WingIDE development environment for Python,
which does have a good debugger. However, it seemed to bog down somewhat
on non-trivial programs, so I mostlydebug python by assert and print now.
After
half a lifetime of working in C and C++, I find python amazingly more
productive
even without a debugger. Programming is fun again!

http://xkcd.com/353/

----- Original Message -----
Some members of this list have recommended python.  I downloaded it and
have some questions.
(1) I downloaded the version for Windows.  The installer made what seem to
be two executable files, python and pythonw.  What is the difference?
(2) The documentation talks about ttys and interactive programming.  Is
there an IDE for python, with a debugger.  (I don't see the advantage of
python if there is no IDE / workspace and debugger.)

--
dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website:
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http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp 
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[Bob Grove]

It's an interpreted language, so in terms of usefulness, think shell
scripts, PERL initially (at least that's what I did).

IDE/workspace/debugger here:

http://pydev.sourceforge.net/

This is a plug-in for Eclipse (www.eclipse.org).

If you do not use Eclipse, that's probably at this point a good IDE to learn
overall.  It's open source.  Learning curve can be a little sticky for some,
it's not quite the same as VC 6.0 although I find VS 2005/2008 team suite
obnoxious myself and Eclipse way superior as a IDE.

pythonw.exe doesn't automatically generated a MS-DOS console, or inherit
one.

In your downloaded on windows Python, under Python25\Doc

is a compiled HTML help.  Within there is a pretty good tutorial (a few
things out of place but overall pretty good)

If you know C and Matlab, Python is a piece of cake frankly to learn for the
basics.

Just go through the tutorial using the command line first and then move onto
the more heady topics.

For myself, looking to see what I could use it for, I started with running
scripts where I would have used a shell commands or a .bat file.



-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Borogove [mailto:kaleja@...]
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 11:07 PM
To: music-dsp@...
Subject: Re: [music-dsp] Questions about python

It's non-free, but I've used the WingIDE development environment for Python,
which does have a good debugger. However, it seemed to bog down somewhat
on non-trivial programs, so I mostlydebug python by assert and print now.
After
half a lifetime of working in C and C++, I find python amazingly more
productive
even without a debugger. Programming is fun again!

http://xkcd.com/353/

----- Original Message -----
Some members of this list have recommended python.  I downloaded it and
have some questions.
(1) I downloaded the version for Windows.  The installer made what seem to
be two executable files, python and pythonw.  What is the difference?
(2) The documentation talks about ttys and interactive programming.  Is
there an IDE for python, with a debugger.  (I don't see the advantage of
python if there is no IDE / workspace and debugger.)

--
dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website:
subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp
links
http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp 
http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp


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[banzaii]

Hi!

Yesterday I stumbled across a nice math project while searching for a  
free alternative to mathlab: Have a look at sage (http://
www.sagemath.org/). As far as I know up to now, it seems to be also  
python based and combines some math programs in one program. So, you  
can write functions in python (it seems to be possible to compile  
them also to c code from that program and immediately use them in  
your equations...nice...).
There are also plugins so that you can use functions from external  
programs like mathlab etc.

I am sorry, I cannot tell more about it - I am quite new to dsp  
programming and especially sage is absolutley new to me.

What I haven't found yet is a possibility to load a soundfile into  
this and apply calculations to it, but I think this should be  
possible via python.

Hope it helps and is not too off-topic.

greetings,
Kai-Philipp Schoellmann
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