Fwd: ANNOUNCE: Optik 1.4 released

[Robert Olson]

fyi, argparsing for python. I think this is a package that's going to 
become part of the python standard library.

--bob

>Path: news.baymountain.net!not-for-mail
>From: Greg Ward <gward at python.net>
>Newsgroups: comp.lang.python.announce
>Subject: ANNOUNCE: Optik 1.4 released
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>Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 21:17:59 -0400
>
>Optik 1.4
>=========
>
>Optik is a powerful, flexible, extensible, easy-to-use command-line
>parsing library for Python.  Using Optik, you can add intelligent,
>sophisticated handling of command-line options to your scripts with very
>little overhead.
>
>Here's an example of using Optik to add some command-line options to a
>simple script:
>
>   from optik import OptionParser
>   [...]
>   parser = OptionParser()
>   parser.add_option("-f", "--file",
>                     action="store", type="string", dest="filename",
>                     help="write report to FILE", metavar="FILE")
>   parser.add_option("-q", "--quiet",
>                     action="store_false", dest="verbose", default=1,
>                     help="don't print status messages to stdout")
>
>   (options, args) = parser.parse_args()
>
>With these few lines of code, users of your script can now do the
>"usual thing" on the command-line:
>
>   <yourscript> -f outfile --quiet
>   <yourscript> -qfoutfile
>   <yourscript> --file=outfile -q
>   <yourscript> --quiet --file outfile
>
>(All of these result in
>   options.filename == "outfile"
>   options.verbose == 0
>...just as you might expect.)
>
>Even niftier, users can run one of
>   <yourscript> -h
>   <yourscript> --help
>and Optik will print out a brief summary of your script's optons:
>
>   usage: <yourscript> [options]
>
>   options:
>     -h, --help           show this help message and exit
>     -fFILE, --file=FILE  write report to FILE
>     -q, --quiet          don't print status messages to stdout
>
>That's just a taste of the flexibility Optik gives you in parsing your
>command-line.  See the documentation included in the package for
>details.
>
>
>AUTHOR, COPYRIGHT, AVAILABILITY
>-------------------------------
>
>Optik was written by Greg Ward <gward at python.net>
>
>The latest version of Optik can be found at
>   http://optik.sourceforge.net/
>
>Copyright (c) 2001 Gregory P. Ward.  All rights reserved.
>
>
>CHANGES IN OPTIK 1.4
>--------------------
>
>[editorial note: most significant code changes in Optik 1.4 were
>  made by David Goodger; except as noted below, David should be credited
>  with everything in this list!  I just rearranged some of his changes,
>  renamed a few thing, and put out the release.  --Greg]
>
>   * Factored the help-formatting code out of OptionParser into
>     some new classes (HelpFormatter and subclasses) in help.py.  This
>     should make it a lot easier to customize how help is formatted.
>
>   * Added the notion of "option groups": an OptionParser can now
>     contain several option groups, each which contains several options.
>     The main purpose of this is to enable sensibly-grouped help output,
>     but it opens up all sorts of interesting (and largely untested)
>     possibilities for code to throw whole option groups around instead
>     of individual options.  Added two new classes: OptionGroup, and
>     OptionContainer for code common to OptionParser and OptionGroup.
>     (OptionContainer should be invisible to programmers using Optik).
>
>   * Added the 'description' attribute and set_description() method to
>     both OptionParser and OptionGroup (actually OptionContainer, but
>     I just said that class was invisible).  Again, this is to make
>     help output more useful.
>
>   * Made it easier for OptionParser subclasses to decide whether
>     they should have the standard "help" option, by moving the logic
>     from class level to the _populate_option_list() method.
>
>   * Added the "choice" option type, which is just a string type
>     constrained to a fixed set of values.
>
>   * Added method get_default_values() to OptionParser.
>
>   * Rewrote how OptionParser recognizes abbreviated long
>     options; removed a redundant internal instance attribute.
>
>   * Simplify parsing logic in OptionParser a tad by relocating a loop
>     and renaming _process_arg() to _process_args().
>
>--
>Greg Ward <gward at python.net>                         http://www.gerg.ca/
>Jesus Saves -- and you can too, by redeeming these valuable coupons!
>
>--
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