Implementing EDI help

[James Lance]

Hello Pluggers,

I'm working on a project that requires building and parsing EDI  
files.  I'm taking the initial dive into the EDI world and it seems  
like the standards committees are pretty tight lipped about how to  
actually go about implementing it.

I need to be able to generate several files (for the curious I need  
850, 856 and 846) that deal with order fulfillment, inventory and ship  
confirmations.

I'm currently using Python for my platform, but I'm not finding a  
whole lot out there that is very helpful.  I found one tutorial that  
explained how to turn EDI into XML, but I'm still not sure how to  
actually generate raw EDI files.

Any help or pointers would be much appreciated.

-James Lance