Now What? :o)

[Michel Pelletier]

-james wrote:
> 
> 
> I'm almost through the online tutorial, and I'm hooked. I don't see any info
> on coding GUI  forms though. Can anyone recommend a website, sample code, or
> a good book that covers how to do this?

All the Python books are good, the O'Reilly ones are good and the New
Riders one (I got to glance over it before it went to press) is
excellent also.

> Are GUI forms a platform dependant
> issue? 

Yup.  But there are GUI frameworks that are cross-platform, like
wxPython.

> I'm coming from a world of drag and drop and, from what I gather,
> this done programatically in python.

Not necesarily, if the framework you choose handles it in a way you
like.  What I think you're getting at is that you're used to MS
languages that assume the GUI is Win32.  Python can not make that
assumption, and why put all that dirtyness in the core of the language
anyway?  That's why python is modular, if you want wxPython, import it's
module, if you want windows, import the pythonwin module.
 
> I saw some conflicting articles on Amazon.com about source code On said
> python source must always be a text file; another one mentioned that python
> source code can kinda be compiled to byte code (forgive me if I'm off on
> this) and ran using a Java virtual machine. Is this true? 

Sorta.  Python source code is a text file.  CPython (commonly just
called python) compiles these files into *Python* bytecode which the
CPython interpreter can then run.  JPython compiles them into *Java*
bytecode which any JVM can run.

> Or are text files
> my only choice? How about pickle & unpickle? Where do they  fit in to this
> picture?

They are documented on the python site in the library reference.  

-Michel