Using browser as interface to python app

[Just van Rossum]

Sandy Norton wrote:

> I've just been prototyping a simple multi-threaded internet news
> monitor and have gotten to the point where I need to make a decision
> about the direction(s) the user interface might take: I've ruled using
> wxPython and Tkinter as I think a GUI is overkill, however I'm
> intrigued by the possibility of running a simple local webserver which
> would serve a set of webpages (with checkboxes, text fields, etc..)
> directly to a browser which would then allow the user to interact with
> the running python app.
> 
> I thought about using CGIHTTPServer in the Standard Lib but its use of
> forking doesn't make sense for Windows. OTOH, I'm also sure that
> there's a COM way to do this somehow, but I'd really like to try to
> make the end app as portable as possible. Another consideration is
> distribution footprint...(we wouldn't want the user to have to
> download and set up apache :-)
> 
> Any tips, pointers, advice whatsoever on this topic would be greatly
> appreciated.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Sandy Norton
> 
> FYI: I'm using Internet Explorer 5.0 and python 2.1.1 on win2K

Does pydoc -p <port> work under Windows? If yes, it might be a good
http server demo.

Just