Python:C++ interfacing. Tool selection recommendations

[Mike Meyer]

> (I wonder, by the way, if it's a good idea to provide a very rich interface
> between an application and embedded Python. I have no experience in the
> area, but intuition tells me that simplicity and minimalism is important.
 
So long as you distinguish between minimalist and the bare minimum. My
experience with using and building systems with embedded interpreters
shows that you can never tell what a user will want to do. If you
provide some functionality that can't be invoked from the embedded
python, you can guarantee that some user somewhere will want that
functionality.

So your "minimal" interface should include the ability to do anything
that the application user can do from whatever interface you
provide. That may include functionality that the environment normally
provides for manipulating your application - unless the environment
provides tools for scripting that functionality.

> How well has this worked out in past projects?)

Applications that fail to provide complete functionality have worked
out poorly, usually leaving me frustrated. The most recent example is
Apple's Terminal application in OS X. I want to open a new window,
make it use a font other than the default font, resize the window,
then launch an application in that window passing it an argument from
the command line. This can't be automated because Apple left part of
the functionality out of their scripting interface. As a result, I'm
reduced to using xterm - which has problems of it's own.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.