Python component model

[Fredrik Lundh]

fumanchu wrote:

>> 4) Custom property and component editors: A component editor can present
>> a property editor or an editor for an entire component which the visual
>> design-time RAD environment can use to allow the programmer end-user of
>> the component to set or get component property values. Normally a design
>> time environment will present default property editors for each
>> component property type, but a component can override this.
> 
> This is the hard part. I believe Dabo has done some work in this space,
> but this is where the tight coupling comes in between code and tool, a
> coupling which Python has traditionally resisted.

that's not that hard on a pure technical level; even a "basic" tool
like IDLE can hook itself into an executing Python process.  once you're 
hooked up, you can inspect and modify most about everything.

for example, doing remote tweaking of live Tkinter widget trees is 
pretty straight-forward.

coming up with a good way to capture the modifications, and use them in 
your actual application, is a bit harder.  do you really want to replace 
plain old source code with some kind of more or less obscure resource 
files?

and designing a metadata vocabulary that's powerful enough to be useful 
for more than just one or a few target domains might be really hard.

</F>