[Pythonmac-SIG] PackMan

[Kevin Ollivier]

On Tuesday, July 29, 2003, at 01:49  PM, Jack Jansen wrote:

>
> On dinsdag, jul 29, 2003, at 22:36 Europe/Amsterdam, Kevin Ollivier 
> wrote:
>> Jack and all, if I agreed to rebuild PM this weekend in wxPython (and 
>> it works ^_-), would you be open to using that as a starting point 
>> for future development?
>
> I would very much like it if you redid PackMan in wxPython, and it 
> should be easy, see my other mail on the subject. It will, of course, 
> turn out not to be easy because I overlooked various things, but then 
> we'll fix those [*].

I'll take a look and see what I can do. =) Thanks for sending the 
footnote, it was kinda ominous not being there. ;-) (Kinda like "oh 
yeah, and just watch out for the .... ARRRGGGGHHHH!")

> I will not promise not to do a Cocoa version, though. MacPython 2.3 
> is, in my eyes, pretty much feature complete, but it's user-visible 
> components are butt-ugly (or does that word offend Americans? Then 
> read only "ugly" and blame it on my Irish ancestry:-).

I'm not offended by the word 'butt-ugly', in fact I think it makes the 
point much better than simply 'ugly' myself. ;-) But then again, I 
watch shows like Monty Python, South Park and Japanese Animation so it 
takes quite a bit to shock me. =)

I did have a thought or two on how to make the PM a little prettier... 
We'll see what you think when it's ready. =)

> At some point in the not-too-distant future I want to have a set of 
> tools that can compete with commercial offerings not only in 
> functionality but also in look and feel and ease of use.

Hmmm... We're very much in agreement here. =) BTW, I think the 
PythonCard code editor is quite good in this regards. It offers syntax 
coloring, code folding, tab/space conversion (possibly even 
autocomplete now?) and personally it's the most complete Python IDE 
I've seen for any platform. I think it already does compete with 
commercial offerings - in fact, I think it beats them. ;)

Oh, and I have a quick question regarding Cocoa - Are the graphics API, 
etc. somehow offer a superset of Carbon's functionality or does it 
basically do what Carbon does, only with a simpler/more intuitive API? 
If it's the former, than wxCocoa may mean you can have PM 
cross-platform and get your dose of Cocoa too. If the latter, well then 
it sounds like the point of making a Cocoa version is because it's just 
so pleasant to do. =)

Thanks,

Kevin