[Pythonmac-SIG] FAQ item

[Glenn Andreas]

At 10:41 PM +0200 7/29/03, Jack Jansen wrote:
>On dinsdag, jul 29, 2003, at 22:05 Europe/Amsterdam, Glenn Andreas wrote:
>
>>At 9:41 PM +0200 7/29/03, Jack Jansen wrote:
>>>On dinsdag, jul 29, 2003, at 19:18 Europe/Amsterdam, Glenn Andreas wrote:
>>>>PyOXIDE does syntax coloring (and the next version should work 
>>>>correcty with 2.3), but it doesn't have the debugger that 
>>>>PythonIDE does (yet - it will soon though).  It is, however, 
>>>>making extremely good progress (last night I added a simple 
>>>>module help/documentation window that uses pydoc) - it is really 
>>>>amazing how powerful Python + PyObjC + Cocoa really is.
>>>
>>>Glenn,
>>>there were some questions here about your binary-only release of 
>>>PyOXIDE, and
>>>I don't recall seeing an answer from you yet on the subject of 
>>>PyOXIDE licensing.
>>
>>The current plan is freeware but the source to the Objective C 
>>portion is not available (but all the python portion is).  The 
>>problem is that the editor is actually part of my Palm development 
>>IDE and so it still pretty well entangled (I plan to clean this up, 
>>but partially by bring _more_ of the IDE over, with things such as 
>>"projects").
>
>This is going to be a real problem. One of the reasons (AFAIK) that 
>the Apple is looking
>only at the engine part of MacPython and not the tools is that the 
>tools depend on Waste.
>And while Waste is available in source form the license is hairy 
>enough that they
>can't touch it.
>
>And even though for Python itself we're easier with licensing issues 
>(I was happy
>when I got permission from Marco Piovanelli, the waste author) 
>having something essential
>depend on something that is neither open source nor vendor supplied 
>is going to be a problem.

I see - makes sense.  Hopefully, this isn't going to be a major 
problem down the road, just currently (see below)

>
>  All in all, the source editor is still quite a ways off from being 
>a simple, stand-alone, drop-in, everything works, sort of thing (for 
>example, right now it assumes that every document belongs to a 
>project which keeps track of things such as break-points, as well as 
>additional symbols to color, completion dictionaries, "find 
>definition" double-click pop-ups, headers, etc... only some of which 
>are relevant right now to PyOXIDE).
>
>Is the code actually yours, or someone elses? If it is yours: could 
>you be tempted
>to put it under two licenses? Note that Python is *not* GPL, it is 
>BSD-style. So there
>are no problems with you distributing a non-open-source version of 
>your code in another
>product, nor with you moving fixes from the Python community to your 
>proprietary
>version.

It's all mine, mine, all mine!!!

Sorry.  I couldn't resist.  But the code is actually mine, so I can 
do whatever is needed...

So here's the basic idea - at some point I'll have the editor nicely 
separated out into it's own framework - I may even have the "project" 
handling done in a similar way.  The editor would then have little 
plug-ins for different languages (for things like syntax coloring, 
indent handling, function popups, etc... - these may even be written 
in python instead of their current ObjC), and it may well have 
built-in support for embedded python scripts (for use in something 
that isn't a Python IDE).  Those pieces, as well as the small obj-c 
skeleton with Python infrastructure to use these frameworks would be 
released as source code.

I just don't know what the timeframe is at this point - I'd rather 
try to figure out the features and underlying architecture than worry 
right now about cleaning things up to release them.

It's ironic, but just today there has been talk on the Cocoa mailing 
list about the desire for some sort of syntax coloring supporting 
editor window framework source project thingy (since "How do I make 
syntax coloring of an NSTextView work" is a fairly common question).

Glenn Andreas                      gandreas at delver.com
Author of Macintosh games: Theldrow 2.3, Blobbo 1.0.2, Cythera 1.0.2
Be good, and you will be lonesome