[Pythonmac-SIG] Bob Ippolito's synopsis of Python(s) on OS X

[Jim Harrison]

on 3/31/04 10:45 AM, Kevin Ollivier at kevino at tulane.edu wrote:

> ...we are quickly working to resolve many of these issues on the wxPython
> front.
> 
> By summer, many of those graphics glitches you have seen will be gone,
> WebKit will most certainly be available, support for catching the basic
> AppleEvents (i.e. like Open) is now enabled, and quite possibly the
> DataBrowser will be more or less completely supported and utilized as
> the underlying control for both ListCtrls and TreeCtrls. Also, our
> latest CVS supports the "Brushed Metal" look, and also controls now
> also let you specify normal/small/mini size variants for a control. And
> that's just a summary, not a complete list. =)

Yay!! I'll also agree with another poster that basic cross platform
development is crucially important for many. We do our research development
on Macs (both the development machines and servers). We also use the same
machines to develop software that's used on a daily basis in our local
clinical laboratories and related health system areas for data analysis and
specialized quality control. I wish I could do this work in Cocoa/PyObjC,
but the fact is that most, but not all, deployment machines must be Windows.
So our choice for these smaller scale projects is either cross-platform
development or develop on Windows. We like the ability to develop on our
Macs and deploy on both Windows and Macs. We don't have a lot of extra time,
and if we couldn't develop in this way, the overhead would mean that most of
these project just wouldn't get done. At the moment we develop in either
python (for non-GUI utilities) or REALbasic for rapid GUI development.
Although RB is pretty good for cross platform RAD when your needs are basic
(heh), we'd really like to move to all Python. So we'll be watching wxPython
with a lot of interest.

Jim Harrison
Univ. of Pittsburgh