[Pythonmac-SIG] My stab at a new page

[gandreas at gandreas.com]

On Feb 9, 2006, at 1:32 PM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
> If I'm a newbie, I'm going to go, "Huh?", then "shrug," and move on to
> Realbasic. There needs to be something double-clickable there for a
> newbie to use. PythonIDE, though it had many flaws, was useful this  
> way.
>  BTW, what happened to PyOXIDE? It had major bugs, but was  
> promising as
> a "next-generation" basic IDE for Python development on the Mac.


PyOXIDE isn't dead - it's just sleeping.

Seriously, there are several issues:

1) Lack of available time
2) It mostly does everything _I_ need (I actually use it on a fairly  
regular basis, and I have no burning need to add new features)
3) It needs to basically be re-written - it started as an editor with  
python embedded in it (i.e., use the python.framework and the various  
python embedding routines).  Unfortunately, with 2.4 and the  
corresponding PyObjC, that just plain doesn't work well - PyObjC  
pretty much requires the thing to be a PyObjC-based application  
("application embedded in python"), instead of an application  
embedding python.
4) The whole "what version, what extensions" mess that is being  
discussed here (sometimes I need to use the quartz binding stuff,  
which precludes other things, for example)
5) The whole "what is the goal/underlying philosophy" problem that is  
tangentially being discussed here (personally, I write just simple  
scripts that end up being run on the command line, but I like the  
"interactive" form that the old PythonIDE & PyOXIDE provide where you  
can repeatedly run the same script, have an interactive console  
attached to that name space to examine things, call stuff, etc...  
which obviously doesn't work the same for somebody building a PyObjC  
standalone app vs wxPython app vs beginner who just wants to learn  
how to do something)

So given #2, it hasn't been worth my time (#1) to solve #4 & #5 (I've  
at least got a plan for #5 which should help reduce the scope of #4)  
and overcome #3.

I really should at least release the 2.4 (partial) supporting build,  
not to mention there are a ton of bug fixes in the underlying IDEKit  
it's built on...


Glenn Andreas                      gandreas at gandreas.com
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