[Pythonmac-SIG] My stab at a new page

[gandreas at gandreas.com]

On Feb 10, 2006, at 11:27 AM, Bob Ippolito wrote:

>
> On Feb 10, 2006, at 7:24 AM, gandreas at gandreas.com wrote:
>
>>
>> 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.
>
> That's not true, and I've told you the correct way to fix that...   
> That's why py2app can build plugins.
>
> -bob
>


Perhaps "requires" is too strong a word - how about "is easiest to  
use if" instead?

Still, the current architecture of PyOXIDE (links with  
Python.framework, and calls the various PyRun_SimpleString,  
PyRun_SimpleFile and other commands as listed at <http:// 
ftp.python.org/doc/ext/embedding.html> via various UI callbacks,  
tries to manage the GIL, etc...) has a high impedance match against  
the way PyObjC works (since it wants to take care of all the details  
for you, made worse when _that_ code does UI work).  My point is that  
the better way is just to make PyOXIDE a py2app based creature from  
the start (and then python code calls the IDE framework), though  
moving all the python code into py2app generated plugins is an  
interesting option (with it's own benefits/drawbacks).

If it were trivial to fix, I'd have done it already...


Glenn Andreas                      gandreas at gandreas.com
  <http://www.gandreas.com/> wicked fun!
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