Python script for mobile platforms -- suggested?

[Robert Dailey]

On 8/14/07, Jay Loden <python at jayloden.com> wrote:
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> XML is first and foremost a machine-parseable language, and a human-readable one second ;) I don't think this is particularly hard to read, but then I work with XML configuration files on a daily basis at work, so I may just be a terrible person to ask...
>
> I'm not sure I agree that you're not using XML as it was intended; you're mixing data and presentation, but it's still a document containing data. That's what XHTML is, and what the XML document definitions like OOXML are all about. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. My question would be a much simpler "why is this XML?".
>
> XML makes sense when you need a structured document, and sometimes that makes sense for configuration options or defining a structure, but it's not clear why you'd need it here. Is this something you're intending to make editable by the end user? If you're willing to replace it with Python scripts instead of XML documents, it sounds like maybe you're not worried about letting users edit the menus. If so, why not code the menus direct into the main C++ code? This would be faster, unless you need to frequently edit these menus.
>
> I think the best thing to do would be to take a step back and ask what it is that you're trying to do as the end result. What are your requirements; can you expect that Python will be installed already? Is the choice between parsing XML once with C++ or having to ship a Python interpreter with associated overhead? Once you have a set of requirements and determine what's most important to you it should make it easier to pick a solution. For instance, on a mobile device, you might simply not have the spare cycles that embedding a python interpreter would require versus a lightweight lib like TinyXML. Similarly, you'd have to ask yourself if the data is always static, or if you have a need for dynamic content (i.e. embedded scripting) within the menu definition.
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> -Jay
>

Well, Ideally the python script would have a series of callback
methods that are triggered when specific predefined events occur in
that menu. For example, when the user presses the LEFT key, a callback
should be executed in the python script to perform various tasks. So
you'd do something like:

def OnKeyLeft():
    # Do something here...
    pass

However, I think the root of the problem is that I'm editing text
files directly to modify the look and feel of menus. Ideally, I'd have
a tool that allows a user to visually create a menu by interactively
creating controls and assigning them properties through a GUI
interface. However, in my specific case I was unable to make a tool
due to time restrictions.

I could, at the very least, use wxPython to make this tool, which
would output menu definitions in XML (which will be non-human readable
or editable), or perhaps even binary for quicker parsing by the game.