[Pythonmac-SIG] Newbie....(for now)

[Kent Quirk]

The easiest way to know if you have a package is to try to import it.
Don't forget that Python has a command-line interpreter. Just run it and
type "import SciPy" and see if it works!

If you want to learn idiomatic Python one of the best places to go is
the Python Cookbook. I'd recommend buying the book (2nd edition),
although the recipes are available online at: 
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/

By your comment about "not OS X specific" I'm guessing that you want to
build Mac GUI apps. But if you've never done application programming
before with a GUI API, you might have trouble getting into it from
Python. There are several Python tools for building GUIs, there's no
clear standard, and they all tend to assume you already know how to
build GUIs. I'm not aware of a book that attempts to do much for people
new to the concepts.

For example, PyObjC will let you do pretty much anything you can do on a
Mac in Cocoa, without writing a line of Objective C. But it's a "bridge"
to ObjC -- you really have to be able to read and understand Objective C
and Cocoa to use it.  

The standard Python GUI library is tkinter, but it's clunky, limited,
and makes apps that look pretty much only like tkinter apps. 

Having not yet used wxPython, I'm not sure how "native" its apps look,
but people seem to like its power.

Good luck!

	Kent


Robert H wrote:

>I've been writing PHP web apps for about 3 years now and I took one  
>JAVA course over that time.
>I'm looking to get into "real" programming and I've chosen Python as  
>my intro to it.
>I"ve installed the framework build of 2.4.1 on my Tiger install and  
>i've tried to read a lot of documentation.
>As with most help it is too advanced for where I am right now or it  
>isn't OS X specific enough. So I'm going to try to turn here....

>Question1:
>When you install something like SciPy.py how do you know if you have  
>the dependents that you need.
>Is there a way to list installed packages? I looked at package  
>manager and it just doesn't seem mature. Maybe I'm just using it wrong.

>Question2:
>Where are the packages installed?

>Question3:
>Are there a good example of Python programs on a site somewhere?