🌐 Mailman 3 October 2003 - Pythonmac-SIG - python.org

Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Python for OSX programming beginner?
by Russell E Owen March 20, 2005

March 20, 2005

>Been lurking here for a while and quietly observing. > >I am looking for a programming language and preferably and IDE for a >young nephew wanting to dip his toes in the programming pool... >Is Python worth further investigating and how good are the IDEs? >Is there something along the lines of REALbasic VisualBasic >integrated interface/code style IDE available? >What are the specialities limits of the language? >Why learn Python rather than battle on and master C or more >particularly Objective C ? >Rather difficult to answer, but how different is the learning curve? > >Many thanks for any help. Hmmm...I suggest the following: Smalltalk: Squeak and VisualWorks NC are both free (the latter only for noncommercial use). Smalltalk is a lovely, simple really powerful language that includes: - powerful IDE and class browser with integrated debugger; smalltalk has the best development environment I've ever seen for a language because it includes live debugging, live changing of classes (want to fix a method? go ahead; the change propagates; fix it and continue on the fly) - really simple yet powerful language; one of the most elegant languges I've seen, though the syntax is a bit different than C and Python programmers are used to - very rich class library, including one of the nicest collection classes (lists, sets, etc.) available Between these two, squeak is smaller and more fun and includes a nifty GUI called Morphic; however it all runs in one big window (very non-Mac like). VisualWorks is more Mac-like (at least on a Mac) and more mature, but is much larger. Both are fully cross-platform (write once, run everywhere). One limitation to smalltalk is that it's not much good for simple scripting, hence simple text processing scripts and such. Python really shines there, so... Python. This is a really nice language and he'll be able to go far with it. However, based on what you said above, some of its limitations make me nervous: - there is no really well integrated GUI, unlike the suggestions above. You can do GUI programming, but you have to choose a 3rd party package and they are fully powerful, but the two main ones (Tkinter and wxPython) are somewhat clumsy and poorly documented. - hence there is no really first rate IDE (not to put down the IDEs that are there, but in comparison to smalltalk or RealBasic...) Note: python is built into MacOS X 10.2, but it's an outdated version missing some of the things that make the language sane (such as readlines support and a GUI package). Install the missing items or a better package (if you've been reading you've seen various options for that including at least one recent binary installer). I suggest learning those two (since their few weaknesses are complimentary), but you could also consider: Buy RealBasic. The knowledge is well worth the money! It's not a wonderful language, but not so bad either and if he already knows it, well...that's a huge leg up. Java. Not sure what the IDE situation is for MacOS X, but the language is reasonable (much saner than C++). The problem is that the need to declare the type of all objects makes it a clumsy and messy language compared to Python and Smalltalk. I suggest NOT using C++. The language is too arcane and messy. The object model is insanely complicated and the pitfalls fill volumes. Learn to program first, then learn C++ later if you really have to. -- Russell

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WebKit, SVG
by Dinu Gherman Oct. 4, 2004

Oct. 4, 2004

Hi, recently I played a bit with Konfabulator, some kind of a "widget framework" for OS X, which looks very nice at the beginning. But after a while it seemed to me that despite the very good idea, its implementation is kind of using the wrong technology. They try to make it very simple to define widgets by specifying them in XML and adding behaviour in Javascript code. This is done in some very strange way, though, like putting the Javascript code insinde XML comments, which is the recommended way of doing it! Well, I think SVG and Python would be the better combination, so I wonder if Apple's WebKit is any good in making use of Adobe's SVG renderer plug-in, somehow? Of course, then we'd still need some bridge to Python, but you need to start somewhere... Dinu PS: www.konfabulator.com -- Dinu C. Gherman ...................................................................... "The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children." (King Edward VIII)

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ANN: Preview of SystemConfiguration wrapper
by Bob Ippolito April 2, 2004

April 2, 2004

http://undefined.org/python/SystemConfiguration-0.1.tar.gz This is a source distribution, it requires PyObjC and Developer Tools. The wrapper itself is (entirely) an ObjC framework, but it includes everything necessary for Python wrapping. I haven't done any documentation, real tests, especially testing of the runloop integration.. but here it is if someone wants to play with it. The ObjC is a little sloppy (three classes in one file), and the setup.py is a lot sloppy (thanks to distutils being not easily extensible), but it works.. or at least it should. I'll be adding stuff from MoreSCF, probably tomorrow, and writing more tests/examples and possibly some documentation over the next couple days. -bob

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Quicktime, Carbon and MacPython
by Mark Kim Dec. 3, 2003

Dec. 3, 2003

Hello all, I'm a developer with Transana (www.transana.org) working on integrating Quicktime into our new Python version of Transana. I'm currently using MacPython 2.2.2 (or 3) on a G4 1.0Ghz with 1GB of RAM running 10.2.6. I'm having a problem with the MovieController. Currently I have disabled it in the MovieTask loop because I have created a second thread to play the loop and the combination causes the interpreter to crash. A rough outline of the code looks like (this is not syntactically correct): Qt.EnterMovies() self.theWindow = Win.CreateNewWindow(6,31,bounds) Qd.SetPort(...) self.theMovie ... = Qt.NewMovieFromFile(....) ... self.MoviePlayer = MoviePlayer(self.theMovie, self.theController) self.MoviePlayer.start() #new thread Within the class MoviePlayer(threading.Thread) while not done and not stop: gotone, evt = Evt.WaitNextEvent(0xffff, 0) etc...etc... looks almost identical to example given in MacPython I'm assuming because I've spawned a second thread and there's a Carbon event, this is causing the crash. Is my assumption correct? Is there a way to spawn a thread and have the MovieController at the same time? Or maybe I'm looking at this completely wrong? Thanks in advance, sorry if this is long, Mark Kim

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PackMan issues
by Tom Loredo Nov. 4, 2003

Nov. 4, 2003

Hi folks- I love the package manager, but would like to raise the following issues (possible bug; feature requests): When I try to use PM at Bob I's pimp site, the list of packages is larger than the window. I can scroll down to see the bottom part of the list, but as soon as I release the scrollbar it immediately scrolls back up to the top of the list. Thus many of his packages are inaccessible. This is using MacPy2.3 on OS 10.2.6 on a G4 Quicksilver and on a G3 Powerbook. My G4 is at home with a dialup connection; my G3 I can bring to work with T3 access. Having one machine with a slow net connection is behind the following requests. First, I'd love to see package size information in the PM window. This way I can tell if it's realistic to download a package to my G4 over my dialup connection. Second, I'd love to see useful progress info on the download and installation. If I check "verbose," PM tries to produce this, but unfortuately the resulting text window update is too slow and I'll typically not see *any* of the progress lines until the download is complete, at which point the window happily shows me every status line from the start to 100%. Finally, I'd love for there to be a way to save a package locally in a way allowing it to be moved to another machine and installed via PM there. Perhaps I can just sync the site-packages directories on both machines, but I don't know if some of the packages have other side effects. Is this feasible? Ideally I'd like to grab the packages on my G3 at work, and install them on my G4 at home. I suppose I could do it directly with distutils, but it would be neat if PM could do this. Thanks, Tom Loredo

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PIL 1.1.4 breaks Python 2.3 on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
by Bill Janssen Nov. 3, 2003

Nov. 3, 2003

When I install PIL 1.1.4 against the default /usr/bin/python on Panther (Mac OS 10.3), things seem to build and install fine. The little "coretest" program in PIL runs OK. However, when I fire up python, and try to "import Image", I get the following: % /usr/bin/python Python 2.3 (#1, Sep 13 2003, 00:49:11) [GCC 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1495)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import Image Fatal Python error: Interpreter not initialized (version mismatch?) Abort % I've tried re-building python from source and re-installing PIL, with the same results. Any ideas? Bill

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make packages w/o packman
by Wladimir Labeikovsky Oct. 31, 2003

Oct. 31, 2003

hullo, could somebody point towards info on how to build external python packages for use with framework python? e.g. how to take the ,say, numeric sources from numpy.org and change, say, setup.py so that it builds and installs correctly against panther builtin python.... thanks!! w

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upgrading to OS 10.3
by fat man Oct. 31, 2003

Oct. 31, 2003

I'm a new mac user and currently have python installed on my OS 10.2 machine. I will soon be upgrading to 10.3 and was wondering if i might run into any problems upgrading (as 10.3 'includes' most of python). would it be necessary/best to remove python before upgrading? if so, how would i go about doing this (like i said i'm new to macs, i apologize if this is a rather novice question). would dragging the python folder to the trash be sufficient or does the installation of python on 10.2 change system files. thanks for any and all help on the issue. -r __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/

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Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Re: [Image-SIG] PIL 1.1.4 breaks Python 2.3 on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
by Alexandre Parenteau Oct. 31, 2003

Oct. 31, 2003

> Fatal Python error: Interpreter not initialized (version mismatch?) > Abort Sorry if I jump in a discussion I didn;t really follow, but I just wanted to say that I have this problem quite often when somehow I mix the /Library/Frameworks/Python with the /System/Library/Frameworks/Python on Panther (10.3). On Panther, Python comes installed as a Framework. So it is especially important for python modules to be compiled with the same framework it is going to be used against. You can try a 'otool -l module.so', it will tell you which frameworks was used. Alex. > % > > _______________________________________________ > Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG(a)python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig > -- Alexandre Parenteau Computer Scientist Core Technologies, AGM Adobe Systems, Inc. 408-536-6166

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ANN: emkey 0.2 - a simple post-processing tool for Keynote documents
by Dinu Gherman Oct. 31, 2003

Oct. 31, 2003

Hi, I've released emkey 0.2, a simple post-processing tool for Keynote documents. As of now it might be particularly useful for people using Python code on Keynote slides, but it's easy to imagine additional features. Please see the full Readme for this first release below. Regards, Dinu emkey ===== Summary ------- emkey is an EmPy-based post-processing tool for Apple Keynote documents. Overview -------- emkey is a simple command-line tool for post-processing Apple Keynote documents. It currently imports external text snippets on single slides and can apply syntax color highlighting to them if these are Python source code. Basics ------ emkey works on the APXL [1]_ presentation file of a Keynote [2]_ document. Before using it you create a normal Keynote presentation document. EmPy [3]_ tags like ``@load("fibo.py", colored=1)`` on a slide will then be expanded during post-processing by emkey with the content of the respective file, with syntax highlighting for Python code if desired. The tool makes one backup of the APXL file before modifying it, and allows to revert to this backup after post-processing. History ------- :0.2: first release Requirements ------------ There are no special requirements for running emkey, except a Python interpreter 2.x [4]_, EmPy 3.x (3.3 included), copyrighted by Erik Max Francis and PyFontify (0.5 included), copyrighted by Just van Rossum. Licence ------- emkey is released under the GPL - see the included file, "GPL.txt". The included EmPy and PyFontify modules are licensed under the LGPL and the Python License, respectively. Download -------- The emkey distribution, including one Keynote sample document is available from: http://python.net/~gherman/emkey.html Notes ------ Thanks to Erik Max Francis and Just van Rossum who have kindly allowed to include EmPy and PyFontify respectively into the emkey distribution. Note, that there is no installation procedure by which you might risk to overwrite an existing EmPy or PyFontify. **Be careful when using emkey on Keynote documents! Remember to revert to the original version before re-editing the document with Keynote, again!** Future ------ In principle one could extend this tool to provide further kinds of post-processing capabilities on Keynote files, which, of course, needs intimate knowledge of the APXL files. Links ----- .. [1] http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2067.html .. [2] http://www.apple.com/keynote .. [3] http://www.alcyone.com/software/empy .. [4] http://www.python.org Author ------ Dinu Gherman, http://python.net/~gherman/Contact.html, 2003-10-31

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