Mailman 3 June 2003 - Pythonmac-SIG

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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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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Retroactively adding readline support to OS X Python 2.3b1
by Bob Ippolito July 7, 2003

July 7, 2003

Almost equivalent to b.bum's readline-0.0.0 hack, this one downloads readline 4.3, compiles a static libreadline.a, and link the python 2.3 readline.c against that. This avoids any PrivateFrameworks/readline.framework version compatibility issues because it's linked to a static version of readline, so it should be safe to redistribute the resultant binary so long as you comply with the relevant licenses. It should also be safe to redistribute this "source" archive under the same license as Python. It's available at: http://undefined.org/python/readline-0.0.1.tgz It should work for anyone who has Python 2.3b1 or later. It's been reported to work for Python 2.3b1 on OS X 10.2 and the Apple Python provided with developer preview of Panther. -bob

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Retroactively adding WASTE support to OS X Python 2.3b1
by Bob Ippolito July 2, 2003

July 2, 2003

http://undefined.org/python/waste_for_python2.3.tgz -- (I'm lazy, this is the readme) -- This setup.py will retroactively build/install the WASTE module for Python 2.3b1 if you do not already have it. This would happen if you compiled Python 2.3b1 without getting WASTE first, or if Apple did ;) The real reason to install this module would be to use PythonIDE. To install: get waste from http://www.merzwaren.com/bin/waste/waste-21b1.sit unstuff waste-21b1.sit mount the WASTE disk image ( waste-21b1-distribution.img ) sudo python2.3 setup.py install This archive contains code from Python CVS, and all code in this archive is under the same license as Python unless explicitly stated otherwise. To run PythonIDE (test if it worked): (drop the /System if you're using a non-Apple version of Python 2.3b1) pythonw2.3 /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/Mac/Tools/IDE/ PythonIDE.py - bob

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MacPython, wxPython, and Gnuplot
by Andrew J Porwitzky June 30, 2003

June 30, 2003

I'm having a problem with MacPython, wxPython and Gnuplot working together. I'm trying to call Gnuplot through wxPython in MacPython. (Mac)Python can't seam to find gnuplot, which was built through fink and is in /sw/bin/gnuplot . Noticing that /sw/bin/ wasn't in the path I put a symbolic link to gnuplot in a location that was in the path and then I tried a path location inside the built app, (something.app/Contents/Resources/), neither worked. First off, I don't understand why this didn't work, but is there a way to set the PATH from inside python? Is there a way to give BuildApplet a path? Have any of you ever heard of any problems like this? Thanks a million, -Andy

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Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] jpeg under PIL?
by Bob Ippolito June 30, 2003

June 30, 2003

On Saturday, Jun 28, 2003, at 01:50 America/New_York, Calvin wrote: > Is it possible that these recurring problems will be fixed in the > future? > I almost went back to 2.2 because installing, python, mysql, pil with > jpeg, readline, worked so well the last few times I did it. They're not really problems, they're dependencies. The ranlib thing is sort of a problem, but I don't see them getting around to fixing that anytime soon. It's only a small burden to remember to ranlib, unless you're not superuser and you have some poorly installed static libs. > Will readline support be part of 10.3? Why isn't jpeg support just > part > of standard PIL? I haven't had a problem with MySQLdb since 10.0, but > readline and jpeg-PIL keep popping up. AFAIK, Apple is still bastardizing readline into a private framework that only gets installed (maybe?) with the dev tools. Probably due to GNU license issues or the like. Apple also has no good reason to provide you with a libjpeg, since Quicktime and/or Quartz does quite a good job... likely better than the reference jpeg implementation that everyone else uses. I did write a wrapper for QuickTime once that exposed a subset of the libjpeg interface, maybe I'll see if I still have it and clean it up, but that doesn't really solve any problems unless Apple starts distributing the headers and library with OS X. I don't work for Apple or anything, so the chances of that making it into OS X are pretty slim. Personally, I'd be perfectly happy distributing binaries of all this stuff for OS X users that don't want to deal with the mess of compiling things, at least as soon as there's a stable single-source version of Python for OS X that everyone starts using. The problem is that I don't like having to read licenses for every library that goes into it, that part of software development doesn't amuse me, I'm not a lawyer. It'd be a better (read: easier) world if everyone used the LGPL or one of the less restrictive licenses in their code support libraries, but not everyone does, like GNU readline for example. > ps. where is that tip jar? No need to tip me, if you want to spend some money, donate to the PSF ( http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html ).. it's even tax deductible (in the US)! -bob

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Python in Panther (2.3 beta 1)
by John P Speno June 30, 2003

June 30, 2003

I just downloaded the python package in Darwin 7 (Panther), and it's 2.3 beta 1. You can find it with all the other packages here: http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/7.0b1/index.html

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native PyQt
by Jan de Leeuw June 30, 2003

June 30, 2003

Obvious question: anyone working on a native PyQt using the new free Qt for OS X ? === Jan de Leeuw; Professor and Chair, UCLA Department of Statistics; Editor: Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Journal of Statistical Software US mail: 9432 Boelter Hall, Box 951554, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554 phone (310)-825-9550; fax (310)-206-5658; email: deleeuw(a)stat.ucla.edu homepage: http://gifi.stat.ucla.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------- No matter where you go, there you are. --- Buckaroo Banzai http://gifi.stat.ucla.edu/sounds/nomatter.au ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------

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Tkinter, first time
by Martin McGowan June 30, 2003

June 30, 2003

pythonmac-sig, I'm just cracking open python, reading Mike Lutz Programming Python, 2nd edition, and would like to use Tkinter. What should I be doing here? Do bash-2.05a$ python Python 2.2 (#1, 07/14/02, 23:25:09) [GCC Apple cpp-precomp 6.14] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import Tkinter Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? File "/usr/lib/python2.2/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 35, in ? import _tkinter # If this fails your Python may not be configured for Tk ImportError: No module named _tkinter >>> The download page suggest I should have a fully working copy on my Mac OS X? http://www.python.org/topics/tkinter/download.html Thanks, -- Marty McGowan III

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Thanks for all the offers for help!
by Jack Jansen June 28, 2003

June 28, 2003

Folks, thanks for all the offers to help me out with debugging the installer. Pascal Oberndoerfer ran the thing, and everything appears fine. I should have told y'all earlier that this had been taken care of, but this week was a bit hectic with EuroPython and all... -- - Jack Jansen <Jack.Jansen(a)oratrix.com> http://www.cwi.nl/~jack - - If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma Goldman -

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