Mailman 3 September 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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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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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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ANN: TECManager 0.2 - Codec bridge between Python unicode and proprietary Apple character sets
by Bob Ippolito Sept. 30, 2003

Sept. 30, 2003

As per Jack's suggestion, I've revised TECManager to become a full bridge between Python's encodings and Apple's Text Encoding Conversion Manager. On my US version of OS X, the following codecs are available immediately after importing the TECManager package: mac_systemscript mac_simpchinese mac_thai mac_roman mac_gurmukhi mac_arabic mac_devanagari mac_currentscript mac_hebrew mac_centraleuroroman mac_tradchinese mac_japanese mac_tibetan mac_korean mac_gujarati mac_cyrillic mac_greek The Mac specific encodings that come with Python are: mac_cyrillic mac_greek mac_iceland mac_latin2 mac_roman mac_turkish Notice that some of the Python codecs are not taken over by TECManager. This is because TECManager only generates "built-in" codecs based upon the name of system scripts, and does not have any specific default encodings for region or language codes. However, it is possible to create codecs for any language code you want. For example, to create the turkish encoding, one would do the following: >>> import TECManager as TM >>> TM.tec_codecs.createModule('encodings.mac_turkish', TM.getTextEncoding(script=TM.smRoman, language=TM.langTurkish, region=TM.verTurkey)) which will (assuming you haven't used mac_turkish already and caused encodings to cache it) replace the built-in support for mac_turkish. From there, you can simply 'encodedstring'.decode('mac_turkish') or u'unicodestring'.encode('mac_turkish') Note that this is still experimental software and I'm looking for users so I can nail the bugs out of it. Currently, the only issue I know of is that when using the encoding error functions some input may not get converted (I'm only trapping errors relating to missing mappings, other inconsistencies are getting passed up as exceptions at the moment). The only build requirement is Pyrex, and I've made some small changes that allow TECManager to compile with a vanilla Pyrex (my hack is no longer necessary). homepage: http://undefined.org/python/ pydoc documentation: http://undefined.org/python/TECManager-0.2-pydoc.html source tarball: http://undefined.org/python/TECManager-0.2.tar.gz PackageManager URL (Python 2.3 - 10.2.x): http://undefined.org/python/pimp/

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Sample using Python to use Applescript to...?
by Dinu Gherman Sept. 29, 2003

Sept. 29, 2003

Hi, I'm sorry, but I won't have the time for doing the appropriate research first, so I have to ask quickly: has anyone a short sample for doing something like running a Python script that either calls an existing Applescript or does the same thing via OSA-whatever to run an app like SnapZ Pro X, say, and tell it to make a screenshot of some window, say, maybe even using some parameters...? Thanks, Dinu -- Dinu C. Gherman ...................................................................... "Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?" (Clarence Darrow)

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Adding functionality to existing MacPython installations
by Jack Jansen Sept. 29, 2003

Sept. 29, 2003

Bob, after the aeve discussion I took half an hour off from real work, and started looking through your stuff (quickly: it'll be a bit longer before I get a chance to really look at it). The main reason is that I think the standard OSA bug is indeed so serious that we might as well get people to switch to aeve now (as you suggested:-). I think this would lead us down a path where we have "functionality addition" releases for MacPython, orthogonal to the 2.3.X bugfix releases that are common to Python. In other words, at some point we create a "MacPython 2.3.X FA 1" release, that contains a number of modules that we expect to be included in 2.4. We take care that these FA releases work with any 2.3.X. (The alternative would be to de-couple MacPython distributions from core-Python distributions, similar to the Windows situation of PythonWin and PythonLabs-Python-for-Windows. But if we want all the good stuff to be picked up by Apple eventually and end up on every Mac in the universe I think trying to stick with the unified distribution is definitely worth the extra hassle). So then I started looking at some of your stuff, and I immediately have two questions: 1. Why do you use TECManager in stead of Python's builtin unicode support? 2. For LaunchServices and TECManager, why did you use Pyrex and not bgen? Both of these questions have to do with maintainability, really. The huge advantage of bgen is that maintenance in the face of new Apple releases is usually just the press of a button, and all new functionality is wrapped automatically. Unless I am mistaken your pyrex code is hand-written (right?). And the advantage of using Python's builtin unicode support is that worrying about it is somebody else's problem:-) -- Jack Jansen, <Jack.Jansen(a)cwi.nl>, 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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ANN: DrawBot, an environment for programming 2D graphics
by Just van Rossum Sept. 29, 2003

Sept. 29, 2003

I'm happy to announce a first public version of "DrawBot", an environment for 2D graphics programming. DrawBot is a minimal "IDE", that allows you to write simple Python scripts that generate two-dimensional graphics. The builtin graphics primitives are currently pretty braindead, this version only supports rectangles, ovals and (bezier) paths and polygons. A future version will also support text and images. DrawBot is written in Python. The binary download is fully self-sufficient (ie. it doesn't need a Python install around), but if you use or build it from the source you'll need Python.framework 2.3 as well as PyObjC 1.0b1 or later. In either case, you need MacOSX 10.2 or later. Binary: http://just.letterror.com/~just/drawbot.dmg Source: http://just.letterror.com/~just/drawbot.tgz It contains an "Examples" folder with some, well, examples. Note that you don't _have_ to use the drawing primitives I provide: they're just thin wrappers around Cocoa's NSColor and NSBezierPath, so you can also use the latter (or anything else from Cocoa, like NSImage) directly. To an extent it's intentionally sparse with features: DrawBot is being developed as part of a course that teaches a bit of Python to visually oriented non-programmers (ie. design students), and I don't want to overload these people with stuff that'll confuse them; there's enough of that in Python itself already... DrawBot is released under an MIT-style license. It contains a more or less reusable Python editor widget that supports syntax coloring and smart/auto indentation. Have fun, Just

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Re: Pythonmac-SIG Digest, Vol 5, Issue 36
by Michael J. Barber Sept. 29, 2003

Sept. 29, 2003

On Friday, Sep 26, 2003, at 17:02 Europe/Lisbon, Dinu Gherman wrote: > I'm sorry, but I won't have the time for doing the appropriate > research first, so I have to ask quickly: has anyone a short > sample for doing something like running a Python script that > either calls an existing Applescript or does the same thing > via OSA-whatever to run an app like SnapZ Pro X, say, and tell > it to make a screenshot of some window, say, maybe even using > some parameters...? > If you don't want to mess around with gensuitemodule, just open a pipe to osascript. You can either give your AppleScript to osascript as strings, or as a file name. Here's a little example using strings: MACUNIXSCRIPT = """osascript -e 'return POSIX path of "%s"'""" UNIXMACSCRIPT = """osascript -e 'return (POSIX file "%s") as string'""" import os def mac2unix(mpath): return os.popen(MACUNIXSCRIPT % mpath).readline()[:-1] def unix2mac(upath): return os.popen(UNIXMACSCRIPT % upath).readline()[:-1] Hope that helps, Michael

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WebKit missing in PyObjC PackageManager install?
by Martina Oefelein Sept. 28, 2003

Sept. 28, 2003

Hi! Am I doing something wrong or is WebKit not included in the PyObjC 1.0b1 package from the default PackageManager database? How can I install it? Do I have to build it from source? What I did: For MacPython 2.3, I installed PyObjC 1.0b1 with PackageManager a while ago. It doesn't contain WebKit. I have also installed PyObjC 1.0rc1 for /usr/bin/python, using the installer from Sourceforge. This includes WebKit. At the time when I did these installs, I didn't have the WebKit SDK installed. After installing the WebKit SDK, I tried to reinstall PyObjC in PackageManager, using "Overwrite", but without effect. Any ideas? ciao Martina

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gensuitemodule.py application selection window does not take focus
by Matt Duignan Sept. 28, 2003

Sept. 28, 2003

Hello, I think I may have run into a bug, or big usability problem with gensuitemodule. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. ---- I was hoping to use Python's OSA support for accessing OS X's Address Book. I believe that as a first step I need to generate a python package for Address Book with gensuitemodule. (Note, I am using MacPython V 2.3 on OS X 10.2.6) When I run: python /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/plat-mac/gensuitemodule.py the "Choose a File" dialogue opens, for "Select scriptable application". The problem is that this window seems to refuse to take focus i.e. the window decoration is transparent, buttons and sliders do not respond to the mouse or keyboard, and the window cannot be brought into the foreground over other application windows. However, this dialogue does let you select an application, but since double clicks or the choose button don't work, it is impossible to make the dialogue complete. Is this a known bug, or am I going about this the wrong way? (Note, my "python" command is symlinked to the MacPython rather then OS X's included python. I've had no problems with MacPython, including using it with the PyObjC bridge) Thanks in advance, Matt Duignan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com

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