Mailman 3 February 2005 - Pythonmac-SIG

SciPy installer for Panther Python, anyone?
by Just van Rossum Aug. 12, 2005

Aug. 12, 2005

I'd like to quickly evaluate SciPy for a project, but I can't seem to find a binary distribution for 10.3's Python anywhere. Am I not looking hard enough? Tried to build from the source but the amount of dependencies for building it makes this not a viable option right now. Just

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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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[OT] To upgrade Mac OSX or not?
by Skip Montanaro March 4, 2005

March 4, 2005

This is probably a bit off-topic for this list, but is the only Mac-specific mailing list I subscribe to, and Mac OSX versioning seems to affect MacPython and many apps built with it. I was prompted to write after seeing Brian Lenihan's post about PySol for Mac OSX. Visiting the page I saw "10.3 only". *sigh* Yet another app I can't run on my laptop. Here's the rub. Apple seems to rather quickly drop support for what appear (numerically) to be minor releases. 10.1 is long gone. I have 10.3 on my G5 and 10.2 on my laptop. I'm loathe to buy 10.3 at this point for my laptop because 10.4 is in beta (right? Apple offered a preview version of 10.4 to me for $500 recently). I figure as soon as I buy 10.3, 10.4 final will be released. 10.3 will start to corrode and I'll be stuck again with "old" software once again. Only now I have two Macs, so the costs are double. It seems that Apple's upgrade policy almost forces me to buy new versions as soon as they are released. If I snooze when new releases come out I quickly get left in the dust and wind up either skipping a version or upgrading right before the next release. (This has happened to me in the past.) I really hate to say this, but in this respect backward compatibility in Windows seems to be much better. Am I missing something? Thx, -- Skip Montanaro skip(a)mojam.com http://www.mojam.com/

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Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] CFURL Pain
by has March 3, 2005

March 3, 2005

Bob wrote: >>>Well I can verify that there definitely are serious problems with >>>CFURL after screwing around with it a bit. >> >>Figures. Yuck. Must be bgen's revenge for all the nasty things we >>ever said about it. > >All the nasty things I ever said about it are because of things like this :) But it's so quick! As long as you're Jack and know how to use it. If you're not Jack, I guess you're screwed. On second thoughts, given Jack's existing To-Do list is probably the size of K2 he's probably screwed too. :p I wonder if it'd be easier just to hand-code wrappers using Pyrex, perhaps with a very basic macro system that automates only the simplest of tasks. A lower level automation that works well might ultimately be more productive than total automation that tends towards flakiness. While a single person wouldn't be able to wrap nearly as many APIs, the wrappers that did get done would probably be more reliable due to the extra attention; maybe a bit nicer to use too. Plus it'd make it easier for more folk to write these wrappers, taking some pressure off Jack. >>>Too bad :) If you're writing Mac OS X specific code you >>>**really** should have PyObjC anyway. >> >>Oh, I have. It's all the casual users who don't that present the >>problem. If PyObjC is going to be so essential to all aspects of >>MacPython usage then it's really time for it to join the standard >>library. > >So let's offer a package that includes appscript, PyObjC, and py2app >in one installer. I do recall Jack saying something about maybe having a smaller core library and moving a lot of the non-essential stuff to an external package that could be managed independently; kind of a 'second tier'. Perhaps that would be the way to do it: more flexibility for individual package developers since they're not tied to the official Python upgrade cycle while still providing a quick and simple one-stop installation for users. Even modules that are destined for the core library would benefit from spending some time at this halfway house first while all the kinks are worked out (e.g. OSA.so). Might be worth exploring to see what sort of infrastructure it would require to run. HTH has -- http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/

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Qualcomm Purevoice codec
by Roger Binns March 1, 2005

March 1, 2005

Can anyone give me hints on how to access the Qualcomm Purevoice codec that is part of Quicktime from Python? In BitPim we convert between wav and Purevoice using the convertor that Qualcomm provides: http://www.cdmatech.com/solutions/products/purevoice_download.jsp Note that they don't supply it for MacOS X. There is however a codec inside Quicktime. Ideally I want as close functionality as possible as their Windows and Linux binaries. In those cases the command line tool is named pvconv and takes one parameter. If given a wav file (mono, 8000Hz sampling rate) then it is converted to a corresponding Purevoice file with a .qcp extension. If given a qcp file then it is converted to wav. I'd also be happy with C code that accomplishes the same thing since I can package that up as a binary or Python module. The format is also known sometimes as QCELP. I couldn't find anything relevant using Google. There is a Carbon.QT module but none of the methods appear to do any form of conversion. Carbon.Snd only appears to do recording and playback from the audio device and doesn't know about codecs. Roger

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Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] SciPy installer for Panther Python, anyone?
by Brendan Simons Feb. 28, 2005

Feb. 28, 2005

On 28-Feb-05, at 6:00 AM, pythonmac-sig-request(a)python.org wrote: > From: Peter Maxwell <peter.maxwell(a)anu.edu.au> > Date: February 27, 2005 11:22:51 PM EST > To: pythonmac-sig(a)python.org > Subject: [Pythonmac-SIG] SciPy installer for Panther Python, anyone? > > > No guarantees, but my latest attempt to compile SciPy seems to have > worked: > > http://cbis.anu.edu.au/misc/SciPy_complete-0.3.2.mpkg.zip > > -- Peter Maxwell Sweet. Thanks Peter. I was just about to resign myself to writing my own non-linear function optimizer. You just saved me a lot of work! Brendan ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca

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Python 2.4 test_locale fails?
by Jim Correia Feb. 28, 2005

Feb. 28, 2005

(New to the list, couldn't find the answer in the archives...) I'm just getting around to building and installing Python 2.4 on 10.3.8. After building and running the tests, test_locale fails. (If I tweak the test to not abort after the first failure I see that it fails for the decimal_point and thousands_sep for most locales.) Is the test faulty? Is here a bug in Python 2.4? In the 10.3.8 locale support? The output from the test is below. Thanks, Jim ./python.exe ./Lib/test/test__locale.py test_lc_numeric (__main__._LocaleTests) ... FAIL ====================================================================== FAIL: test_lc_numeric (__main__._LocaleTests) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Traceback (most recent call last): File "./Lib/test/test__locale.py", line 45, in test_lc_numeric "%s != %s (%s); " AssertionError: , != . (decimal_point); supposed to be fr_FR, set to fr_FR ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 1 test in 0.015s

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CFURL Pain
by has Feb. 28, 2005

Feb. 28, 2005

Hi folks, I'm not really up on these APIs nor their Python wrappers, but I suspect this stuff is broke: First try: import Carbon.CF as CF f = CF.CFURLCreateFromFileSystemRepresentation('file://localhost/Users/has/', True) print f # <CFURL object at 0x000c10e0 for 0x000de810> print `f.CFURLGetString().toPython()` # u'./file://localhost/Users/has' (Where did './' come from?) print f.toPython() # MacOS.Error: (-192, 'Resource not found') print f.CFURLGetFSRef() # crashes print f.CFURLGetFSRef()[1].as_pathname() # MacOS.Error: (-35, 'no such volume') Second try: import Carbon.CF as CF f = CF.toCF('file://localhost/Users/has/').CFURLCreateWithString(None) print f # <CFURL object at 0x000c10f0 for 0x0004fec0> print `f.CFURLGetString().toPython()` # u'file://localhost/Users/has/' print f.toPython() # MacOS.Error: (-192, 'Resource not found') print f.CFURLGetFSRef() # crashes print f.CFURLGetFSRef()[1].as_pathname() # crashes Anyone want to confirm/correct me? (OS10.2.8, MacPython 2.3.3) has -- http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/

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SciPy installer for Panther Python, anyone?
by Peter Maxwell Feb. 28, 2005

Feb. 28, 2005

No guarantees, but my latest attempt to compile SciPy seems to have worked: http://cbis.anu.edu.au/misc/SciPy_complete-0.3.2.mpkg.zip -- Peter Maxwell

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Address Book Bindings?
by Nick Matsakis Feb. 27, 2005

Feb. 27, 2005

Does anyone know if anyone has written python bindings for the Mac Addressbook API? I would expect it wouldn't be too difficult for anyone who knows how to do this, since they provide a simple C API. (I've never written anything but pure Python). http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Reference/AddressBo… Nick

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