[Pythonmac-SIG] PyOXIDE wishes?

[Chris Barker]

gandreas at gandreas.com wrote:
> Sometime between now and WWDC, I'm planning on coming out with a major 
> update for PyOXIDE <http://projects.gandreas.com/pyoxide>

Glenn,

I'm sure you've seen the recent threads her bemoaning the lack of good 
tools (particularly open-source ones) for newbies developing with Python 
on OS-X. PyOxide seems to be the obvious candidate for filling that void 
of a "Mac-like" IDE. I haven't tested it for a while, but it seems that 
bugs are the biggest issue, rather than missing features. Robustness is 
FAR more important that features, except to marketing folks.

That being said:
 >  Right
> now the list is largely bug fix related:

Very good news--focus on that!

> and only a few new features:
>     Out of process interactive interpreter support (which should allow 
> interactive interpreters using a different version of python)

This is the only new feature I encourage you to support. Different 
versions of Python are nice, but not critical, but running the user's 
code out-of-process is very important. As others on this list have 
mentioned (Bob I., in particular, a voice to be listened to), an IDE 
that runs the user code in the same interpreter as the IDE is dead in 
the water as a serious tool. That is the ONE thing that kept me from 
using PythonWin, the old IDLE, and MacPython IDE.

Good luck, I'm very much looking forward to being able to recommend a 
robust IDE for OS-X.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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