[summerofcode] my project idea for soc

[Rahul Garg]

Hi.
Thanks for your enlightening comments.

On 6/4/05, Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:
> Hi Rahul.  It sounds like a very useful project.  Some comments:
>
> Rahul Garg wrote:
> > Hello People.
> > I have submitted a project idea for SOC. Your comments about it will be helpful.
> > I very much would like to work on this project regardless of SOC. So
> > if you are intersted in mentoring me about this one please let me
> > know! Some of the things and ideas required are especially complex and
> > I would be happy to receive help.
> > Second...i am currently doing an internship at a place where i have
> > python 2.3.3 installed and i dont have user permissions to install
> > python 2.4. the internship is till july 15. do you think my inability
> > to use python 2.4 till around july 20 can be a hindrance?
> > Rahul
>
> I don't think Python 2.4 changes anything very significant for this project.
>
> > Modified application (Third submission...second revised submission)
> >
> > Title : Python visual object inspector
> >
> > Details :
> >
> > We can make better use of dynamic nature of python as well as the
> > availability of tkinter in standard python distribution for a visual
> > object inspector. For example during debugging it will be helpful to
> > view an object.
>
> One thing you don't mention, but seems like an obvious aspect of this
> (and something you probably intend), is the ability to view and traverse
> Python frame objects.  In other words, view the frames in a traceback,
> and view the local variables in those frames.

I hadnt thought of that...but now it does seem obvious that it will be
highly useful.

> > Intended features:
> > 1.The view of an object must display the class , attributes and documentation.
>
> This sounds like an ideal place to use Adapters or generic functions, so
> that views can be implemented separately from the objects themselves.

> > 2.In absence of a view implementation by a class , the default
> > behaviour can be calling of view on attributes.
> > 3.String representation can be included.
> > 4.'Hyperlinks' to base classes should be provided.
>
> Another kind of traversal really -- objects contain references to their
> classes, classes contain references to their base classes, etc.  Still a
> lot of work to make that friendly, of course.
>
> > 5.String fields can be directly edited.
>
> Evaluating expressions in different contexts would generally be useful,
> and you'd get this ability for free (though without quite the same
> directed UI).

Yes...python really is dynamic!

> > 6.The view really enables visual programming to a certain extent.We
> > can even have a metaclass called viewable.We can register the creation
> > of viewable objects and can view the list of objects created so far.
> > So we get a complete snapshot of the program in a visual way.
>
> Right now it's challenging to manage and persist objects when you allow
> this kind of flexibility.  You can pickle objects, but you can't pickle
> code, so you'd have to create a whole new serialization process (maybe a
> hybrid of pickle and marshal).  An interesting task, but it should
> really be a step two -- there's already a lot of work in this project,
> and I think it would be more important to get that work nailed down first.

Hmm...you are correct. I should not be thinking  about registration of
instances at all (at this point anyway) , only of viewable classes
since that gives us almost all of what is useful and can be done in a
pythonic way. And i will search for similar projects in python.

sincerely,
Rahul