[Edu-sig] The fate of vpython

[Arthur Siegel]

On Mon, 2006-10-09 at 11:48 -0500, John Zelle wrote:
> I am also very concerned about this situation, as I think VPython is a 
> wonderful tool (to which I've contributed).

Hi John -

Thanks for that concern.

If you are following the vpython list you see that I am digging into the
immediate issues.  I have no C++ skills to have atrophied, but - as I
said there  - getting an understanding of building Python extensions has
been on my agenda and something concrete to dig into helps, so that I am
having some fun with it.  

But I agree that for all the simplicity on the surface, there is more
complexity underneath than one would hope for. It had Dethe, for
example, throwing up his hands in trying a port to native Mac.

The project funding is over, so that only volunteer resources are
available to salvage it.

I agree with you that more radical strategy than following the current
path is probably necessary.

Py-OpenGL is itself moving to a ctypes implementation, and ctypes is now
in the core Python distribution.

Slight problem being that I have no understanding of what that means.
Intuition is that the best solution might be there, someplace.

Meantime I am getting more familiar with the current C++ code, so that I
should be in a position to contribute to a re-implementation, given a
strategy to do so.

But it is OTOH scary that as to the vpython list, I seem to be the guru
at the moment, since I certainly don't consider myself qualified to
think this through without folks with more low-level skills.

I am holding off to going the scipy list with things until I at least
can talk with some measure of intelligence - but I am still thinking
that is where the best hope might be.

Art