Python-powered Win95 Replacement Shell

[Alex Martelli]

Guppy writes:

> http://www.graphite.sh/
>
> Haven't used it a bit (I'm stuck on geoShell as a replacement for
> Microsoft's nasty Explorer shell).

What's "nasty" about Internet Explorer...?  You may dislike the
way MS top mgmt browbeat all sorts of suppliers into giving IE
preference over NN, but, technically speaking, it's _neat_, with
full support for W3C DOM, good componentization, etc.  Much my
favourite way to cook up a UI to any old thing I may be writing,
these days -- just some COM (well supported by Python, and
decently supported by just about everybody else;-), some DHTML
and CSS and A/X etc (well supported by myself with a good text
editor such as GVIM, and decently supported by lots of tools;-),
and I'm done.  And with IE (and the so-called 'active desktop' that
lets IE act as my Windows shell), I can easily embed the GUI for
my apps right into the desktop if I so wish -- just as I can do for
any site I happen to like, etc, etc.


> Claims to support Python as the scripting engine.  My initial thoughts are

Actually, Graphite claims to support 4 active-Scripting engines (VBscript,
Jscript, PerlScript, and now, new in the current patch, Python).

> this would be boggy-slow, but, hey, maybe there's something that can be
> done about that.

Why ever should any of these Active-X engines be slow?!  Besides,
they are already supported as "the" Microsoft-blessed solution to
the issue of scripting Windows -- cfr. the "Windows Scripting Host".


> If anyone does give it a whirl, it'd be neat to see a review/overview of
it
> posted here.

I'm not going to download it unless I hear some compelling reason
why I should -- it _is_ over a MB, and still beta, after all; _what_
does it give me over Internet Explorer, exactly?  Its emphasis on
"themes" sort of throws me off -- I've never particularly liked the
'theme' idea, anyway, and I get pretty much all the dynamic
contents I can handle from the existing 'active desktop' shell.


Alex