Cross-platform serial port access

[David Brown]

I am relatively new to Python, but am planning to use it for a number of
small programs that should be able to run both on Windows (for initial
development and testing) and Linux (once we get a server running properly).
Some of these programs will need to communicate with external devices using
a serial port - is this going to work in a portable fashion using Python?
Does anyone know if Linux supports RTS toggle handshaking (i.e., the RTS
line is high while transmitting, for convenient connection to RS-485
convertors), and is it easy to control from Python?  Are there any Python
modules designed to work with modems?

Thanks for any help in getting me started.

David Brown
Norway