Pythonwin and .NET

[David Bolen]

Ron Stephens <rdsteph at earthlink.net> writes:

> I have a question that I hope someone can partially
> answer. ActiveState has a beta of Visual Python for .Net on their
> web site. I can not use it because I do not have access to a beta of
> Microsoft's Visual Studio. However, the ActiveState beta of Visual
> Python must have at least basic functionality.
> 
> How basic is that functionality? How much is left out? Are there big
> differences between the language supported as Visual Python and
> c-Python as we know it?

I'm not sure you're referring to exactly what you think you are, if I
read the rest of your post correctly - although it's understandable.
"Visual Python" is an integration of Python into the Visual Studio
development environment (it occurs with .NET since it's an integration
with Visual Studio 7, which is the .NET release).  Thus, it's a
plug-in for the IDE.

But that's not the tie in of Python into the .NET framework as one of
its languages sharing the common back-ends.  For that, there was a
Python.NET (or actually Python for NET to avoid possible trademark
infringement with MS use of .NET as a suffix to everything in the
world nowadays) project, which has (I believe) now concluded after
initial work on a prototype proof-of-concept (sponsored by MS), but
for which there is currently no active development.

In terms of why it was concluded, and/or some of the issues with
.NET's support for dynamic, scripting languages, you should probably
refer to the .NET research page at ActiveState:

    http://www.activestate.com/Initiatives/NET/Research.html

and in particular, to the white paper describing the experience of
creating the Python for .NET compiler.

    http://www.activestate.com/Initiatives/NET/Python_whitepaper.doc

The problems mentioned in the paper probably aren't insurmountable,
but they aren't trivial either.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/