Python finally succeeds in cross-platform areas where Java has been failing...

Jonathan P. jbperez808 at spamless.com
Tue Oct 14 17:09:25 EDT 2003


...that would be for desktop-based apps, games, 3d graphics,
and multimedia.

...thanks to APIs and bindings like Pygame, PyOpenGL, PyGtk
and PyGtkGLExt.

A summary of a lengthy post on the subject:
http://lists.free.net.ph/pipermail/compsci/2003-October/001510.html

> - OpenGL for accelerated graphics.
(that's PyOpenGL)

> - SDL for cross-platform sound, device input, etc...
(via Pygame)

> - Gtk for excellent themable cross-platform widgets (make your
>   Gtk apps look just like Win32 apps)
(via PyGtk)

> - GtkGLExt for accelerated OpenGL display inside widgets. Yow!
(via PyGtkGLExt)

One caveat is that while with .pyc files, Python has what are
essentially platform independent executables ala Java
class files, because the libraries mentioned are not yet a
part of the standard Python distribution, you have to
install the modules and dlls separately.

But if the Gtk and libSDL dlls were to one day come bundled
with Python (like Tcl/Tk is now), and with Psyco to provide JIT and
Python C extensions (being easier to deal with than JNI especially
with the help of SWIG) in the mix, who needs Java indeed?






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