Question: tools for business apps development

[Aaron Bingham]

Alex Martelli wrote:

>Robert M. Emmons <RobMEmmons at cs.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>There is a book about this titled "Rapid Application Development with
>>Mozilla" that talks all about this.  It is available free on the net 
>>(sorry can't remember the URL, or in print from the bookstore).  I don't
>>know if this discusses python or not, but it certain discusses XUL and
>>JavaScript.
>>    
>>
>
>I googled. found and downloaded the book, and had a quick check -- alas,
>the "discussion" of Python in the book is limited to:
>"""
>Embedded programmers can use languages such as Perl and Python to drive
>all the windows that an application based on the Mozilla Platform
>creates. Such uses are not documented here. 
>"""
>
>While it definitely looks like a worthwhile book on XUL, anybody wanting
>to drive XUL from anything except Java or Javascript should, I guess,
>look elsewhere (perhaps in _addition_ to said book).  I suspect the
>easiest way to drive XUL from Python based on this book might be to use
>Jython and XUL's Java interfaces (I haven't checked in detail, but
>offhand it looks like the book does document XUL's Java interfaces).
>  
>
If you just want a native Mozilla app with Python as the main 
development language, you are better off using Mark Hammond's PyXPCOM.  
This allows you to call and write XPCOM components in (C)Python.  Since 
Mozilla exposes all interesting functionality as XPCOM components, you 
can do anything this way.  PyXPCOM is part of the main Mozilla 
distribution, though it is not built by default.

-- 
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Aaron Bingham
Application Developer
Cenix BioScience GmbH
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