[Pythonmac-SIG] Python for Mac apps...

[Jack Jansen]

> 	I have been using Python for a little while to do some pretty basic
> CGIs. I couldn't really find this information anywhere, but can Python be
> used for creating full-blown Mac apps that process text, save large files
> quickly, interface with the Mac toolbox, and so on.  I have really enjoyed
> Python for CGI, but I wanted to know how it stands up against Pascle and
> C/C++ for creating Mac apps.

Definitely. The reason I actually get the time to work on MacPython is that we 
use Python to develop a cross-platform multimedia editor and playback system 
for the new world-wide-web standard SMIL, GriNS. GRiNS has by now grown to 
about 50K lines, for all platforms (unix, win, mac) together, and the 
interface is pretty much native on all of these. It's definitely not as fast 
as it would have been when written in C, but it performs good on my (by now 
outdated) 133 Mhz machine, and it's even useable (though barely so) on my 
60Mhz 6100 or a fast 68040 machine. And in C it would be at least 10 times as 
much source, and definitely not doable with a team of 2 people and-a-bit.

I'll post a note here when a GRiNS release is available to the public, just so 
anyone interested can check out what you can do with Python.

In this process, by the way, I've also streamlined the freeze stuff, which 
turns Python scripts into full standalone Mac applications. For now you still 
need CodeWarrior to create these, but Just and myself are working on a version 
of freeze that will create standalone applications without source or a C 
development environment, by stuffing all the relevant shared libraries into 
the resultant binary. You can expect this in the next MacPython release.
--
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