[Pythonmac-SIG] MacPython 2.3 - Carbon only?

[Jack Jansen]

I'll just answer Stephens mail, since he started it all, and try and
address the comments by others as I go along.

Recently, "Magladry, Stephen" <stephenm@humongous.com> said:
> I guess I'll be a voice of dissention. I work for a game company writing
> kids software. We try to keep our min specs as broad as possible. As a point
> of reference, our current min specs is 7.5.5. In our up coming games we plan
> to use Python. A requirement of 8.6 cuts into our potential market. Also,
> 8.6 is only about 2 and a half years old. 

My reason for picking 8.6 is twofold:
- Apple makes a version of CarbonLib available for 8.6, but not
  earlier.
- For some powerPC machines 8.6 is the end of the line. This is
  true for some clones, but I think also for the 6100 (though I'm not
  100% sure).

But all that said, the Mac software market has a history of keeping
old machines and OS versions alive very long. You could still surf the
internet with a Mac Plus in 1995, and I know people who are still
happily using their LC-II's for surfing, MS Word and lots of other
things. MacPython 1.5.2, the last version to support 68K, came out in
september 1999, at least 4 years after the last 68K mac was sold.

And I'd like to continue this trend, but for that I need help. The
alternative is that I spend my time maintaining od hardware in stead
of new hardware, and that's not a good idea. Already Python is lagging
behind RealBasic and AppleScript (and probably even Tcl) on OSX, while
I think the two fit hand-in-glove.

What I can do is that I try not to put fullblown carbon-depencencies
in the C source code, and leave the classic targets in the CodeWarrior
project files. Maybe I can even try to compile them once in a while to
keep them working, if this doesn't cost me too much time.

What I cannot do is test them, so someone else will have to do
that. What I also don't want to do is hinder the progress of Carbon
MacPython because of Classic, so that means that the .py library files
and tools (such as the IDE) will probably move towards Carbon. But
this is fairly easy to solve: we add a folder :Mac:Lib:lib-classic
that's in sys.path before :Mac:Lib if you're on classic and that
contains older, classic-compatible versions of modules. This shouldn't
be too much of a problem for Stephen (I assume that he can live with a
slightly older version of the Python IDE if it's embedded in his
game:-), and others will have to work on porting features
themselves. With this in place compatibility back to 8.1 should be
doable. 

But, as said above: for this I need help. Volunteers: please step
forward!

--
Jack Jansen             | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
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