[Pythonmac-SIG] MacPython vs. Python

[Jack Jansen]

On Saturday, June 8, 2002, at 01:05 , Curtis Galloway wrote:

> Hi all.  I am a longtime Python user on various flavors of UNIX but am 
> relatively new to the Mac world.  My only experience has been with OS 
> X, so I am somewhat ignorant about the OS 9 world.
>
> I'm interested in wrapping OS X frameworks like CoreFoundation so I can 
> use them from Python.  I see that MacPython has wrapped versions, and I 
> also saw something somewhere that said people are working on merging 
> MacPython into the rest of Python.

If you grab Python from CVS you'll see that the CoreFoundation wrappers 
are a lot more finished than they were at the time of 2.2.1, I've put 
quite some work into them lately. And they should work both under 
MacPython and under MachoPython (but you'll have to make a 
--enable-framework Python on the latter).

> Who's working on that?  What's the status? Can I help?  I apologize if 
> this is a frequently asked question.

Wish it were, wish it were... :-)

But if you're willing to help: what I need most at the moment (wrt 
CoreFoundation) is feedback. Which bits are missing, is the 
functionality exposed in a reasonable way, etc.

And if you want to write code: here's my TODO list as far as 
CoreFoundation goes. Feel free to beat me to it.

First thing is I want to check whether I can now turn .plist files into 
Python objects and vice versa. If that works I want to adapt 
BuildApplet.py to build the applet's plist file by reading/modifying 
Python.app's plist file (in stead of having a silly almost-copy of the 
plist file for applets in the Python.app bundle). That should also 
enable us to put custom .icns files in there, etc.

Next come preferences. If the CF implementation is good enough to handle 
CFPreferences Python (and EditPythonPrefs) should move that way. First 
thing to fix would be the IDE preferences, since that is already pretty 
close to the CFPreferences model. If those work then EditPythonPrefs.py 
and macmain.c:init_common() (and pythonresources.h, and a few more minor 
places) need to be fixed to use the IDE preferences module and 
CFPreferences, respectively.

So have your pick, I would say!
--
- Jack Jansen        <Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com>        
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack -
- If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma 
Goldman -