[Pythonmac-SIG] Python 2.3b2-2 installer

Russell E Owen owen at astro.washington.edu
Thu Jul 3 17:10:45 EDT 2003


I deleted my old Python:
- /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework
- /Applications/MacPython
- /usr/local/bin/python* (except python2.2)
- ~/Library/Preferences/python...

The installer ran perfectly.


The Package Manager also now runs (yaay!) and the description panel 
is great (it is new, isn't it? if not, I'm embarrassed). Solves the 
problem of truncated descriptions. The remaining nits are:

- It cannot not find a plist. Apparently this is because my MacOS X 
is too old (10.2.3) but the message really doesn't give any clue 
about that.

- I can still get a traceback for invalid URLs in the package 
manager, but most URLs I tried give a nice error message instead of a 
traceback. One that reliably gives a traceback (appended) is 
"http://python.org/packman". I'll file a sourceforge bug report right 
now.

- Descriptions of packages with more than one version should say 
something to help the user pick a version (e.g. binary? source?).

- The business of listing different flavors of the same package in 
the main list still bothers me, though I think it's not worth trying 
to solve until after 2.3 release. I find it confusing (and think 
naive users are really going to be confused). Also when I installed 
Numeric binary I found that both binary and source now say "yes". 
Weird. Here is a suggestion for a modified interface:
- List only the main package names in the main list, do not list 
different versions.
- Have a separate "version" panel that shows which versions are 
available for the selected package.
- The user can then pick which version to install
- Hopefully you can also indicate which version is actually installed
- Have a "recommended" version. This has two advantages:
   - you can highlight it in the version panel
   - you can HIDE the version panel for naive users and just 
automatically pick the recommended version

In conclusion, things are good. My complex aqua Tcl/Tk application works great.

-- Russell


File "Wapplication.py", line 45, in mainloop
       self.do1event(mask, wait)
File "FrameWork.py", line 194, in do1event
       self.dispatch(event)
File "FrameWork.py", line 227, in dispatch
       handler(event)
File "FrameWork.py", line 289, in do_mouseDown
       handler(partcode, wid, event)
File "Wapplication.py", line 203, in do_inMenuBar
       self.do_rawmenu(id, item, window, event)
File "FrameWork.py", line 314, in do_rawmenu
       self.do_menu(id, item, window, event)
File "FrameWork.py", line 321, in do_menu
       self.menubar.dispatch(id, item, window, event)
File "Wapplication.py", line 445, in dispatch
       self.menus[id].dispatch(id, item, window, event)
File "Wapplication.py", line 462, in dispatch
       W.CallbackCall(callback, 0, id, item, window, event)
File "Wbase.py", line 684, in CallbackCall
       return callback()
File "PackageManager.py", line 176, in domenu_openURL
       self.opendoc(url)
File "PackageManager.py", line 150, in opendoc
       PackageBrowser(url)
File "PackageManager.py", line 328, in __init__
       messages = self.setuppimp(url)
File "PackageManager.py", line 251, in setuppimp
       self.pimpdb.appendURL(url)
File "pimp.py", line 259, in appendURL
       dict = plistlib.Plist.fromFile(fp)
File "plistlib.py", line 211, in fromFile
       plist = p.parse(pathOrFile)
File "plistlib.py", line 302, in parse
       parser.ParseFile(file)



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