[Pythonmac-SIG] Opening a Cocoa window from a Python C extension

[Michiel Jan Laurens de Hoon]

I am porting PyGist (a scientific plotting package for Python, mainly 
written in C) to Mac OS X. PyGist was originally written for Linux/Unix 
machines and was recently ported to Windows. For the Mac OS X port, I am 
using Cocoa to create the graphics windows and calls to CoreGraphics for 
the actual drawing. The graphics work fine, but there is still a problem 
with Cocoa windows created from a Python C extension module.

I create my window with

window = [ [NSWindow alloc]
                initWithContentRect: rect
                          styleMask: style
                            backing: NSBackingStoreBuffered
                              defer: NO];

and try to show the window with

[window orderFront: nil];

The window is displayed and everything seems to be working fine; 
graphics are also drawn correctly. The window becomes the key window if 
I click in it, however the previous key window also stays key, so I end 
up with two key windows at the same time. In addition, cursor events are 
not handled correctly (which I need for zooming and reading out 
coordinate values).

I wrote a little test program to find out what is happening. It turns 
out that the test program works correctly if it is located in a 
directory test.app/Contents/MacOS/test. However, if I move the "test" 
program to a different directory it shows the same problem as a window 
created in the Python C extension, even though the test.app directory is 
otherwise empty.

The problem may therefore be that the window that I am trying to open 
should be somehow linked to the Terminal.app from which I am running 
Python in order for it to be recognized as a bona fide window. Does 
anybody know the right way to do this?

Many thanks in advance,

Michiel de Hoon, U Tokyo.