[Pythonmac-SIG] W widgets/Carbon modules

[Jack Jansen]

On 11 Jul 2004, at 21:12, Kevin Walzer wrote:

> 1. Will MacPython continue to support Carbon in the future?

Yes, definitely. Apple isn't putting much development in Carbon per se, 
so
it isn't much work to maintain it. Moreover, some technology still 
heavily
depends on Carbon, and/or is much richer in Carbon than in Cocoa.
OSA/Applescript and QuickTime, to name two. CoreFoundation is also
the only way to get at some of the exciting stuff without going through
ObjCm and while CF isn't Carbon in Apple's terminology the two are
intertwined in the MacPython implementation.

> 2. A related question--is the W widget set deprecated/going away/to be
> replaced by PyObjC or just not actively developed at this point?

This is a different question. W is not actively being developed, and
it is indeed likely to go away (or at least remain unmaintained). It 
has two
serious problems:
- It predates even MacOS8, which means it is not Appearance Manager
compatible, which means that it doesn't automatically gets the OSX 
Carbon
"good looks". Fixing this is a lot of work.
- All the text editing and some display widgets ultimately depend on a
third party library, Waste, which has a bit of a funny license. This 
isn't a
problem for Python (we've discussed that with the author), but it is a 
problem
for Apple. Which means Apple won't ship the waste module for Python, 
which
means W will never be complete without additional downloads.

> 3. PythonIDE is a nice, user-friendly application that looks good--am I
> correct that this application uses the W widget set and can be 
> described
> as a "pure Carbon" application (one that taps into Carbon without
> external frameworks like wxPython or Tkinter)? Are there any other
> example apps out there that also use the W widget set?

Package Manager is the only one in the distribution.
--
Jack Jansen, <Jack.Jansen at cwi.nl>, http://www.cwi.nl/~jack
If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma 
Goldman