[Pythonmac-SIG] #! line and simple dialogs [SOLVED]

[Nathaniel Gray]

On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 21:50:36 -0400, Bob Ippolito <bob at redivi.com> wrote:
> On Oct 1, 2004, at 9:06 PM, Nathaniel Gray wrote:

> > I figured this out.  The problem is that pythonw is a symlink to
> > pythonw2.3, which is a shell script, and Darwin won't allow the
> > interpreter for one script to be another script.  I ended up using
> > this ugly line:
> > #!/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/
> > Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python
> >
> > Thankfully, Darwin doesn't seem to mind really long #! lines.  The
> > proper solution, AFAICT, is to make /usr/bin/pythonw2.3 a symlink to
> > the mess I listed above rather than a shell script that wraps the mess
> > I listed above.  This is how /usr/bin/python2.3 works, which is why
> > #!/usr/bin/python does work (I was mistaken when I reported that it
> > didn't).
> >
> > I'm not sure who to file the bug report with.  Can anybody point me in
> > the right direction?
> 
> It's not a bug.  The reason pythonw is a shell script is so that the
> argv[0] for the Python interpreter process points to an interpreter
> executable that exists inside of a valid application bundle.  This is
> necessary in order for the WindowServer to accept a connection to your
> process without using undocumented private hacks.  It would be possible
> to do this by means other than a shell script, but "exec" is a
> convenient way of doing this.

Would a simple C program that did the same thing work?  It's pretty
bad that a python interpreter can't work in a #! line.  If it can be
made to work without too much pain I'd suggest it ought to be done,
for the sake of consistency.

> You shouldn't really be using bare scripts as GUI applications in the
> first place.  You may want to take a look at py2app (which is basically
> usable at this point, unless you depend on a funky package like PIL or
> pygame):
> http://svn.red-bean.com/bob/py2app/trunk/
> (which depends on)
> http://svn.red-bean.com/bob/macholib/trunk/

Thanks for the references.  I'll check them out, but I don't really
want to write GUI applications, I want to write scripts that can do
elementary dialog-based user interaction.  AFAICT there's not much
other than the #! issue standing in the way.

> >> As for doing simple dialogs I don't know all the Mac-specific options,
> >> but wxPython provides all the system dialogs and then some and of
> >> course it works the same on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. The
> >> dialogs.py module provides function wrappers for all of the dialogs so
> >> you don't have to worry about creating an instance of the dialog
> >> classes, showing the dialog, and then destroying it, instead you just
> >> make a function call which is a nice match for modal dialogs. It would
> >> be tough to get much simpler than this.
> >
> > I'm afraid downloading WxPython is too heavyweight.  I'm trying to use
> > Python as AppleScript, essentially.  I was thrilled to find appscript,
> > makes it feasible to do exactly that, but I need a simple, lightweight
> > way to interact with users.  The balance is heavily weighted towards a
> > solution that is platform-specific and has few (preferably no)
> > dependencies.  Basically I really want an EasyDialogs that works.  ;^)
> 
> You could emulate EasyDialogs with PyObjC, which is pretty lightweight.
>   You could also probably convince appscript to do all your dialogs in
> the same way that Applescript does.

These are probably the most promising routes.  Really, I asked the
question hoping somebody had done something with PyObjC or appscript
already and I could use their code.

BTW, is there any intention to get PyObjC included in the standard
Python distro?  It would be nice if EasyDialogs could be updated to OS
X standards.

> Using py2app (or to a lesser extent, bundlebuilder) makes applications
> that have no dependencies anyway, so that part of your argument doesn't
> really hold much water.  Using wxPython would make for relatively large
> standalone applications, but standalone applications nonetheless.

I actually meant dependencies for the casual scripter, not the
end-user.  I'd love to be able to tell my friends, "Python makes an
elegant replacement for AppleScript for your simple scripting tasks
and you only need to install 1 package to make it work."  If
EasyDialogs was just a little better it would already be true! :-) 
If/when appscript and/or PyObjC get into the core then the argument
would become even simpler and much more convincing.

Thanks,
-n8

-- 
>>>-- Nathaniel Gray -- Caltech Computer Science ------>
>>>-- Mojave Project -- http://mojave.cs.caltech.edu -->