[Pythonmac-SIG] Mac User Python newbies

[Roger Binns]

> This is a very valid point, but since when has that really mattered to 
> people writing open source software?  Windows certainly doesn't seem to 
> have more support from the open source community than anything else.

http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=418

> As a counter-point, deploying software on Mac OS X is cheap and fast.  
> You save god knows how much time and money in development and testing 
> (especially testing), so you have much higher profit margins.

It doesn't matter how cheap and fast it is for 5% of the market.

If you look at open source graphical toolkits that support at least
two platforms, you won't find any that started on the Mac.  These
are the ones I know of that can be used from Python and where they 
started.

  - QT (Unix)
  - GTK (Unix)
  - wxWidgets (Windows)
  - Tk  (Unix)
  - Fltk (Unix)
  - Fox (Unix)

Consequently the Mac versions of these (if supported at all) is often
not as good as the original platform.  That results in a bit of a
chicken and egg problem.  There is no/little Mac support by other
developers because the toolkits are poor, and the toolkits don't
improve because noone uses them.

Fortunately it just takes some sustained efforts, even just bug reporting
and things get better.  wxWidgets has gotten a lot better although there
are still holes.

For the OP, one choice is to try and help improve a toolkit at the same
time as doing their own project.  It will end up improving things for
many more developers and users.
 
> Virtualization software is useful (and I'd love it to death if it was 
> around), but I've found it to be rarely necessary for Mac OS X 
> development.  

It solves many configuration management and testing issues.  It also
lets the developer use the machine.  For example I can't use the Apple
Addressbook or Calendar programs for my real data.  I fill them with
all sorts of test data.  (Fast user switching sort of helps but brings
other issues).  And you really need virtualisation when you have to
deal with versioning issues of core system components or the OS itself.
For BitPim we have to do seperate 10.2 and 10.3 builds, and there are
now all sorts of 10.2 issues that aren't addressed.  When Tiger comes
out things will get even worse as developers will have to decide which
version to make their primary supported OS version.

QEMU has some support for emulating a PPC system.  Maybe that will work
in the future.  

Roger