[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: Mac Python User Newbies

[thor]

Hi Troy, list!

> Well, that is a good point. I suppose everyone will have a differing
> opinion on that, particularly in terms of goals. For me, I'd like to
> see a single package, which includes a GUI designer, script editor
> with colorizing, debugger, interactive console, some sort of module
> browser for functions and syntax, resource viewer, something similar
> to package manager... and a basic set of modules for x-plat
> development work. Then, some tool which helps to output the whole
> thing as a runtime package.

I wholly agree that this would be a utopian environment!

As a Director user myself, I have gone through some of the same
problems as you have.

I wanted to make a cross platform software that used pyGame for drawing
and wxPython for Menus and GUI buttons, etc. This is not possible as 
wxPython
does not support the pyGame thread. This is a big problem. No way of 
drawing
2D in python and use wxPython.

Solutions:
- Do 2D stuff in OpenGL (quite awkward) as pyOpenGL works with wxPython
- Don't use wxPython but native libraries on each of the 3 platforms I 
want to write for.

For this reason I am now using Java and I draw on a Canvas inside the
Swing GUI elements and this is easily done and cross platform.

I might be missing some solutions, but I tried for months and gave up.

Python rocks and is extremely nice, the user community as well, but as 
you
say, a lot of the time (for me) has been wasted by trying to figure out 
a workable
environment for what I wanted to do without luck.

Multimedia in Python is problematic but possible (as the list will 
assure you).

good luck and thanks for bringing up those issues, it is by discussion
that things progress.

thor