[Pythonmac-SIG] plistservices 3 is available

[Bob Ippolito]

On Mar 26, 2005, at 11:33 PM, Sarwat Khan wrote:


>> Since we fixed the bugs in plistlib w.r.t. date/time stuff before  
>> the release of Python 2.4, is there any particularly good reason  
>> to use plistservices instead of the updated plistlib?
>>
>>
>
> Well, there is the fact that you have to go to http://sarwat.net/ 
> opensource/ to get it. Is that a good reason? :)
>

Unfortunately most people would rather pick something up from the  
standard library if it works :)


> The most useful part is the classes it contains and the programming  
> interface that mimics Cocoa. When I'm using  plists I often want to  
> manipulate dates the same way I do in Cocoa/CF (datetime et al can  
> be annoying). plistservices has the following classes with the  
> following methods,
>
> class Data:
>     dataWithContentsOfFile
>     dataWithOpenFile
>     dataWithString
>

Which are inconsistent with PyObjC, because the number of arguments  
does not equal the number of underscores!

So now there are three ways to do it:
1) Use plistlib, which comes with Python anyway, and has a pythonic  
API (at the expense of having to download it if you're not on a Mac)
2) Use PyObjC, and get the real APIs (at the expense of losing cross- 
plat support and requiring an extension, but guaranteed compatibility  
and speed)
3) Use plistservices, and get something that is similar to the real  
APIs, but mapped in a somewhat ambiguous way, that is different from  
the PyObjC mapping.

-bob