[Pythonmac-SIG] Apple's python extensions into Quartz2D

[Bob Ippolito]

On May 27, 2005, at 6:32 PM, nickg wrote:

> What's the latest with Apple's python extensions to use Quartz2D?
> I'd like to use them with the latest python release but I can't
> figure out where the original source code for the extensions are so I
> can't do a build.  It looks like they used SWIG, but that's about as
> much as I figured out.

They're not open source.  You can't use them with anything but the  
release of Python that ships with Mac OS X.  File a bug.  I filed  
mine over a year ago:

rdar://3540071
Python CoreGraphics extension can't readily be used by other Python  
versions
26-Jan-2004 02:10 PM

I updated it this april to say "hey, this actually matters now that  
2.4.1 is out there", but I still have not received a response.

I believe the reason is that the extension does some really horrible  
nasty SPI hacks in order to lift some of the restrictions that are  
normally imposed by these APIs (WindowServer connections, etc.)  At  
least, that's what I gathered from reverse engineering it a bit.

> Or this is something I might be able to do with PyObjC (which I never
> have used)?  Or is there another alternative?

It depends on what you're trying to do.  The Cocoa APIs are higher  
level than Quartz2D and imposes a few restrictions along the way.

-bob