[Pythonmac-SIG] on a tangent from new icons

[Donovan Preston]

On Apr 21, 2006, at 1:44 PM, Jacob Rus wrote:

>   1. If it doesn't already, I think Mac Python should ship with a  
> python
>      spotlight importer (I got one somewhere else, but should be  
> default)

I'm +0 on this. I got the spotlight importer someone mentioned on  
this list a while back and it worked ok, but I don't really find  
spotlight to be that useful. Since there seems to be a lot of energy  
right now towards producing a complete Python install experience on  
the mac, installing it might be good. But it might need to get  
checked into the Python mainline for that to happen, which might be  
more trouble than it is worth.

Can the person who wrote the importer pipe up? How is it licensed?  
Can someone who has Python checkin rights volunteer to get it checked  
in and built by the normal build process? If not, then I think it  
should remain a separate download.

>   2. Let's export some UTI's for .pyc/.pyo files and .egg files (maybe
>      public.python-bytecode and public.python-egg or something, or  
> maybe
>      they need to be org.python.python-bytecode, etc.)

+1

> 3. Let's make sure that python files get useful "kMDItemKind" names.
>      Right now, if I associate one with PythonIDE.app, I get "plain  
> text
>      file" for .pyc, and "Document" for .pyo, which is not useful.

+1

>   4. Let's add some spaces in the names of things like PythonIDE.app,
>      BuildApplet.app, PythonLauncher.app and PackageManager.app.

PythonIDE and PackageManager are dead. Build Applet and Python  
Launcher seem like nice names, but I really don't care that much. +0.

> Some other questions:
>
>    * What's the difference between PythonIDE.app and IDLE.app?  Should
>      they get different icons?  Is one of them preferred to the  
> other?  I
>      just use TextMate and iPython from terminal, so I don't really  
> know
>      what all they do.

IDLE is written in Tkinter and is cross-platform. It is maintained by  
the core Python developers. PythonIDE is written using the ancient  
Mac OS Python bindings (Toolbox, now Carbon) and hasn't really worked  
very well for about 5 years. It's going away in the next release.  
Continue to use TextMate and IPython, it's what every Python  
developer does anyway :-) (I use Aquamacs and regular python in  
Terminal)

>    * What exactly do python eggs do?  Are they just extra modules
>      packaged up, or can you run them as standalone apps?

They are zipfiles of the kinds of things you normally see in your  
site-packages directory, either Python modules or packages. You can't  
run them.

>    * If the latter, how exactly do eggs differ from the applet's  
> created
>      by BuildApplet.app?

BuildApplet takes the script you drop on it and puts it inside of an  
Application bundle as the main script. When you double-click the  
resulting application, it starts python and executes your main script.

>    * Do we want different icons for py2applet.app and BuildApplet.app?
>      What exactly is the difference between these?

No idea. If there's a py2applet, it probably deprecates BuildApplet.  
I wasn't aware of this. I always just used py2app from the command  
line to build standalone Python applications, I don't see much value  
in offering drag-and-drop solutions, but I don't see the harm in  
offering them.

> Basically, I'm confused by the seemingly endless official or
> semi-official ways to package up python code and edit it on the Mac.
> Are any of these deprecated?

Yeah. Let's finally remove all the confusing deprecated crap.

dp