[Pythonmac-SIG] Python control/integration of a Cocoa/Quicktime application?

[Darran Edmundson]

I have a couple of Cocoa/Quicktime developers working on a small custom 
application.  These guys are very capable at OS X programming but don't 
have any python experience.  I, on the other hand, have a lot of python 
experience but virtually no Mac development experience.  I could really 
do with some advice from someone able to see "the big picture".

A bit of background ... We are working on a museum exhibit where a large 
65" 1920x1080 screen attached to a Mac Pro is electronically positioned 
on a 4m industrial slide-track via a physical interface device.  Each 
millimeter of track corresponds to a different image in a 4000 frame 
photo-jpeg-encoded Quicktime.  The user tweaks the interface device, the 
screen moves, the image changes appropriately - that's the basic plan.

I have a python program on the Mac that determines, among other things, 
the screen location.   The OS X developers are going to write a 
full-screen Cocoa application that handles the display side of things 
(along with some tricks like: change to a new movie; tweak the opacity; 
add a second layer movie; etc.)  The question then: how to join these 
two codes?

Options (that I can think of, probably more worthy of discussion):

1) Get the Mac guys to write their application as a library that can be 
wrapped in pyObjC and invoked by my python program.  In this scenario, 
the result is only one process/program with no network issues.

2) Add networking code to both the python and cocoa apps in order to 
communicate (binary socket, XML over http, Bonjour, etc.).  Easy in 
python via Twisted, no doubt less so in cocoa.

As always, any advice is much appreciated.

Cheers,
Darran.

-- 
Darran Edmundson [darran at edmstudio.com]
http://www.edmstudio.com