On 4/21/06, Guido van Rossum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There's a lot to read in your post and the links you post -- more than > I have time ofr right now. Let me try to prune some of the ideas. > > I'm not interested in switching to Jython for this purpose; nor am I > interested in directly linking to code that's part of Squeak -- > unless, perhaps, there's some low-level code that is independent of > the rest of the Squeak environment while providing some functionality > we need. I'm also not interested in making Python an entirely > self-contained system such as Squeak is -- much of Python's strengths > come from its capabilities as a glue language, seamlessly integrating > with other software on many different platforms. > > But, after encouragement from Alan Kay, I *am* interested in producing > a Squeak-like environment *on top* of Python. Alan suggested using a > slightly different starting point than Squeak; modern graphics cards > have a wealth of functionality that can be accessed directly. I'm no > graphics expert, but I believe OpenGL and perhaps SVG could be the > right basis to get started.
The Mozilla project has some of the best cross-platform widget-level toolboxes, including SVG (and they are looking at OpenGL support). The funny thing about most cross-platform graphics toolkits is that the ignore the platform with the best graphics: OS X. > The approach that seems to make the most sense to me (but I'm open for > alternatives) is to start out by producing a solid low-level graphics > package like this that can work across platforms (Linux, Windows and > OSX preferably); once that is settled, we could build an application > resembling Squeak's UI. That's a huge project to start from scratch. Mozilla-the-toolkit is adding support for Python in the next major version, perhaps Python can leverage that? > There's probably more to it; but typing this email at a busy > conference my thoughts are a bit distracted. > > --Guido More on the Smalltalk-Squeak-OS X interplay: Squeak may be "cross-platform" but it's always been unusably slow on OS X when I've tried it. I'm used to building GUIs with the PyObjC bridge and native Cocoa widgets, which are generally as fast in Python as they are in Objective-C. Also, Objective-C is based directly on Smalltalk, but meshes *really* well with Python, and there is a cross-platform version of much of the Cocoa library: GnuStep. GnuStep isn't all the way there, but it could be a good place to start if the Mozilla libararies aren't chosen. --Dethe _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
