Re: [Pyobjc-dev] Testsuite adventures

[Dinu G. <gh...@da...>]

Jack Jansen:

> The easy answer is that FrameWork is a very old module (I think Guido 
> even wrote the original himself, otherwise I did many many years ago), 
> it's a minimal application framework. It has nothing to do with MacOSX 
> "Framework"s.
>
> The better answer is that this confusion is going to occur more often. 
> Do you have any suggestions as to how I could document this? In the 
> documentation? The help string? Anywhere else?

Well, we're talking about non-portable platform-specific modules and/or
packages, don't we? Of course, "portable" and"specific" are not always
clearly defined or might change for a given module (say, PyObjC, once
Apple decides to distribute Cocoa on Intel boxes).

If we look into Python's standard lib. we find the os module for
which the docs have the following to say:

   This module provides a more portable way of using operating system
   dependent functionality than importing a operating system dependent
   built-in module like posix or nt. [...]
   Extensions peculiar to a particular operating system are also avail-
   able through the os module, but using them is of course a threat to
   portability!

Clearly, os is not the place for "unportable" modules. So I guess,
what we'll need sooner or later is a place or mechanism in the stan-
dard lib. to comprise non-portable code of general interest to all
users on a specific platform, maybe under "system" (still free)?

This would reduce the number of Mac-only items in the standard lib.
top level by more than 50! I just counted them on this page:

   http://www.python.org/doc/current/modindex.html

And it would be more predictable to find platform-specific stuff,
too. Of course, even then, way too general names like ColorPicker,
FrameWork, EasyDialogs and so on should have some other umbrella
package if that makes sense or be renamed to something more mean-
ing ful, probably something equivalent to Tkinter, if I understand
their purpose correctly.

> Please submit an SF bug report (for python, documentation section,
> assign to me) so I won't forget.

What bug title do you suggest? ;-)

Dinu

--
Dinu C. Gherman
......................................................................
"An error is not a mistake until you refuse to correct it."
(Werner Heisenberg)