From: Bruce S. <bas...@nc...> - 2010-08-17 03:50:31
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I should alert everyone to a ticking time bomb with respect to VPython on a Mac, in the hopes that someone in the community can contribute to a solution. When the first native-mode Mac version of VPython was created, it didn't seem possible to base it on the Cocoa environment of the Mac, due to issues with threading. As I understand it (though I don't claim much expertise on the matter), the problem is that Cocoa wants to be the primary thread, yet to run a Python program Python has to start, then read a .py file, and in the VPython case establish threading of Python computations and periodic OpenGL graphics operations, all of which is antithetical to standard Cocoa architecture. In fact, in a Cocoa mailing list one expert said that just such conflicts had made it extremely difficult to implement Java within a Cocoa environment. As a result, Mac VPython is based on the older Carbon environment, despite the fact that Apple is dropping support for Carbon and has in fact announced that Carbon will never run as a 64-bit environment. If at some point there is no 32-bit Python, there will be no way to produce a Carbon-based VPython. In that case, unless some way is found to implement a Cocoa-based VPython, the only way to have a Mac Python will be to revert to a "non-native" Unix-oriented version based on X11, without the standard Mac look and feel. If you have the necessary expertise to contribute to finding a way to base VPython on Cocoa, please let me know! Bruce Sherwood |