Re: [Visualpython-users] Cocoa-based VPython desperately needed on the Mac

[Bruce S. <bas...@nc...>]

VPython on Linux is based on GTK, which I believe is related to gimp,
and before there was a native VPython for the Mac we used essentially
the same code on the Mac (the Unix side) as on Linux. So that's a
"solution" to which we might have to return, but many Mac users feel
uncomfortable with the resulting non-native look and feel.

Bruce Sherwood

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Lenore Horner <lh...@si...> wrote:
> Some things I use (gimp and gnucash for instance) have qt versions which enable them to run without X11 or Xquartz.  I don't know if that solves the problem or only adds one more layer to the interface.
>
> Lenore Horner
>
> On Aug 16, 2010, at 11:50 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
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>
>