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

[Lenore H. <lh...@si...>]

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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