Joe Heafner had trouble posting to this list and asked me to post it for
him:
"I just bit the bullet and installed the final release of Python 2.5
(from python.org) on my iMac running OS X 10.4.7 (PPC). This
distribution includes IDLE and this version of IDLE found the Visual
documentation that was previously installed when I installed
visualpy-24 via Fink; this surprised me. I decided to copy the Fink
site-packages directory to the Python 2.5 site-packages but VPython
programs won't execute, presumably because visual was built against
Python 2.4 via Fink. Every Python 2.5 demo that I tried worked perfectly
on my iMac. Three things about the Mac build of Python 2.5 are extremely
useful to me. Python source files now have a pretty icon. Double
clicking on a Python program's icon loads the file into IDLE for editing
and/or execution. Most importantly, there is no need for X11. What would
it take to modify the current VPython that's available via Fink to play
nicely with Python 2.5? Once upon a time I tried my hand at making a
Fink package but failed miserably."
The fundamental issue has been discussed previously. Someone with Mac
experience needs to write a small module to create a window and handle
mouse and keyboard interactions. We have such modules for Windows and
for Linux/Unix (alas, OpenGL doesn't provide this functionality). In the
absence of this native-mode window/interaction module, we have to limp
along using the Unix version, which means using X11.
So the issue isn't Python 2.5 vs. 2.4 but the current need for X11
support for window/interaction, which means fink.
Bruce Sherwood
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