visualpython-users

[Visualpython-users] re: Distributiion

[<art...@rs...>]

Bruce -

I appreciate you staying engaged with me on this. Truly.
My onslaughts I am sure are not pleasant to take, and there is
some history to my passions here that have little to do with
you personally (but do involve your institution).

I am a staid guy in real life, probably getting a little
carried away with my Internet crank alter-ego.  But in the
end I still believe that at heart I am a concerned citizen
on issues of education - and we are all playing with tools
and approaches that can in fact really make a difference.
So some passion is appropriate, I think.

That being said, I do think you are still managing to miss
my points.

>... had piously hoped that the exact sequence you describe
>would not be common nor particularly onerous.
>Clearly this pious hope was not true in your case. More below on the sinning....

I think you would know that this scenario is not personal to me.
I am an avid VPython user, and would have no reason to remove it
from my machine.  I am simply stating a very plausible general scenario.
What *is* personal to me is the fact that I don't use idle_VPython at all
but do use standard IDLE quite often when I want to be in interactive mode.
Normally I will be working on something unrelated to VPython. Going to Python
docs is *most* common for me when I am doing something interactive.  Almost by
definition, I am exploring something about which I am unclear.  Help>Python
Documentation and the VPython (of all things) top level help screen pops up.

Ill mannered and wrong from the perspective of someone who is an avid VPython fan.
Probably  outright bizarre to someone who downloaded it with a casual interest.

>It seemed proper to try as much as possible NOT to modify
>idlefork, so that those who want to track its
>progress could continually install newer versions and still have things
>work properly. As I said, "This kludge may well go away when current major
>work is completed by Stephen Gava to make IDLE configurable."

I guess I strongly disagree with your prior decision on which way to go, and your
current decision to let it go on. But as I said - not earth-shaterring.

>Numeric is prominently featured as a separate entity on the VPython
>documentation page, there is a link there to the Numeric web site (though I
>just noticed that we need to update that link, as there is now a
>redirection in place), and the full documentation for Numeric is included.
>What more could we do to acknowledge our debt in an adequate, well-mannered
>way?


Top level headlines from the vpython.org

VPython includes:

the Python programming language

an enhanced version of the Idle interactive development environment

"Visual", a Python module that offers real-time 3D output, and is easily usable by novice programmers


The fact is that (let's say) 95% of what one downloads from the site is
Numeric code, developed and enhanced over years. Yet it is not mentioned
in 'VPython includes'.

Case rested on that point.

And you had previously made the point that there was no harm in overwriting a previous
Numeric install with the big-footed distribution.  Now I uninstall VPython.
What happens to by previous Numeric install.

Have not tested it, but if my surmise is correct -

Case rested on that point.

Art

Re: [Visualpython-users] re: Distributiion

[Andy D. <dou...@la...>]

Just to chime in ---

I think Bruce & co. are doing a great job.  It is indeed difficult to
install on anything other than systems just like the developers have, but
it's getting a lot better a lot faster.

Speaking from long experience, I can attest that managing a free software
program is a *lot* of work.  Managing it in coordination with other
rapidly-changing free software[*] is a lot more work squared.  The more we
other users can help out with advice for fellow users and with patches,
the more time the developers can spend on the core visual module.

-- 
    Andy Dougherty		dou...@la...
    Dept. of Physics
    Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042

[*]For example, consider the (trimmed) output of 
$ ldd cvisualmodule.so 
        libgtk-1.2.so.0 
        libgdk-1.2.so.0 
        libgmodule-1.2.so.0 
        libgthread-1.2.so.0 
        libglib-1.2.so.0 
        libpthread.so.0 
        libdl.so.2 
        libXi.so.6 
        libXext.so.6 
        libX11.so.6 
        libGL.so.1 
        libgtkgl.so.5 
        libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 
        libm.so.6 
        libc.so.6 
        libSM.so.6 
        libICE.so.6 
        libGLU.so.1 
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 

A number of those libraries are still in fairly rapid development with
at least occasional incompatible changes.  Couple that with the huge
variety of Linux installations and distributions and with the
ever-evolving nature of Linux itself, stir in Python evolution for good
measure, and you've potentially got a very big mess.