Re: [Visualpython-users] Installer issues

Sounds like we are in fierce agreement!

Small technical note: There isn't any real "marriage" of Visual and
idlefork; anyone can obviously edit Visual programs with any editor
whatsoever. But there has to be at least one way to do it in a bundled
distribution, and idlefork has served the purpose well.

Bruce Sherwood

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arthur" <ajs...@op...>
To: "Matthew Kohlmyer" <mak...@un...>;
<vis...@li...>
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Visualpython-users] Installer issues


> > for those who have never used Python, and one for Python experts.
> > Ideally, (though Bruce has pointed out the practical difficulties of
> > doing this) the novice installation package should contain everything
> > needed to get started (Python, VPython, Numarray, etc.).
>
> Again - I am not as far off from that thinking as might be surmised.  I
> would like to get PyGeo in the hands as many folks as possible - its quite
> cool, IMO - and do not want to limit the audience to geeks of any stripe.
> So an all-in-one environment - that includes Python itself - is an
> alternative that interests me as well.  The additional upside, if its
> configured not to interfere with anything that might already exist on
> anyone's machine, is that there would be alot of freedom to do things like
> configure a IDE and help files specific to VPython.  I already have, for
> example, a working compilation of a nice open source editor - ScITE -
> configured for the syntax hightlighting of PyGeo keywords.  Easy enough to
> do that for VPython.  (Frankly I think that VPython should unmarry itself
> from IDLE.  There are a lot of alternatives, free and open source, that
> might be explored.)
>
> But I also agree with Bruce that a line needs to be drawn as to what
> platforms will be supported.  The all-in-one distribution, for example,
> might sensibly have more limited platform support than the distutils based
> distribution, for example.
>
> For my purposes Windows would be the target of the all-in-one distro.  I
do
> understand the importance of Apple in the educational community - but
don't
> know enough about it to comment about what is appropriate there.  Other
than
> understanding that Linux compatibility is being achieved.
>
> But an effort at an all-in-one Linux distribution seems to me a bad idea.
> Though it is probably achievable in some reasonable way if limited to
let's
> say a version or two of Redhat and compatables, and done via rpm.
>
> And again, I certainly think there should be a good distribution for those
> "in the loop" as to geeky kinds of things.
>
>  There is no reason those folks will not appreciate VPython, and are the
> ones likely to help create a community capable of sustaining and extending
> it.
>
> Some of the recent demos posted up to VPython gives a good idea of the
kinds
> of things it is capable of in experienced hands.
>
> Art