From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2003-06-10T05:41:31+09:00
Subject: Anyone looked at PythonCard?

Here in Portland a new group has started called MOSS (Mini-Open Source 
Summit) where open source developers meet once  a month to talk about 
their projects and share ideas.  This last Saturday about 20 of us got 
together.  I decided to show my SuperShape Ruby/Tk app.  One of the Python 
guys thought it was kind of cool and he decided to convert it to Python 
and using PythonCard he did it in about 1/2 an hour. It probably took me 
about 2 hours to get it working with TK and mine doesn't have the cool 
slider bars his did - so his was interactive, he could slide the bar and 
see the effects right away.  Now I could add slider bars to my Ruby/Tk 
version, but it would take a while to figure it out.  

So I was rather impressed with how fast that a GUI app could be developed 
with PythonCard.  The name comes from HyperCard which was a Mac 
application that allowed you to easily developa GUI app (with no 
programming at all).  So PythonCard is a rapid application development 
tool.  According to the author (who was the guy who actually was at the 
MOSS meeting converting SuperShape to Python) it's more like visual basic 
now than Hypercard (the idea being the VB is supposed to allow you to 
rapidly develop a GUI app, leaving the language (BASIC) out of it for 
now).

PythonCard is based on wxWindows and uses the SciTe editor component (so 
he could type code and see the results immediately, kind of like irb, but 
with nifty things like completion and API hints).  I wonder if something 
like this could be a plugin for FreeRide?

Phil