Communicated from Jeff Elkner and Michael McLay : 12/13/2003 12:40 PM
*The proposed Python education distribution should also include a collection of software development support tools. Jeff Elkner is using Visual Basic as the benchmark against which the Python development environment must compete.
He thinks Eclipse would provide a good IDE environment because it will allow students to start off learning programming with Python and then switch to learning Java, C++, and other languages using the same IDE. The Python distribution may choose to include multiple GUI widget set.
Currently the standard Python distribution includes Tkinter, which is based on the Tk widgets. Other wrapped GUIs include Gtk+ (and Gnome), Qt, and wXPython. Platform specific widgets include the Microsoft Foundation classes and the Apple Carbon interface. (Carbon is somewhat of an apples and oranges comparison.)
For something that departs from the classic widget ideas, it might be interesting to look at Jef Raskin's Humane GUI ideas < http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/ >.
*I've attached Jeff's requirements for making the Python distribution a viable tool for teaching K-12.
*---------- Forwarded Message ----------
*Subject: Python + EclipseDate: Saturday 13 December 2003 10:27
*For Python to make serious inroads into high school classrooms (as a VB alternative, for example), the issue of a development environment is paramount. It seems to me for a number of reasons that Python + Eclipse offers by for the best hope for a good solution to this problem in the not to distant future. I say this because:
*1. Eclipse is rapidly gathering developer support and becoming the IDEof choice for many professional developers.
*2. It is already making its way into the schools as an IDE for AP CSCclasses for Java development.
*3. Python support would enable it to be used as the one IDE for high school programs using Python and then Java, much as Visual Studio issued now for VB and then C++, Java, C#, etc.
*Here is a quick list of Python Eclipse things that I've found:(I'm cc'ing this to XpWdc friends who introduced me to Eclipse. We already spent an evening playing with the Python Eclipse plugins)
* http://www.kalab.com/freeware/pythoneclipse/pythoneclipse.htm- discontinued
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyeclipse/- version 0.0.1
*http://www.xored.com/- version 0.4.1- commercial, open source product- looks like the winner so far
*As the next url and several others I found suggest, it seems like theXroed TruStudio effort is the most serious, and the most mature.
*Should we start by contacting them about a TruStudio sprint at PyCon2004? http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=122&thread=9622
*There is already a page on the python.org wiki about Eclipse, but there isn't much there: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/Eclipse
*Here is the Eclipse COBOL project I mentioned:http://www.eclipse.org/cobol/
*The Visual Editor Project:http://www.eclipse.org/vep/
*--Jeffrey Elkner <jeff@elkner.net>Open Book Project <http://ibiblio.org/obp>
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