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Jambu looks really interesting. I've been developing web applications

On 25/09/2007, stephen emslie <stephenemslie at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jambu looks really interesting. I've been developing web applications
> with python, open source tools and the web standards stack for a few
> years so this sounds right up my alley.

Hi, I could have done with your help earlier :-)

> Does Jambu embed python with PyXPCOM? It would be great to see this
> technology put into practice so soon after SVG and python have hit
> mozilla!

No. After early attempts to leverage the Mozilla Platform with Python
and SVG I decided after discussion with Aaron (a11y lead at Mozilla)
to abandon Mozilla. I had big problems with Python on XUL, both
building and running. Though python access to the platform (pyXPCOM as
you say) was easier to set up, I at that time thought I wanted python
DOM access and scripting as well but Mark Hammond's work on that at
Active State seemed to have frozen (i'm now not so sure I want that,
partly due to concerns over sandbox security).

Recent Mozilla developments with the renewed activity on XULRunner as
a platform and ActiveState's commitment to open Sourcing parts of
Komodo (XUL + python) make it much more attractive. I would still
rather use a standard release of XUL rather than a custom build for
reasons of support and testing.

I'm using librsvg for SVG rendering and without SVG DOM have to
provide simple dynamic rendering and events in my own model. That is a
bit of a pain but does afford ultimate flexibility. I haven't ruled
XUL out completely as a possible future direction. The inherent
portability is very attractive.

Another possibility would be to use both Python and Javascript as
appropriate. I like Javascript, but its just that I *really* like
python ;-).

On another note I see Mark Finkle just announced his work on a
Javascript version of ctypes that gives dynamic access to XPCOM. That
should be very useful.

-- 
Steve Lee
--
Open Source Assistive Technology Software
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