An important VPython-wx milestone

VPython-wx can now run all the standard VPython demos. The only remaining
piece of platform-dependent code is tiny routines for something called
GetProcAddress. Threads have been eliminated from the C++ code. Eliminating
threads and platform-dependent C++ code should make it much easier to
maintain and extend VPython in the future. Of immediate importance is that
VPython-wx runs on 64-bit Python on the Mac, using Cocoa, which was
impossible with the old VPython architecture.

Steve Spicklemire has been providing great support in this effort. He got
mouse zoom and rotate working correctly, and he has been developing
distutils machinery for easy building on Windows/Mac/Linux. He is
investigating various options for building user installers (the distinction
is that to build you need a C++ compiler, whereas Windows and Mac users
need binary installers; most Windows users don't have a compiler installed,
and a compiler is no longer included in the standard Mac installation).
Steve has also been testing VPython-wx on Mac and Linux, while I
concentrated on Windows. Thanks so much, Steve!

The wxPython fonts look quite ugly in label objects, and I've asked the
wxPython community about this. I hope they'll tell me that I'm doing
something wrong.

Next priorities are wider testing by Steve and me, and installers for all
platforms to make it easy for adventurers to try it out.

After that, it is intended to make it easy to place a VPython canvas in a
wxPython window and add buttons, sliders, etc. to other locations in the
window, as well as adding standard menus. In the longer run the current
emphasis on CPU OpenGL graphics should be replaced by using GPUs on the
graphics card.

Bruce Sherwood

P.S. In other news, there is a new project Brython (www.brython.info) whose
developer is creating a Python-to-JavaScript compiler, which means one
could run Python programs in a browser. GlowScript (glowscript.org, the
browser-based 3D programming environment I'm developing that is similar to
VPython) already lets you write your programs in either JavaScript or in
CoffeeScript, which compiles to JavaScript. Maybe it will be possible to
use Brython to let GlowScript programs be written in Python, which I feel
is a significantly better language for the purpose than either JavaScript
or CoffeeScript.

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