Anthony Kozar wrote:
Hello again,
I want to thank everyone for their responses on this issue -- I appreciate
the help! I did get Python 2.3.7 with Tkinter to build on my 10.2 machine
and it was incredibly straightforward. (I forgot to install WASTE, so the
IDE did not build, but that's OK for now).
Glad we were able to help. :-)
I am sorry but not surprised I suppose that so many people feel that 10.2 is
"very ancient", "pretty old", or "obsolete". I bought the computer running
10.2 only 5-1/2 years ago. Sure it could run 10.5, but I long ago decided
that I did not want to play Apple's "upgrade game" anymore. My Beige G3 can
only run up to 10.2 but it is more comfortable running OS 9. These
computers satisfy most of my needs quite well.
I will point out that AFAICT, the Windows installers for Python 2.5 support
Windows 95. The equivalent Mac OS version (timewise) would be System 7.5!
Just last year, I completed the Carbonization of a fairly large program.
The program now runs on MacOS 7, 8, 9, and 10.2 through at least 10.4 (I
assume 10.5 will work too -- the only reason it does not support 10.0 or
10.1 is because CoreMIDI is not functional in those versions). This is
probably a specialized case, but it was not too difficult to maintain
support for System 7 in this program.
Before anyone gets upset by these comments, none of this is intended as a
criticism. I am merely griping about the state of Mac development because I
have been rather frustrated the last couple of weeks trying to get several
open-source programs running on my 10.2 machine.
I do understand that the MacPython development team is probably much smaller
than the Windows team. And the Mac OS and platform have undergone several
very significant changes during the last 13 years and Apple makes it much
more difficult to support older systems than Microsoft does. In fact, I
think the blame lies with Apple due to the pace of their OS releases and
their attitude that anything older than 2-3 years is not worth supporting.
I am just continually saddened to see so many developers (especially for
open-source projects) who either adopt this attitude or are forced to
support only recent systems by the circumstances thrust upon them.
Yes, I think the responsibility here lies with Apple rather than with
third-party developers. Apple is very aggressive about updating the
capabilities of the OS and the pace of development makes maintaining
backwards compatability a challenge. It's different from Windows.
However, if you want to develop this platform that's what you live with.
Any reason you have to support 10.2, apart from the fact that it's what
your machine runs? The user base for 10.2 is negligible.
I have been asked by a potential client to write a GUI for a cross-platform
program written in Python. The request was to support "all platforms" that
the underlying program itself will run on. That program has an interactive
commandline-like interface and is 100% pure Python, requiring only Python
2.3 to run. It is distributed for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and even Mac OS
9. The Python 2.3 minimum thus includes OS X 10.2 as a potential target for
the GUI. I've already informed the client that OS 9 support is unlikely. I
suppose that 10.2 support may be iffy if I have to upgrade to complete the
project.
Maybe there are not many 10.2 users left. But I still frequently hear from
people who are "just now" giving up their OS 9 machines for something newer.
It would be interesting to see some real numbers for how many 10.2 users
there are.
The Omni Group keep statistics on the OS version of folks downloading
their software: 99.7% of their users are on Leopard or Tiger. While
this isn't absolute, it provides an interesting snapshot. More info:
http://update.omnigroup.com/. I'd say, based on this, that there
probably aren't many 10.2 users left--at least not many users who are in
the market to install new software, free or otherwise, on their machines.
Sorry for the long "rant". MacPython is a great piece of software and I
appreciated the help getting Tkinter working on 10.2. Unfortunately, other
tools that I was hoping to use on this project (such as Guib, the successor
to SpecTcl) are proving to be much more difficult to install on 10.2 than
Tkinter was.
Again, glad to help.
Best,
Kevin
--
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
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