The need for a high level language in Puppy 4.2

[pa_mcclamrock]

i don't want to get into a programming language brawlfest.

Neither do I, but I do want to explain briefly why I (a software hobbyist with limited spare time) picked Tcl/Tk out of all available languages: ease of use. Tcl/Tk is the simplest, most English-like programming language I could find; the documentation is extensive and, on the whole, fairly clear; you can instantly test-run either single lines of code or entire programs (which you can't with a compiled language), and get helpful error messages if they don't work.

TCL/TK is a resource hog, just look at http://www.cis.udel.edu/~silber/470STUFF/article.pdf (only java was worse). It wasn't that fast, either.

That article is from October 2000, and I'd be interested to see something a bit more recent. More importantly, though, Tcl/Tk does not hog human resources like the time and effort it takes to write and debug programs. This, "IMHO," would make Tcl/Tk worth using even if it hogged as many computer system resources, and took as many milliseconds to get things done, as Java--which it doesn't!

I think i'd be awesome if python runtimes are crammed in, but that's not realistic.

Probably not, but you might make up a Python .PET (fairly quickly, if possible) and submit it for proposed inclusion in Puppy 4.2 Unleashed.

[sunburnt]

polymath; You should upload your Mono SFS file to MU's site.

I think this is the correct link to do it:

http://dotpups.de/dotpups

Here's another repository:

http://puppyfiles.org/dotpupsde/dotpups

[Mr. Maxwell]

Python is amazing... AND it has a good GUI toolkit. Yes I already know it's huge, you don't need to tell me that.

[pa_mcclamrock]

Python is amazing... AND it has a good GUI toolkit. Yes I already know it's huge, you don't need to tell me that.

Hugeness is a disqualification for the official Puppy distribution, but not necessarily for a puplet. You might package up Python and all accompanying goodies, and put out an aptly named puplet--say, "Python Pup" (unless you can come up with something a bit more imaginative)--to show what it can do. If you want it to be really huge, include Blender for 3-D animation, written in Python/Tk.

[Mr. Maxwell]

Ah yes, Blender. My favorite open-source application ever developed. It would probaly fry everyones computer though considering how old most of them are. If Python was made standard in Puppy I could develop all kinds of cool applications for puppy, but because it's too big I'll have to find another method.

[pa_mcclamrock]

Ah yes, Blender. My favorite open-source application ever developed. It would probaly fry everyones computer though considering how old most of them are.

You might be surprised. My daughter has a fairly old computer with a 1 GHz processor, and Blender runs remarkably well on it.

[Mr. Maxwell]

Yes but I'm looking at a 550MHz processor with 64MB of RAM! No chance at all...

I'll ask around on the Python Forum and see how much I can strip off. If I get get it below 5MB think it will be included?

[pa_mcclamrock]

Yes but I'm looking at a 550MHz processor with 64MB of RAM! No chance at all [for using Blender] ...

Um, you're right--the slowness of the processor might not be fatal, but the small amount of RAM would.

I'll ask around on the Python Forum and see how much I can strip off. If I get get it below 5MB think it will be included?

In the official Puppy distribution, where the quest has been to cram the whole thing into an ISO of less than 100 MB (and people dispute about whether even 2 MB or less for Tcl, Tk, and Gnocl is worth it), most likely not. In the version of Puppy Unleashed that follows 4.2 (for which, i.e., 4.2, the package list has been finalized), maybe so. In a custom puplet that you will be able to create with even greater ease than before in Puppy 4.2, sure--even if Python alone takes up noticeably more than 5 MB!

[Mr. Maxwell]

To be honest a 100MB disk image is a waste of a 700MB disk. At some point I will include a Python distro of Puppy, just not yet as the 64MB of RAM makes it impossible to have more than one Puppy installed at a time. (I have to delete all hard drive partitions to install puppy) I guess I do have a 16GB flash drive I could install a couple puppys on...

Anyway, it really is a shame to know that Python will probaly never be included in Puppy. It really limits my ability to contribute to Puppy.

EDIT:

Scratch everything I just said! I was messing around with Python (version 3.0) and was able to reduce the size down to 2.433MB (yes, two and a half megabytes!) using ZIP compression!!!!! (it was the windows version and was without the standard library and Tkinter) I'm not sure it would work but if it does we might have a serious competator for the next puppy realese! This way if the user needs to they can install Tkinter later and the appropriate standard library modules come with the to install package, a preaty easy way to do things and I would be willing to help set it up. (as long as someone compiled python for me, my C/C++ compiler is messed up)