Re: Epiphany extensions, what to do next

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinouts gnome org>]

Hi Xan,

Op dinsdag 17-03-2009 om 14:26 uur [tijdzone +0200], schreef Xan Lopez:

> - On the other hand, having a huge platform might make your code clash
> constantly with the GNOME platform. You'd rather use GIO for all I/O,
> but it probably won't be as natural as using Python default system.
> Seed, on the other hand, uses JavaScript, which is a really small
> language, so it can do things like integrating GIO deeply, making it
> natural to use it. Same with everything else.
> 
> So, that all being said, I'm not sure what I think myself. If I had to
> decide now I'd probably say that Seed makes more sense in the long
> term, but maybe 2.28 is too soon to drop Python, as we'll have our
> hands too full trying to make the browser usable to deal with another
> big transition, code rewriting, etc.
> 
> What do you guys think?

It _might_ be possible to reuse existing Python code with a
Javascript-based extension system by doing something like what the PyPy
project did with their Javascript backend for R(estricted)Python:

http://codespeak.net/pypy/dist/pypy/doc/js/whatis.html

However, I doubt that will allow regular Python libraries to be used.

In any case, what I miss in your pro/con list is the question of
accessing the DOM. Currently that's impossible with Python extensions.
If we gain this possibility (do we?) by declaring Javascript/Seed our
supported extension development platform, I'd say it could be worth
deprecating Python.

-- 
Reinout van Schouwen