Re: python-loader

[John N S Gill <jng renre com>]

> > thanks Jody -- recompiled with bonobo and now have the console :)
> > Now to find out what i can do with it.
>
> I'd be interested to know too :-)

Things are going along well so far.

I've managed to write a couple of python snippets to read and write
ranges of data to/from the sheet, so basically I'm up and running.

I optimistically did 'import wxPython.wx' in the console and was
rewarded with a core dump (not really surprised by that -- wx was
probably a bit surprised to find large parts of gtk already up and
running :).

Finding a way to get wx running is a key step to being able to use chaco
for plotting.  I've got a couple of tricks i can try, at least one of
them should work.  Failing that we can look at creating a pygtk Gui for
chaco (suspect it should be easy to convert wxpython to pygtk).

(i'm assuming pygtk stuff runs happily within a gtk app -- another
experiment for me to go and do).

Also played a bit with the py-func stuff.  This seems to be working very
well, it is good to know just how easy it is to extend gnumeric in this
way.

So, we have python embedded in gnumeric, which is excellent.  The other
bit that would be really good to have is to have a gnumeric extension to
python, so that in >any< python process you could 'import gnumeric' and
start talking to gnumeric spreadsheets.  

This would be a very powerful tool + would make things like command line
conversion from one spreadsheet format to another a matter of writing a
dozen or so lines of python.

The way I'm thinking of doing that is to fire up gnumeric in (non-gui?)
mode + have it run some sort of server to sit listening for instructions
from elsewhere.

My own choice for a server would be a thing called pyro ('cos it is
simple and i understand it).  However, I believe gnumeric already has
support for things like corba and I've heard ole mentioned.  I don't
want to add yet another protocol, so if you can point me in the right
direction that would be most welcome.

I think being able to extend gnumeric with python in these ways will
prove extremely powerful.  It should make prototyping ideas very fast
indeed. 

I'm anxious to get it working a bit smoother so i can explore what can
be done.

John