Just Getting Started with Python on MS XP Pro

[W. Watson]

What do I download to use Python with MX XP Pro on an ASUS 4 year old
motherboard? I would guess a good book source for starters would be the
O'Reilly book.

Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

""I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions
and billions of years before I was born, and had
not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
-- Mark Twain (a nod to evolution)
--
Web Page: <home.earthlink .net/~mtnviews>

[Laszlo Nagy]

W. Watson wrote:

What do I download to use Python with MX XP Pro on an ASUS 4 year old
motherboard? I would guess a good book source for starters would be the
O'Reilly book.

You mean Microsoft XP Pro?

For a beginner, the motherboard does not really matter. First of all,
you should download Python itself:

http://www.python.org/download/

or more probably:

http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5/python-2.5.msi

Then you should download a good editor. There are many, listed here:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors
Under Windows, for a beginner, I would recommend pythonwin, but you can
decide.

Finally, you can start practicing. A book is always good. You can read
online tutorials too:

http://docs.python.org/tut/
http://www.awaretek.com/tutorials.html
Regards,

Laszlo

[DouhetSukd]

Wise choice + welcome to the club.

Though Python is open source and well appreciated on Linux, I think you
will find that most people in this newsgroup will be fairly courteous
about _your_ choice of platform. Some will not know about the weird
process forking stuff on windows and helpfully suggest that 'if you
were to use a real OS...'. But in reality Python is just as happy on
XP as on Linux and the lack of scripting/shell alternatives on XP makes
it all the more useful there.

The only real XP drawback is that Python is not bundled on Windows,
while it is included with OS X and most (all?) Linux distros.

So, giving a *.py program to another XP user means little by itself, it
needs to be either packaged in an exe (see py2exe) or you need to get
your buddy to install python on their machine.
In descending order of cheapness/usefullness.

1. download python + work through the tutorial. well, maybe not all
of it, but with pythonwin around, you can try out significant snippets
quickly.
2. use any ol' text editor that _you_ are familiar with, save to file,
and python <fileunder DOS. later on you can always pick an editor.
i prefer eclipse + pydev, yes, even on windows.

personally, i find pythonwin _great_ to test out code interactively,
mediocre to write lots of code with and occasionally handy to debug
code in.

if you hate typing python <fileunder DOS, then I guess you will have
to run programs from pythonwin.
3. internet

this newsgroup is very informative.

dive into python, pretty good net resource

www.diveintopython.org

4. books:

Learning Python, isbn 0596002815, is pretty good.

Python Programming on Win32, isbn 1565926218, is good, if a bit dated
(2000, covers COM but no .Net)

In depth Python - Python in a Nutshell, isbn 0596100469
5. GUI stuff.

wxPython. If, like me, you hate handcoding everything and want a VB
drag&drop clone you will have to look around for someone else's advice
- there are several such editors that do wxPython but I have never
found anything entirely to my liking. I am sure others will chime in
with their recommendations .
6. Database stuff.

Personally, working on MS SQL, I vouch for mxODBC - shareware, which I
used for years without paying, until I decided the guy had definitely
earned my $75.

http://www.egenix.com/files/python/e...xtensions.html
7. Prepping *.py programs for distribution to users w.o. Python

py2exe - www.py2exe.org/

Best o' luck.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-01-06, Do********@gmai l.com <Do********@gma il.comwrote:

The only real XP drawback is that Python is not bundled on
Windows, while it is included with OS X and most (all?) Linux
distros.

While it's true that Microsoft doesn't bundle Python with
Windows, a _lot_ of XP computers do come with Python installed.
My IBM ThinkPad came out of the box with Python installed. I've
read that a few other large PC vendors (HP/Compaq?) also ship
Python pre-installed on their machines.

However, it's not usually installed in a manner that makes it
conveniently usable by the end-user...

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! NOW, I'm supposed
at to SCRAMBLE two, and HOLD
visi.com th' MAYO!!

[W. Watson]

Laszlo Nagy wrote:

W. Watson wrote:

>What do I download to use Python with MX XP Pro on an ASUS 4 year old
motherboard? I would guess a good book source for starters would be
the O'Reilly book.

You mean Microsoft XP Pro?

For a beginner, the motherboard does not really matter. First of all,
you should download Python itself:

http://www.python.org/download/

or more probably:

http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5/python-2.5.msi

Then you should download a good editor. There are many, listed here:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors
Under Windows, for a beginner, I would recommend pythonwin, but you can
decide.

Finally, you can start practicing. A book is always good. You can read
online tutorials too:

http://docs.python.org/tut/
http://www.awaretek.com/tutorials.html
Regards,

Laszlo

Many thanks. I've been impressed lately what one finds in Wikipedia. The
first such occurrence was when I find all the release dates for a photo
software package that I use. Not even the mfger had that!
Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

""I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions
and billions of years before I was born, and had
not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
-- Mark Twain (a nod to evolution)
--
Web Page: <home.earthlink .net/~mtnviews>

[W. Watson]

Ah, I misread wiki as wikpedia. Nevertheless, wikipedia surprises me, as
well as just wiki sites.

[W. Watson]

The wiki site lead to a link to download pythonwin, but the download is
broken. Googling invariably leads back to that link. I found
<http://www.python.org/download/releases/binaries-1.4/pythonwin/>, which has
two files listed: oadist.exe and win32dbg.exe. Do I need both or is just the
latter one?
Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

""I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions
and billions of years before I was born, and had
not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
-- Mark Twain (a nod to evolution)
--
Web Page: <home.earthlink .net/~mtnviews>

[Thomas Ploch]

W. Watson schrieb:

The wiki site lead to a link to download pythonwin, but the download is
broken. Googling invariably leads back to that link. I found
<http://www.python.org/download/releases/binaries-1.4/pythonwin/>, which has
two files listed: oadist.exe and win32dbg.exe. Do I need both or is just the
latter one?

A google query 'pythonwin' directly brings me here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

I think this is the place to go

Thomas

[rzed]

Do********@gmai l.com wrote in
news:11******** ************@42 g2000cwt.google groups.com:

Wise choice + welcome to the club.

Seconded.

The only real XP drawback is that Python is not bundled on
Windows, while it is included with OS X and most (all?) Linux
distros.

My computer does, in fact, include a Python 2.2.1 installation,
which the manufacturer uses internally.

2. use any ol' text editor that _you_ are familiar with, save
to file, and python <fileunder DOS. later on you can always
pick an editor. i prefer eclipse + pydev, yes, even on windows.

personally, i find pythonwin _great_ to test out code
interactively, mediocre to write lots of code with and
occasionally handy to debug code in.

if you hate typing python <fileunder DOS, then I guess you
will have to run programs from pythonwin.

Not so, but it takes a little setup. If I want to run a Python
program named, say, "fixthis.py ", I can invoke it by typing
"fixthis.py " at the command-line prompt (if I'm running cmd.exe),
or by clicking the icon in Windows Explorer. To make the command-
line option work, I have to have file associations set so that .py
files open with python (and .pyw files open with pythonw, for that
matter). I *think* this is done at install time, though I may have
done that separately.

There is also an environment variable called "pathext", which is
just a list of extensions the system recognizes as being
executable in some way. if you add .py and .pyw to that list, then
all you have to type at the command line is "fixthis" to get that
Python program to run.

I note that I have had my Python root and Python/Scripts directory
on my path at times. There may be some packages that require these
things, but what I talked about in the previous two paragraphs
doesn't require pythonpath to be set specially.

(Fiddling around) Ah! If you want to invoke the interactive python
shell, you will probably want to add the root location to your
path, so you can type

python

.... to invoke it, rather than

c:\python25\pyt hon

.... and something similar may be true for the Scripts
subdirectory.

--
rzed

[W. Watson]

Thomas Ploch wrote:

W. Watson schrieb:

>The wiki site lead to a link to download pythonwin, but the download is
broken. Googling invariably leads back to that link. I found
<http://www.python.org/download/releases/binaries-1.4/pythonwin/>, which has
two files listed: oadist.exe and win32dbg.exe. Do I need both or is just the
latter one?

A google query 'pythonwin' directly brings me here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

I think this is the place to go

Thomas

That gets me the python program (pywin), which I got from a URL in a post
above (python-win.msi). I guess these are the same or at least just the
interpreter, and do not provide the IDE-debugger. I can't get pythonwin, the
debugger and IDE. The link was broken last night when I tried it. Well, let
me try now. Nope, it still reports "Error 404: File Not Found"


Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

""I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions
and billions of years before I was born, and had
not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
-- Mark Twain (a nod to evolution)
--
Web Page: <home.earthlink .net/~mtnviews>