[vtkusers] vtk and python - some questions.

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

hi,

	I sent this message on Friday but I have no idea why it didnt
show up on the list.  Please excuse me if the original mail actually
shows up again later! :)

        My following paragraph may sound offensive, please do not take
it personally.  I am merely stating the state of affairs as I see
them.

        As the python vtk users are aware, the vtk bindings for python
are far from perfect.  They certainly function and one can work around
some of the problems and actually do pretty nice things.  However,
there are a large number of things that are not ok.  Primarily, the
vtk python objects do not behave as proper python objects at all.

        I believe that at one time SWIG (www.swig.org) was used to
generate the wrappings.  What were the problems with swig and why is
it not used any more?

        There are quite a few new tools that help making proper python
bindings for c++ libraries.  ExtensionClass, CXX etc. come to mind.
Most notably, there is a new tool called py_cpp (the name may change)
that eases wrapping c++ classes to python.  py_cpp is under active
development and is available here

        http://people.ne.mediaone.net/abrahams/downloads/py_cpp.html

        I was wondering if we could use py_cpp and modify the current
wrapper scripts to use it automatically.  Would this be possible to
do?  If it is, could someone in the know please provide some hints on
the auto generation of wrappers?  One has to typically write very
little boilerplate code to wrap the classes.  One does require the
boost libraries though.

thanks,
prabhu

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