Any tips on Python web development on Mac OS

2008-08-05 Thread Tim Greening-Jackson

Hi there.

I've recently learned Python -- but would by no means describe myself as 
expert -- and have a couple of "pet" projects I want to do in my spare 
time in order to consolidate what I've learned by using it to solve 
"real" problems.


I'd like to create a couple of websites on my Mac at home. I have a very 
basic understanding of HTML, but am lazy and would prefer to do the work 
either in Python itself or have some package I can use in conjunction 
with Python.


So I need some sort of tool which can help me design the "look and feel" 
of the website, together with something that will help me generate the 
content. So I can produce the template for the pages (i.e. put this 
button/text here, and on rollover it changes colour and on click it goes 
to...) and also do "smart" things like take user feedback etc. etc.


I've had a very quick look at the Django and Turbogears websites. Is it 
worth learning one of these for a small, simple site? Will they actually 
help me set up the structure of the site, or are they more geared to its 
content.


I've also seen an open-source package for the Mac called Locomotive, but 
this appears to be a framework for Ruby on Rails and I don't want to 
learn Ruby.


I'm also trying to find/download HTMLgen. If I try to install the 
version from macports it tries to downgrade my installation of Python to 
one of the previous versions. Is it worth using and where can I find a 
copy that I should be able to build/install cleanly on a Mac.


I'm running:

Python 2.5 (r25:51918, Sep 19 2006, 08:49:13)
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5341)] on darwin

on an elderly iMac G5 which runs Mac OS X 10.5.4 (9E17)

Any tips, pointers etc. would be gratefully received.

T.
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Re: Hobbyist - Python vs. other languages

2008-08-05 Thread Tim Greening-Jackson

Tobiah wrote:


You may enjoy:

http://www.pythonchallenge.com/

It's a blast and a half.  To solve the
puzzles you have to write python programs
that do various things. 


Thanks for that. I can see that will keep me amused for quote some time.
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Re: Any tips on Python web development on Mac OS

2008-08-05 Thread Tim Greening-Jackson

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

Tim Greening-Jackson a écrit :
(snip)
You're not going to get anywhere without learning (x)html and css IMHO. 
Even using a "graphical" html editor like Dreamweaver requires having a 
good enough (IOW : being able to do it all by hand) knowledge of these 
languages.


Well, to be honest I do know rudimentary HTML and have been playing with 
CSS by hand --- the only HTML editor I have is a public domain one 
called Taco. I can put together the basic template for the website, and 
use CSS to keep tuning the look and feel until it was right.


I have Apache/MySQL already running on my Mac, a fairly fast broadband 
connection with a static IP address and a vanity domain to point at the 
server. So I could serve it all from home.



Depends on what your "site" is doing.


There are all *sorts* of things I would like it to do, but am not 
dogmatic about any of them. For example, having various people being 
able to login to it securely to shuttle files between ourselves would be 
useful. As would webmail access. And various "robot" functionality...


The exercise is more to see what Python can do to help me develop 
websites and get used to some sort of proper development framework, 
rather than Apple iWeb which is superficially attractive but 
fundamentally crippled and produces unreadable HTML.


There are quite a couple other (and more recent) "html generator" 
packages. You may want to have a look at brevé:

http://breve.twisty-industries.com/


Thanks. I'll take a look.
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