>Following your posting, I just took a look, to get a quick overview, especially of Python, and found it
extremely interesting.
<g>
>Here I have two questions, that aren't clear to me.
>2) Does it work with Unicode, or have some other mechanism for supporting multiple languages?
I've read somewhere that there is discussion to switch to unicode as default - but I haven't followed up. Guess so <g>.
>1) Is the language compiled for each platform (C-style), interpreted by some sort of virtual machine (Java-style), or what?
or what <g>. AFAIK the most often used implementation is CPython, which is an p-compiler/interpreter couple more similar to vfp than java. This CPython is written in C and implemented for a lot of ix's and has windows ports - and these windows ports offer "hooks" either into COM (activestate, mark hammonds release) or into .Net (there are 2 implementations I nearly always mix up without chacking...). These can usually enhanced on each platform with nearly identical c-functions.
There is an implementation called jython, which is implemented in java, runs in java with the ability to call java classes and vice versa. But it is a few version numbers "behind" the current CPython, as the original developer is now paid by MS to develop IronPython. There are also tentative tries to make java classes accessible to CPython via JNI (jpype and a few others).
IronPython is nearing version 1 and should be able to consume anything from .Net natively. What version they are targeting for their first relase I am not sure.
I've only done 2 small update gigs in python - just enough to whet my appetite. Versioning seems to be a problem when using one of the many other libs - look up "python cheeseshop" for some offerings.
regards
thomas
>TIA,
>
>Hilmar.
>
>>Check out the Dabo framework which is an N-tier application framework written in Python by persons very familiar with VFP. It looks very interesting. Here is a description:
>>
>>
http://www.python.org/pycon/2005/papers/9/>>
>>Also consider the language Ruby and the associated framework Rails. Both suggestions are free open source, cross platform (read not just Windows) products.
