John,

The reality for us is that we are a VFP shop at the moment, not a python shop. With lianja, we would be able to use python and xbase interchangeably.



> For PDF's Ghostscript (for the last ten years - and now with python). Pyvox is a Python extension module for processing volume images, particularly medical images. Using open source means you have the source - if the guy stops supporting or updating - do it yourself. Not that hard - believe me.

If I'm recalling correctly there isn't a 64 bit version of ghostscript isn't there. We have used ghostscript but ran into all kinds of problems (did not run on 64 bit machines, and output was not reliably correct).


>>Same for compression. The compression library from craig boy has shown to have problems, but no chance to have it fixed.
>
>Not sure what you are using but I just use ARC - which in turns has all of the compress tools I've ever needed. I really like 'tar' and 'gz' - keeps the window explorer guys out of the file normally - which means it has a little protection from accidentally opening and changing something.

We are using pkzip. but to be honest, its a little old and only has command line integration.

>>We are using MS office to do spell checking. I wish we have never done that. Same for sending emails.
>Since switching to python I use STMP (or mail.py) for emails. There is also a python spell checker but I haven't used it.

>>We were looking into a way to send text messages. We searched for free solutions and though everyone claimed to have a way to do this, we went with >3rd party software and a text message service provider. I don't need any extra headaches and the costs are absorbed by the client.
>
>My software is sending SMS via python's urllib - works well. Sends about 1000 a week. I use the direct cell provider's web interface (I'm in the states).

We have clients in the US and Europe, so we have to work with solutions that are provider independent. We are using special providers which operate throughout the world and providing one single interface for uni and bi directional text messages. We are using a 3rd party solution that will take care of all protocols, retries and error handling. through the same software we can handle emails. Sending text messages is now as simple as adding a row in a table.


>>Now we are on a point to do DICOM. There is a lot of free stuff there, but really, I'm scared like hell we pick a solution and down the road we discover >we are on the wrong track. So, I'd better buy a product plus hire a consultant to get us a solution.
>
>There is a python medical open source app - but I can't recall the name (everything starts with "py" and some times it's hard to find the correct name) but I recall looking at the calendar tools it had. But it also had some sort of way to send info to insurance companies. I didn't have a need to send anything to a insurance company. But I have done lot's of different EDI solutions using python.

That is interesting... food for thought