Schwartz: A Python Shell for Quartz 2D | Hacker News Reader

Schwartz: A Python Shell for Quartz 2D

schwartzapp.com

34 pointsnmcfarl13 comments

I've seen this with other Cocoa apps so it may not be your fault, but I'm seeing alot of this kind of text render error:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.hipchat.com/1658/151914/evj...

https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.hipchat.com/1658/151914/j41...

Looks interesting. I like the idea of showing the results of the Quartz 2D commands on the side and the Python prompt. I'd just like to know what the limitations of the free trial version are so I could try it out.

Is it really necessary that this application is only running on OS X 10.8+?

Absolutely brilliant name.

Looks cool, can't wait to play with it.

So only for Macintosh computers, then?

It's a Python shell for an Apple API. What did you expect?

I don't think Quartz is available on Windows unless you install Safari.

Hi, developer of Schwartz here. Yes, this is a thoroughly Mac-native application, so I won't be able to make it available on Windows.

Aside from the considerable difficulty of finding or developing an implementation of Quartz 2D that would run on windows, the app itself is mostly Cocoa/Objective-C (with a little Python of course). The entire app would have to be re-written from the ground up for Windows.

Cocotron, a free cross-platform reimplementation of Cocoa, contains an MIT-licensed open source implementation of Quartz called "Onyx":

https://code.google.com/p/cocotron/source/browse/#hg%2FOnyx2...

If you want to run Objective-C code on Windows, there are surprisingly many options these days, as there's also GNUStep... (I'm not saying that your project should have a Windows port, just pointing out the possibility.)

Well, I'm sure reasonable people can disagree on this, but my opinions are:

* Cocotron and GNUStep are wonderful projects and the devs should be very proud of their accomplishments.

* But for real-world, shipping applications, the only cross-platform environment worth a damn is the Web.

* If you're not going to develop a webapp, then you should always develop apps with the native application toolkit for the target platform. To do otherwise leads to poor quality and major hurdles that are not worth the effort to overcome.

* So if I were going to develop a Windows app, I'd use the native Windows toolkit (whatever that is these days, I'd have to research).

* And besides, Schwartz takes advantage of several 10.8 Cocoa/AppKit APIs, and is of course completely entwined with my Xcode 5 project. I'd be surprised if Cocotron or GNUStep are that up-to-date. I suspect porting the project to Cocotron or GNUStep would be a major undertaking.

Glad to hear about "Onyx" though. Very cool that someone did an independent implementation of Quartz. If I were to do a Windows version, I'd probably combine Onyx with a native Windows app. But I don't have the time or expertise to make that feasible.

Nice ... but what is it good for ?

"Programmers can use Schwartz as a sandbox in which to explore and learn Apple's graphics API using the popular Python programming language."

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