Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 1st Nov 2007 20:24 UTC, submitted by Rahul
"Colin Walters of Red Hat chaired a FOSSCamp session about Hotwire, a unique and innovative graphical shell environment designed to improve the command-line user experience. I've been testing Hotwire releases for some time now, so the opportunity to see Walters present his invention in person seemed too good to pass up."
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RE[3]: Export a Python environment
by colinwalters on Fri 2nd Nov 2007 17:52
in reply to "RE[2]: Export a Python environment"
Member since:2007-11-02
1. Provide types (classes) to represent many of the command-line "objects". Primarily these would be processes, files/directories...
This is already implemented.
2. Make it function as a minimal shell also.
This is also implemented, but I think you're underestimating how hard it is to do a shell. 3. The environment itself should be a Python interpreter.
Yeah, this is the strong feedback I got from the FOSSCamp presentation, and I have a plan to improve it. Once 0.600 is out, the road to 0.700 will focus on this.
In 0.599 you can press Ctrl-Shift-S to get a same-process interpreter where you can play around, and that will form the basis for doing Python in Hotwire.
RE[4]: Export a Python environment
by pythonguy on Fri 2nd Nov 2007 18:48
in reply to "RE[3]: Export a Python environment"
Member since:2005-07-22
...but I think you're underestimating how hard it is to do a shell..
I have not written a full-fledged shell with process control, history and other frills in Python, but I have written complex command interpreters using the cmd module. I guess it shouldn't be too hard.
...
Yeah, this is the strong feedback I got from the FOSSCamp presentation, and I have a plan to improve it. Once 0.600 is out, the road to 0.700 will focus on this.
In 0.599 you can press Ctrl-Shift-S to get a same-process interpreter where you can play around, and that will form the basis for doing Python in Hotwire.
In 0.599 you can press Ctrl-Shift-S to get a same-process interpreter where you can play around, and that will form the basis for doing Python in Hotwire.
Good to know you are already thinking about it. Not to take anything away from your effort, but if I had started on a similar project, this would have been the first thing in my design spec.
Hotwire is cool and looks very promising, but the fact that you did not take advantage of the excellent interactive and introspective capabilities of the Python interpreter is disappointing.
All the best for the project...!
Member since:
2005-07-22
I guess it won't be too much work to develop one. My recipe for such a project's 0.1 version would be,
1. Provide types (classes) to represent many of the command-line "objects". Primarily these would be processes, files/directories, commands, pipes.
2. Make it function as a minimal shell also. The representation (display) should be much the same, but the internal objects would be Python objects which can be introspected.
3. The environment itself should be a Python interpreter. That is, there should be no additional work required to expose Python syntax to the power user using this. Since Python provides an interactive interpreter and even ready-to-use cmd interpreter classes (checkout the "cmd" module), this is straight-forward. This is where hotwire disappoints me.
4. Wrap the whole thing in a nice Py-GTK front-end with support for history, completion etc.
Anyone Interested ? :-)