Applications that support Python scripting. Python Scripting for C/C++ Applications
Applications can and are written in Python, but people are slow to
change, so the vast majority are still done using C/C++ on Linux and
Windows and a combination of C++ and Objective-C on Mac OS X. I've
noticed a growing trend of using Python to provide user automation or
scripting, sometimes called macros, for C/C++ applications. This makes
a lot of sense:
- developers don't have to waste time and money inventing their own
scripting language and users don't have to learn a new automation
language for every application they use
- Python is an Open Source solution and can be embedded and distributed for free so there are no royalty payments or licensing hassles
- Python is simple to learn, yet Python and its standard libraries
are much more powerful than a proprietary language like VBScript
- Python is cross-platform
- tools like SWIG make it easy to expose part or all of the application programming interface (API)
- Python scripting can be added to legacy projects just as well as
new ones so developers don't have to abandon their old C/C++ code
libraries
- On the Windows platform, Python has an excellent interface to COM
(also known as ActiveX) and can be used to interface to almost any COM
program (such as the MS-Office suite). Again, Python scripting can be
added to enhance a project without change to the existing COM
components.
For many of the same reasons, Python is often used as the "glue" language for a project. In the Java world, people are using Jython as the glue and scripting language.
I started a wiki page on python.org to help track C/C++ applications that support Python for scripting.
If you know of an application that wasn't written in Python, but
supports Python or Jython for scripting or as a glue language feel free
to update the wiki page. [Kevin Altis' Weblog]
3:14:42 PM  Google It!.
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