PYTHON bindings for DCOP ======================== These are the new-style Python DCOP bindings. The way in which the bindings are implemented has changed since KDE 3.1.1. How they work ============= The code is divided into two parts: pcop.cpp - the C++ interface between Python and DCOP - generates shared library pcop.so which can be imported by Python pydcop.py - the Python interface to pcop.cpp pcop.cpp includes a header file marshal_funcs.h, which is generated from a data file called marshal_funcs.data by a converter script, gen_marshal_funcs.py marshal_funcs.data contains the basic code necessary to marshal and demarshal the different types that DCOP can handle. For example, it codes how to convert a TQString for use by Python (in this case, a Python string) and the reverse - what the user may supply in Python when DCOP retquires a TQString. In addition to the fundemental types, more complex QT classes are coded, such as TQRect (which converts to a Python tuple ( (x1,y1), (x2,y2) ) ). Documentation is auto-generated out of marshal_funcs.data, creating file marshal_funcs_doc.html, which details how each DCOP type (e.g. TQString, TQRect, int, TQCStringList) is represented in Python. In this implementation, each DCOP type is represented by a basic Python type - numeric, tuple, etc. There are no "QT bindings" necessary. These bindings allow you to code Python to act as a DCOP client (querying and/or controlling other DCOP applications), or as a DCOP server. This means that you can DCOP-enable Python applications even if they are not QT based. If you want to use DCOP in the context of a Python QT application, then there are DCOP bindings included in the PyQT and PyKDE bindings available from: http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/ Examples ======== There are some example Python programs in the test directory. Known problems ============= There is currently a bug which means you must import both pcop and pydcop in your Python programs. This means that a Python program using dcoppython must include: import pcop import pydcop In that order. If you don't import pcop, a seg fault occurs when the interpreter exits. This, of course, will be fixed once I find out what the hell's going on. Authors ======= The original Python DCOP bindings were written by Torben Weis (weis@kde.org). The current implementation, based on Torben's worked, was written by Julian Rockey (kde@jrockey.com). Julian is also the current maintainer.