[PyKDE] Re: Kcontrol modules

[David Boddie]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 20:21:21, Simon Edwards <simon at simonzone.com> wrote:

> Anyone here tried doing kcontrol modules in Python+PyKDE?

Not yet.

> After seeing the success of IOSlaves in Python, I would like to be able to
> kcontrol modules (kcm). I've been playing a bit with coding some admin
> progs that really should be integrated with the control center.
>
> I had a look at the IOSlave code and saw that it works quite differently
> than kcms. Kcms are basically shared libraries that have a factory method
> that returns a instances of a subclass of KCModule.

Yes, when I started looking at panel applets I realised what all the fuss
was about!

> What I would like is some opinions on the three ways of doing in kcms in
> Python. (the 3 ways that I can think of ;-) ):
>
> 1) Implement in C/C++ a kcm that takes a python script from somewhere,
> creates a KCModule instance using the script and returns it back to KDE
> Control for running/embedding. This would be a case of C++ calling a
> library which returns a PyKDE/Python object. I don't know if this is
> possible.

I'd try this method. Recent recommendations by Phil to use various sip
functions might turn out to be very useful in this context.

> 2) Implement in C/C++ a kcm and a subclass of KCModule (Pykcm). Pykcm
> embeds the Python interpretter, and takes a python script from somewhere.
> It then delegates its methods out to the corresponding methods in the
> script. This sounds possible, and it probably a good solution (if it works.
> ;-) )

This is a lot of work.

> 3) Implement in C/C++ a kcm that runs an external python script that then
> uses   QXEmbed (see the KDE API docs) to embed itself in the KDE Control
> center. This is quite do-able I think, but there may be some draw backs.

I've no idea whether this would work!

> Any thoughts?

I'm going to pursue option 1 as I think that it'll provide the most flexible
solution, if it works. Don't let me stop anyone else from trying any of the
above methods.

All the best,

David