[pyorbit] pyIDL

[Phil Dawes]

Hi Jeff et al,

First of all, congratulations for getting this project started - python
bindings to orbit are something I've wanted for a long time.

Secondly, if it'll be any help, there's a module in gnome cvs called
pyIDL which wraps libIDL for python. I wrote it because I wanted to be
able to develop the idl compiler for ORBit-C++ very quickly using
python, and I wasn't very keen on the design of orbit-idl (my dislike of
which BTW has more to do with the prohibitive overhead of writing
polymorphic OO code in C than in any design decisions made by Elliot).

You can see how the library works by looking at the orbit-C++
idl-compiler source (and some sparse documentation) which you can get
from:
http://www.orbitcpp.freeserve.co.uk/

Do you have any plans for a dynamic client side? Something which looks
up type information in the IR so that you don't have to compile IDL for
client side stubs would be really cool!

Anyway, enough jabbering; I'm here to help hack code if you need it. I'd
be more than happy to help write the idl compiler - I've got very quick
at it in the last couple of months!

Cheers,

Phil

BTW, It's good to see James H helping on the project. Many thanks for
your automake-python code - I've been using it heavily on ORBit-C++ and
other python projects!