[Metakit] ongoing problem

[Tom Cloyd]

Gary and List,

Gosh darn...thanks for 'getting it'. A lovely, thoughtful response. I  
utterly
love computers, but I'm a psychotherapist and artist, and don't have all  
the
time in the world to learn what I need to know to work at the level many of
you do. I find myself frequently struggling with documentation or lack of  
it,
in all directions. I have written extensive documentation for my own  
programs
and web sites, and some for others, and I don't minimize the task at all. I
understand why it's always a problem, and the situation won't improve if we
don't ask for, and work for, improvement, eh?

All of my remarks, howsoever tinged with frustration they might have been,
were intended to be constructive, I also want to assure you. When I see  
some
great new tool, I always want there to be an 8-lane freeway to its door.  
There
rarely is.

I just spent 4 frustrating days trying to solve an encoding problem in  
Python.
The Python documentation is really great, and I was delighted by it. But it
gave me tons of options and no direction. Two different discussion lists  
full
of experts had no ideas about my problem. And this was for a program that  
has
worked fine for weeks. I actually get work done with it, and needed to get  
to
going NOW, after it stopped working for reasons I still don't grasp. I  
finally
stumbled across a suggestion of a solution in an odd place, and got the  
pig to
fly, entirely on my own.

The problem? No where could I find documentation of the fact that
string.maketrans() compares the length of its two string parameters in  
terms
of bytes of storage used, not in terms of character count, and encoding
affects this mightly. Given that this is a fact, it can easily be a  
problem,
and there ought to be some recommended solutions (he says hopefully).  
Darned if
  *I* could find them, and othing obvious worked.

Well, I feel a little bad complaining about MetaKit documentation without
offering a solution, so here goes: I recommend that a wiki be set up  
somewhere
(I could even do it at my web site) where those of us working with this  
most
interesting resource could craft some open source documentation. I could
immediately offer some tips for naive newbie windows users, etc., and I'd  
be
fascinated to see what others might have to say.

It's not that existing documentation is awful. It isn't. It's just that  
it's
very difficult to anticipate everyone's needs.

Anyone beside me like the idea? I sure do. Please...think about it.

Tom C.


On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 03:32:05 -0700, <gary.h.merrill at gsk.com> wrote:

Although I have not had similar problems with installing Metakit for
Python on Windows, I have to agree and sympathize with Tom Cloyd's remarks
here.  The problem -- from the point of view of habitual Python users and
those who understand how Python finds imported files and DLLs -- is that
installation of Metakit is almost "too simple".  So it doesn't require any
instructions:  you know where to put this stuff, don't you?
You know all about the DLLs directory of a Python installation and all
about the site-packages directory.  You even know what a DLL *is* (who
doesen't?).   So you just plop the couple of files in the "obvious" places
and off you go.

Except that for people who are perhaps new to using Python or who have
never used a Python package that didn't come with an installer, and who
maybe don't even know what a DLL is (and what its relation to a ".so" file
is), this can be bewildering.

Some additional and very explicit instructions could be very helpful.
Things like:

1. Find your Python installation directory (and say what "installation
driectory" means).
2. Find the DLL subdirectory of this.  Put Mk4py.dll in that directory.
3. Find the Lib/site-packages subdirectory of the installation directory.
Put metakit.py there.
4. You're done.

Something like this could help people in Tom's position.

------------------------------
Gary H. Merrill, Principal Scientist
Analysis Applications, Research, and Technologies
GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development
Research Triangle Park, NC
919.483.8456


--

======================================================
Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC
Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
<< BestMindHealth.com / tc at bestmindhealth.com >>
======================================================

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