[PyKDE] Python based GIS application

[Phil Thompson]

On Thursday 20 March 2003 3:54 pm, Eron Lloyd wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've been looking into working on a desktop GIS application, and not being
> quite brave enough to learn C++, was pondering using PyQt instead. Do you
> think this would be feasible enough, due to the enourmous graphical
> processing demands necessary for geospatial imaging? Also, what is the
> general consensus on providing some kind of functionality in a PyQt
> application similar to Qt Script?

If you are talking about doing a lot of computation in Python (irrespective of 
PyQt) then you need to do some simple benchmarks/tests to see if the 
performance is likely to be acceptable on your platform. Also ask the 
question on the Python mailing list.

I'd certainly look out for existing libraries that do something similar to 
what you want. Especially if they already have Python interfaces or are 
implemented in C++. You could create Python bindings yourself for an existing 
C++ library using SIP quite easily.

Your worse case is that there is nothing out there suitable and Python is too 
slow. In that case I would implement a simple C++ class library containing 
only the computationaly intensive stuff and create Python bindings for it. 
Then do the rest of your application in PyQt.

I don't plan on implementing an interface to Qt Script itself. It has been in 
the back of my mind for a while to implement some C++ classes that provide a 
QObject based API to instances of the Python interpreter. You would then be 
able to execute a Python script by connecting, say, the QAction.activate() 
signal to QextPythonScript.execute() slot. I've already done this once as 
part of VeePee.

Phil