peppy 0.0.1 review

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peppy itself is an attempt to displace my dependency on XEmacs

License: LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License)
File size: 28K
Developer: Rob McMullen
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peppy itself is an attempt to displace my dependency on XEmacs. My goal is to produce a workalike based on wxPython and wxSTC (Scintilla), written in and extensible through Python. I love XEmacs, but my basic problem is this: I don't want to keep space in my brain to remember Emacs Lisp.

I tend not to write elisp code very much, so when I want to go back and write an enhancement to XEmacs, I have to try to relearn it. (This doesn't even begin to address the fundamental lack of documentation for elisp methods.) Delving into elisp gets less and less appealing as time goes on and my brain gets filled up with other stuff.

If the editor were written in Python, I'd have no problem blasting out the enhancement. Problem is, there are no Python editors that are enough like XEmacs to make me switch. There are some IDEs out there that I like, including SPE and PyPE, but for one reason or another they haven't convinced me to switch. For instance, they all want to constrain me to a single window, and I like the multi-window, multi-tab interface like Firefox or XEmacs itself.

I really do like SPE and PyPE quite a bit, and in fact I will probably borrow quite heavily from both of them since they are also based on scintilla. There's going to be a lot of borrowing going on here -- the benefits of open source projects.

An open source project that I tuned into was a Python editor framework set up by Stani (SPE's creator). He created some momentum in early 2006 to combine forces and collaborate, but it seems to have stalled. I was busy with master's degree coursework at the time and couldn't contribute. Now I have a little more time and intend to spend it scratching this itch of mine.

What's New in This Release:
This is an initial proof-of-concept with a dynamic menubar and toolbar.

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