5.1 KiB
Stuff To Do
Project Task List
DONE Documentation default format
CLOSED: [2018-02-15 Thu 21:29]
Decide on a default file format for documentation. The two main contenders being Org Mode, the default for the GnuPG Project and reStructuredText, the default for Python projects. A third option of DITA XML was considered due to a number of beneficial features it provides.
The decision was made to use Org Mode in order to fully integrate with the rest of the GPGME and GnuPG documentation. It is possible to produce reST versions via Pandoc and DITA XML can be reached through converting to either Markdown or XHTML first.
TODO Documentation HOWTO
Write a HOWTO style guide for the current Python bindings.
TODO Start python bindings HOWTO
TODO Documentation SWIG
Write documentation for the complete SWIG bindings demonstrating the correspondence with GPGME itself.
Note: it is likely that this will be more in the nature of something to be used in conjunction with the existing GPGME documentation which makes it easier for Python developers to use.
TODO GUI examples
Create some examples of using Python bindings in a GUI application to either match or be similar to the old GTK2 examples available with PyME.
TODO Replace SWIG
Selecting SWIG for this project in 2002 was understandable and effectively the only viable option. The options available now, however, are significantly improved and some of those would resolve a number of existing problems with using SWIG, particularly when running code on both POSIX compliant and Windows platforms.
The long term goal is to replace SWIG by reimplementing the Python bindings using a more suitable means of interfacing with the GPGME C source code.
TODO Replacement for SWIG
Decide on a replacement for SWIG. Currently CFFI is looking like the most viable candidate, but some additional testing and checks are yet to be completed.
TODO API for an API
A C API like GPGME is not what most modern developers think of when they hear the term API. Normally they think of something they can interact with like a RESTful web API. Though RESTful is unlikely given the nature of GPGME and the process of encryption, it may be possible to provide a more familiar interface which can be utilised by developers of other languages for which bindings are not available or for which it is too difficult to create proper bindings.
Project Task Details
Working examples
The old GUI examples were unable to be retained since they depended on GTK2 and Python 2's integration with GTK2.
Current GPGME examples so far only include command line tools or basic Python code for use with either Python 2.7 or Python 3.4 and above.
Future GUI examples ought to utilise available GUI modules and libraries supported by Python 3. This may include Qt frameworks, Tkinter, GTK3 or something else entirely.
Documentation
The legacy documentation which no longer applies to the Python bindings has been removed.
Current and future documentation will adhere to the GnuPG standard of using Org Mode and not use the reStructuredText (reST) format more commonly associated with Python documentation. The reasons for this are that this project is best served as shipping with the rest of GPGME and the documentation ought to match that. There are also aspects of Org Mode's publishing features which are superior to the defaults of reST, including the capacity to generate fully validating strict XHTML output.
If reST files are required at a later point for future inclusion with other Python packages, then that format can be generated from the .org files with Pandoc before being leveraged by either Docutils, Sphinx or something else.
While there are some advanced typesetting features of reST which are not directly available to Org Mode, more often than not those features are best implemented with either HTML and CSS, with LaTeX to produce a PDF or via a number of XML solutions. Both reST and Org Mode have multiple paths by which to achieve all of these.