[Jsonwidget] using jsonwidget-python to create a pywikipediabot UI

[Zai Lynch]

Hi Rob!

I read your post on jsonwidget-python when you blogged it a few days ago.
Since I'm using some terminal based software lately, it seemed to be
interesting.
Starting from Arpil, I'll have more leisure as I'll just be working
part-time, so I was looking for interesting projects to do. I'm not much of
a programmer yet, though I know some basics about it and had an urge to push
my horizon further in that direction. Learning Python was one thing I put on
my to do list, though I still didn't have a project in mind. It's always
easier for me to learn something when I got a goal to achieve.

Today, I thought: "Hey, why not try to take jsonwidget-python to build an UI
for the pywikipediabot scripts".
http://pywikipediabot.sourceforge.net/
Well, that's why I'm writing. You know that I got a passion for MediaWikis
and that I'm occassionally tinkering around with that bot. Adding the fact
that both (the bot and your jsonwidget) are available in a language I'd like
to learn, seems like an ideal precondition to start a project.

And it also *seems* to be relatively simple. I would just need to

   - make it read from (and write to) the few configuration files.
   - make it translate settings into parameters to call a child script with.

I'm aware of the fact that such an UI wouldn't be ultimatively useful for
anyone, since the target audience for the bot might be techie enough to be
even more convenient with the pure shell than with any UI I could provide
(and UI makes a project less flexible). Though I do it primarly for myself,
to learn the ropes. When someone finds it useful in the end: hey cool. When
not... then not.

Given that I'm very noobish with that kind of stuff, I might ask lots of
stupid questions... And RTFM might be a proper answer for many of these. I
really do not yet understand how this kind of stuff works.
Please let me know when you don't want to be the target for my questions, as
I'm aware of the fact that I can be a PITA at times (you already experienced
that).

My initial questions are:

   - You write that you're releasing your jasonwidget-python under a
   "BSD-style license". The pywikipediabot is released under an MIT license. Do
   you know if that's a conflict in any way? E.g. when I'd like to offer the
   pywikipediabot people to add the UI to their sourceforge project?
   - I downloaded a copy of "Dive into Python" (
http://diveintopython.org/) which was recommended on a Mashable blog
post once. Are there other
   related sources that you'd recommend for reading in order to get an easy
   start? Remember that – like written before – my background is rather
   limited. I only know basics about theoretical computer science (this "formal
   grammar" stuff), some dusty and basic knowledge in Pascal (Kylix) from 7
   years ago and well... LSL.

Don't expect any work on this to be done before April 4th as I'll be really
swamped until then. Though afterwards, I'd really like to (borrowing from
the book title) dive into Python. I'd appreciate any help for this.

Thanks in advance!
zai
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