Thanks for the various replies. They all seem to lead to a lot more
learning. I thought Python was supposed to make it easy to build web
apps. It appears after going thru the learning curve for Python I need
to learn unix, a framework, brush up on HTML and so on. It's like being
caught in a spider web of web sites with endless tools. And the sites
assume everyone knows the lingo - just connect the cgi to the
mod_python and install to apache setting the path to ... - sure.
Someone should invent a way to automate all this. My python app fully
describes the UI and behaviour so it seems possible.
The problem is more the web's than Python's though Python _could_ have
significant additions that would overcome the hurdle. You are correct
that given the current state of affairs you can't just magically make a
GUI program show up on the web effectively. There are a wide range of
technical reasons for that, most of which have nothing whatsoever to do
with Python. Most any other language would be the same (though there
may in fact be one or two special cases where this magic
interoperability is supported... might be interesting to hear of them).
Also, just as writing a GUI with Python requires some basic knowledge of
GUI programming, hooking anything interesting to the web requires a
basic knowledge of some web stuff. Not mod_python, certainly, and
technically you don't need to know anything about apache either, but
even if you took a more direct route, there are two inescapable facts
that will block you given your apparent current level of knowledge.
One is that you pretty much have to know about HTML at some level to be
able to generate dynamic output for web clients. (Even if you use a
canned framework to do the grunt work, it's unlikely you'd be able to
use it effectively without understanding what it was doing under the
covers.)
Secondly, you'd need to know how to get a basic web server set up and
available through your ISP. Whether that involves running something on
your own computer and using a dynamic DNS service, or installing
something that will run in whatever non-standard environment your own
ISP provides, or something else, is a question we can't answer. (At
least, without more background, and you provided none that is useful in
your first posting, just the vague "my site" which means nothing to us.)
Regardless, you are certainly correct about a number of things. One is
that more learning is required. Does that really surprise you? Another
is that this _could_ largely be automated, though not for all possible
GUI features (and certainly not when you haven't even told us which GUI
framework you used), as the web and standard GUIs have an incompatible
architecture. The final result, most likely, would be much easier than
what exists now, but there's a good chance *you* would still have gotten
to the same roadblock, since you wrote your program first and only
*then* asked "how do I hook this to the web?". Generally, if you
haven't planned properly in advance, you'll find yourself stuck with
more learning and more work when you come to the next requirement in the
list.
-Peter
