[digiKam-users] Opening digiKam plugins interface to Python...

[Peter Teuben]

On 6/3/20 9:57 AM, Gilles Caulier wrote:
> Le mer. 3 juin 2020 à 15:47, <digikam at 911networks.com> a écrit :
>> On Wed, 3 Jun 2020 14:18:14 +0200
>> Gilles Caulier <caulier.gilles at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm looking for the future, and i finalize step by step the C++
>>> digiKam plugin interface (DPlugins). If you look in my github
>>> account, you will see activity about to port external tools to
>>> DPlugins. i also well advanced to port older Photo Layout Editor
>>> kipi plugins to cmake, Qt5, and Dplugins.
>> Should these thing be written in Python or in Lua? Lua is used by
>> Darktable and by Adobe's Lightroom...
> Well python Qt5 wrapper already exists and code is avaialble in Krita as well.
>
> Also, the background Python libraries is just monstrous, especially
> for image processing.
>
> Python is now included in Windows SDK (aka MSVC) de facto. It will be
> the standard everywhere for scripting.
>
> And with Lua you need an interpreter too (:=)))...
>
> I playing with LUA when i deployed a VerneMQ Mqtt broker in my office,
> and as the student who work with me while this stage said : " what's
> this F. shit like language...". This student now working on Face
> engine clustering project n digiKam while this summer, and he is
> brilliant.
>
> I don't like LUA syntax. Python is better even if i prefer C++ syntax so far...
>
> Gilles Caulier


Although Lua has the advantage of  being used in darktable (there are 
potentially some scripts that could be re-used), one cannot deny that 
the community involvement of python is quite big compared to lua. At 
least it's not a lisp like language, that has never really become 
mainstream. That would not get my vote, but I'm on the fence of Lua vs. 
Python.

Perhaps some measure is to look at usage of languages in github repos.  
In 2018 python was 2nd with nearly 15% (javascript 1st with 23%).  Lua  
19th with 0.7%   Only perl is below Lua . You can find the report here: 
https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages-by-github-users/

peter