From what I understand, the history of ppython is that it was an attept to distinguish Panda from other copies of python that may be installed on the system in the path. From batch file to exe as it was in 1.1.0 was a big improvement. It was nice not to have to answer the “continue running batch file” question every time I CTRL-C’ed out of something. However, I have some problems with the solution in 1.3.2 where ppython has moved into the python directory. For starters, it is another thing you need on the path besides bin. Mostly my problem is that while other versions of python don’t conflict with Panda because they aren’t called ppython, Panda now conflicts with my non-Panda copy of python that I use because in addition to ppython there is also a python.exe in the python subdirectory. If ppython is going to live in there and require python be on the path, then I don’t think that additional python.exe should be included in the release. After I upgraded it took me a while to figure out why my non-panda python couldn’t find the site-packages I thought it had because I was actually running Panda without realizing it.
Yeah. I have no idea why the Panda3D developers shipped ppython, python, pythonw, and ppythonw with Panda3D.
All my programs run fine on the normal python 2.4 interpreter too.