Actually what this seems to mean is that the new Canola is an alternative framework and runtime environment for Maemo apps. When the plugin architecture and the widget set have matured there will be a new option for Python developers on the tablet.

Today we have :

1) use pyGame and do pretty much everything yourself UI-wise,

2) use Glade to describe the UI and PyGtk, the Hildonized API and widget set, for a traditional windowed look.

Tomorrow there will be :

3) write a Canola plugin. This means using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries tools :

- describe the UI in Edje syntax (or some design tool that exports it), probably using some high-level Canola widgets,
- code the behaviour using the Python bindings to ecore/evas created by the Canola team.

The 1-to-3 numbering also reflects these orders :

- from platform-agnostic to platform-specific (Any/Hildon/Canola)

- from slow and memory-hungry to fast and lean. If you've tried the two demos available in maemo.org/extras (especially the iPhone-like soft keyboard), you'll know what I mean.

So Canola may end up being used to host apps that have nothing to do with multimedia (like Carman), just like Nokia used Mozilla and XUL to build the recently released IT Video Converter, which has nothing to do with Web browsing... could be fun :-)