Integrating a C applet into a Python app (GTK) - python

I've got a Python/GTK project I've been working on for a while, and some of the functionality I want already exists in Gnome panel applets. Based on my reading, panel applets are already in a subclass of the standard GTK Bin, so I would think there'd be a way that I can use the C-based GTK objects in my Python-based application.
For instance, I've got the fish applet in /usr/lib/gnome-panel/fish-applet-2 as a binary
Can I do some GTK magic to get that object so it can be embedded into my Python/GTK gui?
I'm not expecting a step-by-step walkthrough, but if anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

The code for applets in gnome panel is quite complex. It's based on the gnome Bonobo framework (which in turn is based on CORBA). But now the whole thing is in a bit of a flux because gnome is moving away from Bonobo to a new dbus-based design. So if it's loading existing gnome panel applets you want you should absolutely use the code from gnome panel to do it. There is (or at least was) an example program included that does nothing but load an applet into a window.
If you want to display a widget from one of your own programs (a custom applet) inside another of your programs it's much easier. There are a set of widgets called GtkSocket and GtkPlug for this purpose. Of course the to programs doesn't need to run on the same machine. But there is always the delicate problem of getting them together in the first place.

Related

interacting with a user created gui dynamically using python

There is a user created GUI which is an .exe that loads a DLL. This GUI has a bunch of sliders, check boxes etc. I would like to move two sliders at the same time using python automatically without me using my mouse to move the sliders. I would like to know the python modules that an be used to achieve this purpose.
You can try using SikuliX.
It can be used to automate mouse or keyboard actions based on pattern matching. It is originally developed for Java I think, but it can be used with Python.
Basically, anything you can do yourself manually can be done with it.
The developer seems to be pretty active, so you can easily seek help from him if you have issues.

Python Script (main) + Blender "face" animation

SO I am infact doing something very similar to this user posts:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6800292/python-ai-and-3d-animation
but it has no answers and I couldn't contact the user.
Basically I have a functioning python script that answers me with an action accordingly to my voice command. (Fetch emails, weather forecast, turn lights ON/OFF, etc), it has been made using the pyspeech library which is pretty darn good.
Now I want to give my programm a "face"! I thought about modelling the face with Blender (have some knowledge and would build up on it) and I know I could animate it, so the lips move and such.
So I want to know if it is at all possible to:
Load the "face" that I made from blender from my main python script (so when my programm start the face would be there on the screen too)
Run from the script the animations such that when for example when my programm says "You're welcome" I would run the animation that the lips move on the face to simulate it is speaking.
I know that blender has a good python integration (maybe correct is to say it is built on?) and that is why I thought it would be a good program to use.
Hope someone can help and tell me if that is at all possible and maybe show me some right way to go, my googling just showed me always python scripting with Blender which is not what I exactly need here... I think...
Cheers,
Flavio
Indeed, what you want is possible.
If all you want is to play pre-rendered animation videos based on decisions on your program, any GUI that allows you to embedd and play video in a widget will do for your application.
You could rool out your own GUI using Pygame (which has video support, but you will need one of the "minor" more or less "amateur" widget toolkits made for pygame to make up the remaining of your application, as pygame is pretty low level.
On a higher level, although I'had not embedded video, I think you could go with PyQT4 (googled a bit, not that many examples either, buthints that there are eamples in QT4 source) or GTK+ (the samething, it looks like there are more examples).
Another option would be to build your application to run inside the Blener Game Engine itself - It offers both a high level Toolkit, and ways to customize behaviors to user actions (even without coding).
The major drawback in doing this is: I don't know which are the options to distribute an application that needs Blender Game Engine nowadays - your users will need to install Blender (but it is likely Blender folks made an easy way to jhandle this).
On the upper hand: you get the most flexibility, it would even be possible to render some sequences in realtime (as opposed to pre-rendered videos) in your app.
One thing: Blender nowadays use Python 3.x - if the other libraries you need are Python 2, you willl need to make one different process for the GUI inside Blender, and exchange data with your application's backeend in Python 2 (for example using jsonrpc or xmlrpc - that is enoguh simple in Python).

Python widget/cursor detection?

Beginner python learner here. I have a question that I have tried to Google but I just can't come up with the proper way to ask in just a few words (partly because I don't know the right terminology.)
How do I get python to detect other widgets? For example, if I wanted a script to check and see when I click my mouse if that click put focus on an entry widget on a (for example) website. I've been trying to get it to work in Tkinter and I can't figure out even where to begin.
I've seen this:
focus_displayof(self)
Return the widget which has currently the focus on the
display where this widget is located.
But the return value for that function seems to be some ambiguous long number I can't decipher, plus it only works in its own application.
Any direction would be much appreciated. :)
Do you mean inside your own GUI code, or some other application's/website's?
Sounds like you're looking for a GUI driver, or GUI test/automation driver. There are tons of these, some great, some awful, many abandoned. If you tell us more about what you want that will help narrow down the choices.
Is this for testing, or automation, or are you going to drive the mouse and button yourself and just want something to observe what is going on under the hood in the GUI?
>How do I get Python to detect other widgets?
On a machine, or in a browser? If in a machine, which platform: Linux/Windows (which)/Mac?
If in a browser, which browser (and major version)?
> But the return value for that function seems to be some ambiguous long number I can't decipher
Using longs as resource handles is par for the course, although good GUI drivers also work with string/regex matching on window and button names.
> plus it only works in its own application.
What do you mean, and what are you expecting it to return you? You should be able to look up that GUI object and access its title. Look for a GUI driver that works with window and button names.
Here is one list, read it through and see what sounds useful. I have used AutoIt under Win32, it's great, widely-used and actively-maintained; it can be called from Python (via subprocess).
Here are comparisons by the author of PyWinAuto on his and similar tools. Give a read to his criticisms of its structure from 2010. If none of these is what you want, at least you now have the vocabulary to tell us what would be...

Embed interactive shell (VTE) in a PyGtk GUI to manipulate its own widgets

I am planning to do the folliwing:
Create a PyGtk GUI (hardcoded, no Glade) with some widgets, and at the bottom of the screen put some sort of VTE (Virtual Terminal Emulator) from where I could manipulate the widgets, for example changing their attributes and calling their methods from the commandline.
The result would be similar to using AutoCAD's commands, only that I would be acting upon the GUI objects.
I have already found very few things about gtk.VteTerminal widget, but not only could not find a working example or make one myself, it also seem to be a system terminal, not a "current session" python terminal where I could run python commands and access GUI objects.
Any suggestion?
Thanks for reading
What you want exists already: GtkParasite. It's meant for debugging, but I'm sure if you wanted it to actually be a part of your application, you could adapt it.
I'm late to the party, but I had a similar problem.
Look here
Virtual Terminal Question
It's an option if you decide to do something different than what you might have already done.

Python GUI with custom render/drawing

I am looking for a Python GUI library that I can rewrite the rendering / drawing.
It has to support basic widgets (buttons, combo boxes, list boxes, text editors, scrolls,), layout management, event handling
The thing that I am looking for is to use my custom Direct3D and OpenGL renderer for all of the GUI's drawing / rendering.
edit suggested by S.Lott: I need to use this GUI for a 3D editor, since I have to drag and drop a lot of things from the GUI elements to the 3d render area, I wanted to use a GUI system that renders with Direct3D (preffered) or OpenGL. It also has to have a nice look. It is difficult to achieve this with GUI's like WPF, since WPF does not have a handle. Also it needs to be absolutly free for commercial use.
edit: I would also like to use the rendering context I initialized for the 3d part in my application
I don't know what are you working at, so maybe this is not what you're looking for, but:
Have you considered using Blender + its Game Engine?
It supports Python scripting, and provides some APIs to create "standard" GUIs too, while allowing you to do a lot of cool stuff with 3d models. This could be especially useful if your application does a lot of 3d models manipulation..
Then you can "compile" it (it just builds the all-in-one package containing all the dependencies, in a way similar to what py2exe does) for any platform you need.
You can use Qt Scene Framework with OpenGL rendering. There are many examples on Nokia site.
The best Python GUI toolkit is wxPython (also known as wxWidgets).
This is not merely my opinion, see also: wxPython quotes
wxPython is the best and most mature
cross-platform GUI toolkit, given a
number of constraints. The only reason
wxPython isn't the standard Python GUI
toolkit is that Tkinter was there
first. -- Guido van Rossum
I can't say how easy or hard it would be to add your own renderer.
There are OpenGL bindings in Python that will get you 3D rendering. Personally, I'd use wxpython as your 'gui' manager and use the bindings to do opengl for the rest. Wx has the necessary demos (check the wxpython demos installation) and information in their GLCanvas demos.
Another sample code is here too.
You might find PyClutter useful.

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