[Edu-sig] More on Panda3D

[kirby urner]

On 5/8/06, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I think the first thing will be to write a new subclass of writer,
> as I've already done for VRML, VRML2, EIG, POV-Ray, and Live3D.[1]
>

Making progress on this, but of more generic interest to new users on
WinXP would be getting something like this to work:

IDLE 1.1.2
>>> import direct.directbase.DirectStart
DirectStart: Starting the game.
Warning: DirectNotify: category 'Interval' already exists
>>> run()

Disregarding the Warning, this is a positive state of affairs.  Here
we are in old familiar IDLE, yet able to import and dynamically
interact with the Panda3D classes.

Of course the exact same setup is what's implemented in Linux (indeed,
Tk-based PMW = Python Megawidgets are integral to the end user
interface itself),

but in Windows you might run into some weird path issues, owing to the
fact that you already have Python installed, yet Panda3D brings along
its own (the "right version").

Like this:

D:\Panda3D-1.2.2\bin\lib>cd..

D:\Panda3D-1.2.2\bin>ppython .\lib\idlelib\idle.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File ".\lib\idlelib\idle.py", line 21, in ?
    idlelib.PyShell.main()
  File "D:\Panda3D-1.2.2\bin\lib\idlelib\PyShell.py", line 1350, in main
    root = Tk(className="Idle")
  File "D:\Panda3D-1.2.2\bin\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1569, in __init__
    self.tk = _tkinter.create(screenName, baseName, className,
interactive, wantobjects, useTk, sync, use)
_tkinter.TclError: Can't find a usable init.tcl in the following directories:
    D:/Panda3D-1.2.2/bin/lib/tcl8.4 D:/Panda3D-1.2.2/lib/tcl8.4
D:/lib/tcl8.4 D:/Panda3D-1.2.2/library D:/library D:/tcl8.4.7/library

This probably means that Tcl wasn't installed properly.

Here's my suggestion:

copy your tk8.4 and tcl8.4 folders/contents from under a normal
python2.4 install from python.org, and put them in
/Panda3D-1.2.2/bin/lib/

Works for me, algthough I still get cmd window screen garbage -- which
is fine, I'm used to that on Linux as well (I run GNOME and KDE
systems in partitions of two other computers, plus am shopping for a
couple dedicated laptops for U- and Edu- buntu work).

Kirby