How to create a file on users XP desktop

[kyosohma at gmail.com]

On Oct 8, 10:11 am, Tim Golden <m... at timgolden.me.uk> wrote:
> kyoso... at gmail.com wrote:
> > On Oct 8, 9:19 am, goldtech <goldt... at worldpost.com> wrote:
> >>> from win32com.shell import shell, shellcon
> >>> desktop = shell.SHGetFolderPath (0, shellcon.CSIDL_DESKTOP, 0, 0)
> >>> </code>
> >> Tim,
>
> >> How did you learn Win32com?
>
> >> Other than the O'Reilly book, I've never found a lot of
> >> documentation.
>
> >> Trying to browse COM in PythonWin is tough - there's tons of stuff in
> >> there. I've never been able to find the Win32com classes, methods,
> >> usage examples when I browse COM in PythonWin.
>
> >> For example where is, shell.SHGetFolderPath and shellcon.CSIDL_DESKTOP
> >> officially documented?
>
> >> Did you learn from using Visual C++ or VB? How did you learn this
> >> stuff?
>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Lee G.
>
> > Pretty much the only place to learn stuff that's not in the PyWin32
> > docs is on one of the MSDN sites. Yes, that can suck. Here's the
> > general page:http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
>
> > You can google for them too to get direct links to the MSDN page.
>
> > The ActiveState Python (AKA ActivePython) has an IDE that allows you
> > to browse the COM module. It also has a help file that allows you to
> > browse the PyWin32 docs locally. I think you can download that without
> > downloading ActivePython.
>
> > Mike
>
> FWIW, the pywin32 distribution itself also comes with a local
> .chm file. But aside from that, there have been several abortive
> attempts -- including by Mike & myself! -- to get some kind of
> online help going for pywin32, but nothing's really gained traction,
> and we've all got more interesting things to be doing...
>
> One point to bear in mind that, more or less, the pywin32 stuff
> just wraps the MS API really closely, mostly doing just enough
> of the messy plumbing to present the API "objects" as Python
> objects. That's to say: find out how to do it from a C++ or VB
> or Delphi tutorial and translating into Python often isn't hard.
>
> As it happens I've been using Windows APIs for a few years,
> so I have a bit of a head start. But I've answered quite
> a few questions on python-win32 by putting the subject line
> into Google, picking a likely-looking response and translating
> it into Python.
>
> In this case ("How to create a file on users XP desktop") the
> question was too broad and tended to throw up user-oriented
> answers. I tried a few permutations, including limiting the
> search to msdn.microsoft.com, none of which showed much on the
> first couple of pages. A search of the pywin32.chm files does
> point in the right direction, but the fact is that the shell
> functionality exposed by Windows which does this kind of
> stuff is non-intuitive.
>
> While I think everyone agrees that the Windows side of Python
> could benefit from more and better docs, the general answer to:
> How do I do X in Python under Windows? is: How do I X under Windows?
>
> TJG

I'm planning on working on that PyWin32 site some more this fall/
winter. Unfortunately, I shouldn't have volunteered my time during the
summer as I have very irregular a/c at home, and thus it was very
uncomfortable to use my PC when I was off work. Lame maybe, but I
dislike using a computer when it's above 90 degrees and the humidity
is higher than 70%. Bleh!

Sorry about that. I am experimenting with MediaWiki to see if it's any
faster than MoinMoin. If you know of a fast, easy-to-use wiki that's
better than both of those, let me know.

Mike