Newbie, homework help, please.

[BartC]

"someone" <wesbroom at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4068590.2196.1335038608255.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums at ynjn4...


>> textTuple = border(SHI)
>> for lines in textTuple:
>>     print (lines)
>
> Thanks your Bart for trying, I don't understand how it works or if you
> tried to place my script in python to see if it would work, unfortunately,
> I tried 10 different ways plus yours, and I don't see the connection.
> Unless you were trying to help me see the way and I did not, sorry, but
> thanks for trying. The characters did show me a little more.

Did you run my code fragment on it's own to see if it did the job?

The code can be packaged into a function border() just like you already 
have:

def border(text):
 maxwidth=0
 for s in text:
  if len(s)>maxwidth: maxwidth=len(s)

 vertinchlines=6    # assume 6 lines/inch
 hozinchchars=10    # assume 10 chars/inch

 hozmargin=" "*hozinchchars

 newtext=[]
 for i in range(vertinchlines):
  newtext.append("")

 newtext.append(hozmargin+"*"*(maxwidth+4)+hozmargin)
 newtext.append(hozmargin+"* "+" "*maxwidth+" *"+hozmargin)

 for s in text:
  newtext.append(hozmargin+"* "+s+" "*(maxwidth-len(s))+" *"+hozmargin)

 newtext.append(hozmargin+"* "+" "*maxwidth+" *"+hozmargin)
 newtext.append(hozmargin+"*"*(maxwidth+4)+hozmargin)

 for i in range(vertinchlines):
  newtext.append("")

 return newtext

And can be tested like this (obviously you will need to obtain SHI from the
input file):

SHI=["First Name and Last","ENGR 109-X","Fall 2999","Format Example"]

textTuple = border(SHI)

for lines in textTuple:
 print (lines)

The text handling is clunky (I had to learn the Python as I went along), but
with these things you just want to get something working first, then you can
tweak.

-- 
Bartc