A Beginner's Doubt

[Neil Cerutti]

On 2013-06-19, augustofec at gmail.com <augustofec at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is my first post in this group and the reason why I came
> across here is that, despite my complete lack of knowledge in
> the programming area, I received an order from my teacher to
> develop a visually interactive program, until 20th July, so we
> can participate in a kind of contest.
>
> My goal is to learn and program it by myself, as good as the
> time allows me.
>
> That said, what I seek here is advice from people who
> definitively have more experience than me on topics like: is it
> possible to develop this kind of program in such a short amount
> of time? What kinds of aspects of Python should I focus on
> learning? What tutorials and websites are out there that can
> help me? What kind of already done packages are out there that
> I can freely use, so I do not need to create all the aspects of
> the program froms scratch?
>
> It would be wise to give an abstract of the program. I made an
> information flux kind of graphic, but I do not know how to post
> it in here, so I'll use only words:
>
> Full screen window -> Title and brief introductory text -> 3 Buttons (Credits) (Instructions) and (Start)
>
> (Credits) -> Just plain text and a return button 
> (Instructions) -> Just plain text and a return button
> (Start) -> Changes the screen so it displays a side-menu and a Canvas.
>
> Side menu -> X number of buttons (maybe 4 or 5)
> Buttons -> Clicked -> Submenu opens -> List of images
>                                     -> Return button -> Back to side menu
>
> Image in List of images -> When clicked AND hold mouse button -> Make copy
>                         -> if: dragged to canvas -> paste the copy in place
>                         -> if: dragged anywhere else -> delete copy and nothing happens
>
> On canvas:
> Image -> On click and drag can be moved
>       -> Double click -> Opens menu -> Resize, Deform, Rotate, Color, Brigthness, Contrast, Color Curve, Saturation
>
> Then, somewhere in cavas:
>
> Save option -> Prompt for file and user's name
>             -> Prompt if users want printed copy or not -> Print
>             -> After saved, display random slideshow in other monitor, device or screen with the users' creations.
>
> Thats basically the whole program. I've been studying Python
> for a week and half now, through: How to think like a Computer
> Scientist and Invent with Python and Pygame. I'm still at the
> very beggining, though, and I can't make much more than make
> some images appear on a Pygame screen in a menu-like style,
> with a patterned gap between them. No mouse interactions up to
> now.
>
> I really appreciate your suggestions and help.

First off, this is extremely ambitious for one month with no
programming experience. But it sounds like you've made some
significant progress. For a new programmer, mastering the
mechanical aspects of programming can be a huge hurdle, and
you've done that already.

Finally, my advice is to use tkinter combined with PIL for this
project, instead of PyGame. I have not personally used PyGame,
but my guess is it will be much harder to create a reasonable GUI
with PyGame than with tkinter. But I do not know how difficult
this project will be will be even using the libraries of least
resistance. The GUI you propose is very simple, except possibly
for the dragging and dropping, which I've not tried and might be
hairy. Moreover, I have not seriously used PIL and I don't even
know if it supports Python 3.

-- 
Neil Cerutti