WxPython tutorial

Tom nospam at nospam.com
Wed Aug 9 18:57:40 EDT 2000


Agreed.  The wxPython demo program is excellent - a very useful intro and
resource.
(But I think the original posting asked for a tutorial, which the demo is
not.)

The other sources you listed are useful too, but that's because I'm a C++
programmer.  I've heard people say that the wxWindows docs are fine for
wxPython since only a slight mental mapping is necessary (between C++ and
Python types), but I think this would be a bit 'uncomfortable' for many
Python programmers.  It would be better if that 'slight mental mapping'
could be applied directly to the the wxWindows documentation and the result
distributed with wxPython.

Tom.


"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:ug0oeyuy6.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> "Penfold" <spam at spam.com> writes:
>
> > Yes, the demo thats in the wxPython distribution.  Run it, every
"mini-demo"
> > in it contains full source and tells you all you need to know ...
>
> And even better it lets you see what it looks like right there :-)  Of
> course, it's not so much a tutorial in the classical sense, but I
> actually find it much more practical in terms of having stuff I can
> directly use in my own applications.
>
> For me, what I've found best in my approach towards picking up
> wxPython was to have four sources of information available:
>
> 1. wxPython demo (in the 'demo' directory of wxPython)
> 2. wxWindows help documentation (in the 'docs' directory of wxPython)
> 3. wxPython installed modules (in the main and lib wxPython directory)
> 4. wxWindows/wxPython source. (retrieve from the wxWindows or wxPython
site)
>
>
> 1. The demo is by far the easiest to start with since it's chock full
> of code that you can interactively see run and then "borrow" the
> actual code, either from the demo program's listing pane or from the
> filesystem.  You can go quite a long way just depending on the demo -
> you may not get every tiny little thing the way you want but it should
> be really easy to get a functioning application.  Once you start
> getting down the nitty gritty and having other questions, I find the
> other sources to be the most useful in the order listed.
>
> 2. Although there are times when it can be ambiguous with respect to
> wxPython (not quite everything that needs a wxPython note has one) or
> even slightly out of whack with wxWindows itself, the wxWindows
> documentation is really quite good, and it also includes some general
> overviews.  The information is for the most part, directly
> translatable to wxPython.
>
> 3. When in doubt about how wxPython wrapped something from wxWindows
> (and it's not used in a demo the way I want to use it), I start with
> the wxPython .py modules - looking through them can verify which
> methods are wrapped and available (and I found particularly helpful
> with the new grid class which isn't documented elsewhere yet).
> However, at some point this doesn't help fully since the wrapper
> doesn't show you precise parameters for all methods, just a generic
> SWIG interface.  So then you go to...
>
> 4. The source is the final arbiter. :-) First, I'll look at the SWIG
> interface files for wxPython which will let me know precisely what is
> wrapped and how.  If something there is still unclear, I'll revert
> back to the wxWindows source and see what actually happens for a class
> or method (although this requires understanding C++ to follow fully).
> And within the wxWindows source, there are also other direct wxWindows
> samples that (again, requiring C++ knowledge) can provide some further
> samples of operating code.
>
>
> The vast majority of learning I did with (1) and (2) - I've only had
> to delve into (3) and (4) occasionally, but it was really nice to have
> them around when I needed to.
>
> --
> -- David
> --
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