I'm trying to embed a foreign executable inside of a Python GUI (PyQt) just like this post describes: Run a foreign exe inside a Python GUI (PyQt)
but the answer requires the win32gui module, which doesn't seem to be available on linux systems. The PyQt method (http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qwindow.html):
--> QWindow.fromWinId(id)
does what I need, but I'm not sure how to get the handle id (hwnd) of the window of my executable (for the record, I'm trying to embed saods9 within my GUI) on linux (Ubuntu). Everything I'm finding looks to be geared toward a Windows operating system, not Linux. So I'm thinking that this Qt method can't be used on a Linux operating system?
That would be my question: How do you get the handle id of a native window within Linux to be used in the Qt method QWindow.fromWinId(id)?
Is it possible, using tkinter, to create a modern menu with a divider on the left for icons?
It was introduced in Windows Vista, if I'm not mistaken.
Tkinter can not provide native looking windows. If you're looking to make a more modern program, I'd suggest using wxPython or PyQt.
You could probably just use the menu from either and attach it to a Tk window somehow, but it's not recommended.
I've been using WxPython and I've tried Tk, but it seems that, while both are good and I'll likely use them for other projects, neither of those appear to be capable of accomplishing the things that I want for my current project (which is fine, they're good at what they do).
Basically what I'm looking for is something that will allow me to make rich graphical GUIs. My specific goal is a window that will draw bitmap buttons, resize the parent window automatically to fit them, and possibly animate the resize with a slide effect and have the buttons fade in. Also being able to have my own window border style instead of the inbuilt one is important to me.
This particular project will be Windows only, so non-portable libraries are fine in this case, though portable ones would be great too.
If I missed how this can be done in either WxPython or Tk, I'm all ears.
PySide: http://www.pyside.org/
The PySide project provides
LGPL-licensed Python bindings for the
Qt cross-platform application and UI
framework. PySide Qt bindings allow
both free open source and proprietary
software development and ultimately
aim to support all of the platforms as
Qt itself.
The Windows version of PySide is quite new and may be considered as a beta version. PySide is API compatible with PyQt.
How about PyQt?
http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/intro
Just sharing my opinion: Kivy.
Innovative open-source library. Supports both 2.x and 3.x versions of Python.
Kivy - Open source Python library for rapid development of applications
that make use of innovative user interfaces, such as multi-touch apps.
Kivy is based on OpenGL ES 2 and includes native multi-touch for each platform and Android/iOS. It’s an event-driven framework based around a main loop, and is thus also suitable for game development.
Try Pyglet. Its a library for python that makes using OpenGL very easy. You can draw pretty good 2d interfaces using Quads.
I can't tell you what is best because that is subjective but I can give you another option: PyGTK
PyGTK lets you to easily create programs with a graphical user interface using the Python programming language. The underlying GTK+ library provides all kind of visual elements and utilities for it and, if needed, you can develop full featured applications for the GNOME Desktop.
PyGTK applications are truly multiplatform and they're able to run, unmodified, on Linux, Windows, MacOS X and other platforms.
Windows has the "system tray" that houses the clock and alway-running services like MSN, Steam, etc.
I'd like to develop a wxPython tray application but I'm wondering how well this will port to other platforms. What is the tray equivalent on each platform, and how much manual work would be required to support Windows, OSX and Linux (which shells in particular would be friendliest).
wx is a cross-platform GUI and tools library that supports Win32, Mac OS X, GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and more. And if you use it's classes then your application should work on all these platforms.
For system tray look at wxTaskBarIcon (http://docs.wxwidgets.org/stable/wx_wxtaskbaricon.html#wxtaskbaricon).
Under OS X you have the Status Menu bar - the right-most items are often status-related things (like battery status, WiFi connections, etc).
Try searching for NSStatusBar and NSMenuExtra. It's almost trivial to turn an application into one that has an NSStatusBar menu and doesn't appear in the Dock. There are tutorials around on how to do it.
For many Linux desktop systems (Gnome, KDE, etc.) a Freedesktop's SysTray Protocol is implemented. You can try that if any other solution fails.
On Linux it really depends - you got diffrent programming environments there, and some window managers don't even have a tray area. Altho, if you use Gtk (and wx is Gtk really), the gtk.StatusIcon is your friend.
Here are some examples of that (haven't checked if they actually work, but should show you the path).
For wx I found some example code here.
Use Qt: Qt Systray Example
That'll show a systray icon on all platforms that Qt runs on and that support such icons. You'll need to come up with a strategy when systray functionality isn't supported, though.
Python works on multiple platforms and can be used for desktop and web applications, thus I conclude that there is some way to compile it into an executable for Mac, Windows and Linux.
The problem being I have no idea where to start or how to write a GUI with it, can anybody shed some light on this and point me in the right direction please?
First you will need some GUI library with Python bindings and then (if you want) some program that will convert your python scripts into standalone executables.
Cross-platform GUI libraries with Python bindings (Windows, Linux, Mac)
Of course, there are many, but the most popular that I've seen in wild are:
Tkinter - based on Tk GUI toolkit (de-facto standard GUI library for python, free for commercial projects)
WxPython - based on WxWidgets (popular, free for commercial projects)
Qt using the PyQt bindings or Qt for Python. The former is not free for commercial projects. The latter is less mature, but can be used for free.
Complete list is at http://wiki.python.org/moin/GuiProgramming
Single executable (all platforms)
PyInstaller - the most active(Could also be used with PyQt)
fbs - if you chose Qt above
Single executable (Windows)
py2exe - used to be the most popular
Single executable (Linux)
Freeze - works the same way like py2exe but targets Linux platform
Single executable (Mac)
py2app - again, works like py2exe but targets Mac OS
Another system (not mentioned in the accepted answer yet) is PyInstaller, which worked for a PyQt project of mine when py2exe would not. I found it easier to use.
http://www.pyinstaller.org/
Pyinstaller is based on Gordon McMillan's Python Installer. Which is no longer available.
An alternative tool to py2exe is bbfreeze which generates executables for windows and linux. It's newer than py2exe and handles eggs quite well. I've found it magically works better without configuration for a wide variety of applications.
There's also PyGTK, which is basically a Python wrapper for the Gnome Toolkit. I've found it easier to wrap my mind around than Tkinter, coming from pretty much no knowledge of GUI programming previously. It works pretty well and has some good tutorials. Unfortunately there isn't an installer for Python 2.6 for Windows yet, and may not be for a while.
Since python is installed on nearly every non-Windows OS by default now, the only thing you really need to make sure of is that all of the non-standard libraries you use are installed.
Having said that, it is possible to build executables that include the python interpreter, and any libraries you use. This is likely to create a large executable, however.
MacOS X even includes support in the Xcode IDE for creating full standalone GUI apps. These can be run by any user running OS X.
For the GUI itself:
PyQT is pretty much the reference.
Another way to develop a rapid user interface is to write a web app,
have it run locally and display the app in the browser.
Plus, if you go for the Tkinter option suggested by lubos hasko
you may want to try portablepy to have your app run on Windows environment
without Python.
I'm not sure that this is the best way to do it, but when I'm deploying Ruby GUI apps (not Python, but has the same "problem" as far as .exe's are concerned) on Windows, I just write a short launcher in C# that calls on my main script. It compiles to an executable, and I then have an application executable.
PySimpleGUI wraps tkinter and works on Python 3 and 2.7. It also runs on Qt, WxPython and in a web browser, using the same source code for all platforms.
You can make custom GUIs that utilize all of the same widgets that you find in tkinter (sliders, checkboxes, radio buttons, ...). The code tends to be very compact and readable.
#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
if sys.version_info[0] >= 3:
import PySimpleGUI as sg
else:
import PySimpleGUI27 as sg
layout = [[ sg.Text('My Window') ],
[ sg.Button('OK')]]
window = sg.Window('My window').Layout(layout)
button, value = window.Read()
As explained in the PySimpleGUI Documentation, to build the .EXE file you run:
pyinstaller -wF MyGUIProgram.py
!!! KIVY !!!
I was amazed seeing that no one mentioned Kivy!!!
I have once done a project using Tkinter, although they do advocate that it has improved a lot, it still gives me a feel of windows 98, so I switched to Kivy.
I have been following a tutorial series if it helps...
Just to give an idea of how kivy looks, see this (The project I am working on):
And I have been working on it for barely a week now !
The benefits for Kivy you ask? Check this
The reason why I chose this is, its look and that it can be used in mobile as well.
# I'd use tkinter for python 3
import tkinter
tk = tkinter.Tk()
tk.geometry("400x300+500+300")
l = Label(tk,text="")
l.pack()
e = Entry(tk)
e.pack()
def click():
e['text'] = 'You clicked the button'
b = Button(tk,text="Click me",command=click)
b.pack()
tk.mainloop()
# After this I would you py2exe
# search for the use of this module on stakoverflow
# otherwise I could edit this to let you know how to do it
py2exe
Then you should use py2exe, for example, to bring in one folder all the files needed to run the app, even if the user has not python on his pc (I am talking of windows... for the apple os there is no need of an executable file, I think, as it come with python in it without any need of installing it.
Create this file
Create a setup.py
with this code:
from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe
setup(console=['l4h.py'])
save it in a folder
Put your program in the same folder of setup.py
put in this folder the program you want to make it distribuitable:
es: l4h.py
ps: change the name of the file (from l4h to anything you want, that is an example)
Run cmd from that folder (on the folder, right click + shift and choose start cmd here)
write in cmd:>python setup.py py2exe
in the dist folder there are all the files you need
you can zip it and distribute it
Pyinstaller
Install it from cmd
**
pip install pyinstaller
**
Run it from the cmd from the folder where the file is
**
pyinstaller file.py
**
Update
Read this post to make an exe on windows with pyinstaller the proper way and with one file and images in it https://pythonprogramming.altervista.org/auto-py-to-exe-only-one-file-with-images-for-our-python-apps/
You don't need to compile python for Mac/Windows/Linux. It is an interpreted language, so you simply need to have the Python interpreter installed on the system of your choice (it is available for all three platforms).
As for a GUI library that works cross platform, Python's Tk/Tcl widget library works very well, and I believe is sufficiently cross platform.
Tkinter is the python interface to Tk/Tcl
From the python project webpage:
Tkinter is not the only GuiProgramming
toolkit for Python. It is however the
most commonly used one, and almost the
only one that is portable between
Unix, Mac and Windows
You can use appJar for basic GUI development.
from appJar import gui
num=1
def myfcn(btnName):
global num
num +=1
win.setLabel("mylabel", num)
win = gui('Test')
win.addButtons(["Set"], [myfcn])
win.addLabel("mylabel", "Press the Button")
win.go()
See documentation at appJar site.
Installation is made with pip install appjar from command line.
There's three things you could do:
The first thing is to find a GUI Designer that can launch its code as standalone applications like .exe files. I use a version of MatDeck (for people using GUI Designers I recommend MD Python Designer) as I believe(I use another version so I'm not too sure.) it allows me to convert the code to a standalone applications and by having it as such, there is no need to install the software on every PC that's going to run the program.
The second option is partially bypassing the problem, launch the GUI as a web page. This would give you the most compatibility as most if not all OS can utilize it. Once again, you would need a GUI Designer that can convert its components into a web compatible format, I've done it once and I used the same version of MatDeck(Visionary Deck), I would not recommend MD Python Designer this time as I don't know if it can turn its GUIs into websites using web assembly whereas Visionary Deck I've tried and tested. As with all things there are most likely other software this is just one I use frequently because I work a lot with Mathematics and Physics.
The third option is also kind of bypassing the problem but do it in Tkinter and just ensure you have a Python IDE or just plain old Python and run the code, this will launch the GUI. This is a good solution and maybe the simplest but I wouldn't class it as the shortest or the best. If you only plan to switch between a few operating systems and computers this will probably be your best bet.