I'm writing a calculator currently and I'd like to have results displayed in a visually appealing form. The program just has a command line interface for the moment, but I've been trying to find a way to do various things with the results it displays. For example, I'd like to have it display the result in a bigger font size, a different font than system default, and even subscripts and superscripts. From what I could find, the best way to do such things would be if I introduced a GUI and used something like wxPython, and using Unicode code points can only resolve part of the issue. Moreover, for various reasons, I'd just like to have the program in command line for the moment.
I don't think you can accomplish this with the command line, but you might check out curses. I would suggest picking up a GUI for this sort of thing. It's really not too hard to learn and Python's builtin Tkinter is perfectly functional for getting started. There are many good resources for Tkinter. Here are a few I like:
effbot.org
Thinking in Tkinter
An Introduction to Tkinter
WxPython is excellent, but if you are just getting started my suggestion would be to start with Tkinter. Others might disagree...
EDIT
I just remembered running across the console module for Windows. I suspect it won't won't get you what you want, but at least it's out there.
If you're running this on the command line, I'm almost certain that there's nothing you can do to override the font preferences set by the user. In both windows and Linux, the font settings of the command line are user controlled, and I doubt that you can change it without sudo access. Seeing as you're writing a calculator, I don't think a user would want to run it as sudo - I certainly wouldn't want to run something as simple as a calculator with sudo privileges. To require that would make the user think that you are up to something malicious
Related
I'm not sure quite how to word this, which is probably why I'm having trouble finding an answer.
I have a command line script that runs a rummy game, I want it to take over the terminal kind of like how Vim or Mutt does, so that each round is refreshed in the full terminal window rather than just printing out row after row of text.
Can someone tell me what that is called, so I can research it and find out how to do it?
Repo: https://github.com/sarcoma/Cards
You're looking for a console user interface. One of the best libraries for python would be http://urwid.org/
As mentioned in a comment "pythons curses module does what you require".
This is what you need to take over the terminal: https://docs.python.org/3.9/howto/curses.html
Is there any way I can create a UAC-like environment in Python? I want to basically lock the workstation without actually using the Windows lock screen. The user should not be able to do anything except, say, type a password to unlock the workstation.
You cannot do this without cooperation with operating system. Whatever you do, Ctrl-Alt-Del will allow the user to circumvent your lock.
The API call you're looking for Win32-wise is a combination of CreateDesktop and SetThreadDesktop.
In terms of the internals of Vista+ desktops, MSDN covers this, as does this blog post. This'll give you the requisite background to know what you're doing.
In terms of making it look like the UAC dialog - well, consent.exe actually takes a screenshot of the desktop and copies it to the background of the new desktop; otherwise, the desktop will be empty.
As the other answerer has pointed out - Ctrl+Alt+Delete will still work. There's no way around that - at least, not without replacing the keyboard driver, anyway.
As to how to do this in Python - it looks like pywin32 implements SetThreadDesktop etc. I'm not sure how compatible it is with Win32; if you find it doesn't work as you need, then you might need a python extension to do it. They're not nearly as hard to write as they sound.
You might be able to get the effect you desire using a GUI toolkit that draws a window that covers the entire screen, then do a global grab of the keyboard events. I'm not sure if it will catch something like ctrl-alt-del on windows, however.
For example, with Tkinter you can create a main window, then call the overrideredirect method to turn off all window decorations (the standard window titlebar and window borders, assuming your window manager has such things). You can query the size of the monitor, then set this window to that size. I'm not sure if this will let you overlay the OSX menubar, though. Finally, you can do a grab which will force all input to a specific window.
How effective this is depends on just how "locked out" you want the user to be. On a *nix/X11 system you can pretty much completely lock them out (so make sure you can remotely log in while testing, or you may have to forcibly reboot if your code has a bug). On windows or OSX the effectiveness might be a little less.
I would try with pygame, because it can lock mouse to itself and thus keep all input to itself, but i wouldn't call this secure without much testing, ctr-alt-del probably escape it, can't try on windows right now.
(not very different of Bryan Oakley's answer, except with pygame)
I saw here a solution, but i don't want wait until the key is pressed. I want to get the last key pressed.
The related question may help you, as #S.Lott mentioned: Detect in python which keys are pressed
I am writting in, though to give yu advice: don't worry about that.
What kind of program are you trying to produce?
Programas running on a terminal usually don't have an interface in which getting "live" keystrokes is interesting. Not nowadays. For programs running in the terminal, you should worry about a usefull command line User Interfase, using the optparse or other modules.
For interative programs, you should use a GUI library and create a decent UI for your users, instead of reinventing the wheel.Which wouldb eb etter for what you ar trying to do? Theuser click on an icon,a window opens on the screen, witha couple of buttons on it, and half a dozen or so menu options packed under a "File" menu as all the otehr windws on the screen - or - a black terminal opens up, with an 80's looking text interface with some blue-highlighted menu options and so on?. You can use Tkinter for simple windowed applications, as it comes pre-installed with Python + Windows, so that yoru users don't have to worry about installign aditional libraries.
Rephrasing it just to be clear: Any program that requires a user interface should either se a GUI library, or have a WEB interface. It is a waste of your time, and that of your users, to try and create a UI operating over the terminal - we are not in 1989 any more.
If you absolutely need a text interface, you should look at the ncurses library then. Better than trying to reinvent the wheel.
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/134892/
i think it's what you need
ps ooops, i didn't see it's the same solution you rejected...why, btw?
edit:
do you know:
from msvcrt import getch
it works only in windows, however...
(and it is generalised in the above link)
from here: http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread115282.html
I was thinking that for a learning project for myself, I would try to make a GUI for ffdshow on linux, using tkinter. Wanted to make sure this project would be feasible first, before I get halfway through and run into something that cant be done in python.
Basic idea is to have a single GUI window with a bunch of drop down boxes that have the various presets (like format or bitrate), as well as a text box where a custom number can be entered if applicable. Then when all the options are selected, the user hits the Start button on the GUI and it shows a progress little bar with a percentage. All the options selected would just send the relevant selections as cli arguments for ffdshow, and begin the conversion progress (essentially turning all the user's input into a single perfect cli command).
Is all this doable with python and tkinter? and is it something that a relative newb with only very basic tkinter experience could pull off with books and other python resources?
Thanks
That is precisely the type of thing that python and Tkinter excel at. And yes, a relative newbie can easily do a task like that.
Following the example at http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.general/541418, I've succeeded in creating a callable class for balloon tooltips, but the greater complexities of that code elude me when it comes to customization. I browsed a bit of how it works through msdn, but being a novice at more windows-esque languagues like c and vb, etc. I was unable to make much sense of it.
So I ask ye snakely academics:
Things I'd like to be able to do with that code aside from the standard icon, title, text:
Perform actions based on clicking the tooltip
Modify the tooltip that pops up over the icon in the system tray after loading it (to reflect changing values)
Multiple lines? (Not sure if this can even be done, really)
More information on other things you could do in a windows 7 environment versus XP (which seems to be what this was written for).
Ideally I'd get some sort of return value or some semblance of an event when the tooltip is clicked so that I could run some code, but currently I'm importing that code as a module and calling at various times, so I'm not sure how to handle clicks outside of the popup code itself...
Information on handling these things with python seems quite scarce. Thanks in advance.
Perform actions based on clicking the tooltip
Whats the problem OnTaskbarNotify? Hock yourself in there.
Modify the tooltip that pops up over the icon in the system tray after loading it (to reflect changing values)
Probably not, I am not sure about the WinAPI here. I haven't seen it in the wild, so...
Multiple lines? (Not sure if this can even be done, really)
With most WinAPI, just insert a \n in the string.
More information on other things you could do in a windows 7 environment versus XP (which seems to be what this was written for).
LOTS... But that is a bit vague... It depends what your needs are. But for kol feturez you need to google on your own...
On Linux and Unix systems I use the notify-send OS already implemented system.
import os
os.system('notify-send "'+title+'" "'+message+'")
Maybe in Windows there is some API32 for this.
Check this https://gist.github.com/wontoncc/1808234