Beyond the Limits from 3.4 (March/April 2005)

Special

Clearance Sale!

We've been publishing for over five years now and it's time to clear out our inventory of back issues, so we're slashing prices!

Check out this amazing clearance sale of all our past issues. Missing some issues? This is a great time to complete your RBD collection. Save up to 40% off the regular price of our printed back issue packages. These prices are only good until ~~the end of the year~~ May 2008 and supplies are limited, so place your order today.

Recent issues

6.3 cover
6.3: March/April 2008

6.2 cover
6.2: Jan/Feb 2008

6.1 cover
6.1: Nov/Dec 2007

Article Preview

Buy Now

Print:
PDF:

Beyond the Limits

A GUI designer

Issue: 3.4 (March/April 2005)
Author: Didier Barbas
Author Bio: Didier has been a dilettante programmer and linguist for more than 20 years. Unusual for a Frenchman, he speaks 11 languages, including Korean and PowerPC machine-language.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 3,360
Starting Page Number: 46
RBD Number: 3421
Resource File(s):

3421.sit Updated: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 7:47 PM
3421.zip Updated: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 7:47 PM

Related Link(s): None
Known Limitations: None

Excerpt of article text...

Following up on my last two articles on "using RB to make Python GUI apps" (a weak pretext to play with IPC sockets), I came up with the idea of using RB to make "native" GUI applications in Python. After tinkering around quite a bit, I found the best solution, I think, which was before my eyes all along: use RB's IDE!
Objectives
Although programming in Python can be picked up very quickly, and command-line scripts can be hacked in no-time, full-fledged applications, especially those that require a GUI, need a lot of attention. I prefer to devote my limited attention span to coding rather than tinkering with listboxes and pushbuttons. RB protects me from such nonsense, and all programming languages should have a similar IDE.
Recently the need (contract work) cropped up for a GUI'ed application in Python. I wasn't amused, and started playing with options that would produce the GUI for me. Here's what I got, and how I got it.
Building a minimal IDE in RB
This is something that is reasonably doable. A floating palette containing a few GUI elements, click, drag and drop, manipulate canvas objects that look like pushbuttons and listboxes and checkboxes, and so on. Some effort is required, but you can get something that works more or less. However, that's a lot of time to spend in order to mimic RB's own IDE.

...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.