Metadata-Version: 1.1
Name: pythondialog
Version: 2.14.1
Summary: A Python interface to the UNIX dialog utility and mostly-compatible programs
Home-page: http://pythondialog.sourceforge.net/
Author: Florent Rougon
Author-email: f.rougon@free.fr
License: UNKNOWN
Download-URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pythondialog/files/pythondialog/2.14.1/python3-pythondialog-2.14.1.tar.bz2
Description: ===============================================================================
        Python wrapper for the UNIX "dialog" utility
        ===============================================================================
        Easy writing of graphical interfaces for terminal-based applications
        -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        
        Overview
        --------
        
        pythondialog is a Python wrapper for the UNIX dialog_ utility
        originally written by Savio Lam and later rewritten by Thomas E. Dickey.
        Its purpose is to provide an easy to use, pythonic and as complete as
        possible interface to dialog_ from Python code.
        
        .. _dialog: http://invisible-island.net/dialog/dialog.html
        
        pythondialog is free software, licensed under the GNU LGPL (GNU Lesser
        General Public License). Its home page is located at:
        
          http://pythondialog.sourceforge.net/
        
        and contains a `short example`_, screenshots_, a `summary of the recent
        changes <http://pythondialog.sourceforge.net/#news>`_, links to the
        documentation_, the `Git repository
        <http://sourceforge.net/p/pythondialog/code/>`_, the `mailing list`_,
        the `issue tracker`_, etc.
        
        .. _short example: http://pythondialog.sourceforge.net/#example
        .. _screenshots: http://pythondialog.sourceforge.net/gallery.html
        .. _documentation: http://pythondialog.sourceforge.net/doc/pythondialog.html
        .. _mailing list: http://sourceforge.net/p/pythondialog/mailman/
        .. _issue tracker: http://sourceforge.net/p/pythondialog/_list/tickets
        
        If you want to get a quick idea of what this module allows one to do,
        you can download a release tarball and run demo.py::
        
          python3 demo.py
        
        
        What is pythondialog good for? What are its limitations?
        --------------------------------------------------------
        
        As you might infer from the name, dialog is a high-level program that
        generates dialog boxes. So is pythondialog. They allow you to build nice
        interfaces quickly and easily, but you don't have full control over the
        widgets, nor can you create new widgets without modifying dialog itself.
        If you need to do low-level stuff, you should have a look at ncurses or
        slang instead. For sophisticated text-mode interfaces, the `Urwid Python
        library`_ looks rather interesting, too.
        
        .. _Urwid Python library: http://excess.org/urwid/
        
        
        Requirements
        ------------
        
        * As of version 2.12, pythondialog requires Python 3.0 or later in the
          3.x series. pythondialog 2.14.1 has been tested with Python 3.2 and
          3.3.
        
        * I will probably provide a Python 2 backport with release 3.0 (which is
          in preparation), but this will not be regular, and probably not of the
          same quality as the Python 3 version. In the meantime, users who
          really want to stick to Python 2 should use version 2.11 (which can be
          found from the home page, or directly from the `SourceForge download
          page
          <http://sourceforge.net/projects/pythondialog/files/pythondialog/>`_).
        
        * Apart from that, pythondialog requires the dialog_ program (or a
          drop-in replacement for dialog). You can download dialog from:
        
            http://invisible-island.net/dialog/dialog.html
        
        
        Documentation
        -------------
        
        pythondialog is fully documented through Python docstrings. This
        documentation can be browsed with the pydoc3 standalone program or by
        simply opening dialog.py in a pager or editor. The documentation of the
        latest version as rendered by pydoc3 should be available at:
        
          http://pythondialog.sourceforge.net/doc/pythondialog.html
        
        To generate the documentation yourself from dialog.py, you can type
        "pydoc3 dialog" at the command prompt in the pythondialog base directory
        or "pydoc3 /path/to/dialog.py". Alternatively, you can type::
        
           >>> import dialog; help(dialog)
        
        at a Python 3 command prompt.
        
        You can extract the documentation from dialog.py to an HTML file with
        "pydoc3 -w dialog" or "pydoc3 -w /path/to/dialog.py". This will generate
        dialog.html in the current directory.
        
        Alternatively, if pythondialog is already installed, pydoc3 can act as
        an HTTP server and provide the documentation to web browsers. For
        instance, launching "pydoc3 -p 1234" will make it listen on TCP
        port 1234. You can then point your browser to http://localhost:1234/ and
        read the documentation.
        
        See the pydoc module documentation for more information.
        
        
        Enabling Deprecation Warnings
        -----------------------------
        
        There are a few places in dialog.py that send a DeprecationWarning to
        warn developers about obsolete features. However, because of:
        
          - the dialog output to the terminal;
          - the fact that such warnings are silenced by default since Python 2.7
            and 3.2;
        
        you have to do two things in order to see them:
        
          - redirect the standard error stream to a file;
          - enable the warnings for the Python interpreter.
        
        For instance, to see the warnings produced when running the demo, you
        can do::
        
           python3 -Wd demo.py 2>/path/to/file
        
        and examine /path/to/file. This can also help you to find files that are
        still open when your program exits. For more explanations and other
        methods to enable the warnings, please refer to:
        
          http://docs.python.org/3.3/whatsnew/2.7.html
        
        
        Troubleshooting
        ---------------
        
        If you have a problem with a pythondialog call, you should read its
        documentation and the dialog(1) manual page. If this is not enough, you
        can enable logging of shell command-line equivalents of all dialog calls
        made by your program with a simple call to Dialog.setup_debug(), first
        available in pythondialog 2.12. An example of this can be found in
        demo.py.
        
        As of version 2.12, you can also enable this debugging facility for
        demo.py by calling it with the --debug flag (cf. 'demo.py --help').
        
        
        Using Xdialog instead of dialog
        -------------------------------
        
        As far as I can tell, Xdialog has not been ported to GTK+ 2 or later. It
        is not in Debian stable nor unstable (June 23, 2013). It is not
        installed on my system (because of the GTK+ 1.2 dependency), and
        according to the Xdialog-specific patches I received from Peter Åstrand
        in 2004, was not a drop-in replacement for dialog (in particular,
        Xdialog seemed to want to talk to the caller through stdout instead of
        stderr, grrrrr!).
        
        All this to say that, even though I didn't remove the options to use
        another backend than dialog, nor did I remove the handful of little,
        non-invasive modifications that help pythondialog work better with
        Xdialog, I don't really support the latter. I test everything with
        dialog, and nothing with Xdialog.
        
        That being said, here is the *old* text of this section (from 2004), in
        case you are still interested:
        
          Starting with 2.06, there is an "Xdialog" compatibility mode that you
          can use if you want pythondialog to run the graphical Xdialog program
          (which *should* be found under http://xdialog.free.fr/) instead of
          dialog (text-mode, based on the ncurses library).
        
          The primary supported platform is still dialog, but as long as only
          small modifications are enough to make pythondialog work with Xdialog,
          I am willing to support Xdialog if people are interested in it (which
          turned out to be the case for Xdialog).
        
          The demo.py from pythondialog 2.06 has been tested with Xdialog 2.0.6
          and found to work well (barring Xdialog's annoying behaviour with the
          file selection dialog box).
        
        
        Whiptail, anyone?
        -----------------
        
        Well, pythondialog seems not to work very well with whiptail. The reason
        is that whiptail is not compatible with dialog anymore. Although you can
        tell pythondialog the program you want it to invoke, only programs that
        are mostly dialog-compatible are supported.
        
        
        History
        -------
        
        pythondialog was originally written by Robb Shecter. Sultanbek Tezadov
        added some features to it (mainly the first gauge implementation, I
        guess). Florent Rougon rewrote most parts of the program to make it more
        robust and flexible so that it can give access to most features of the
        dialog program. Peter Åstrand took over maintainership between 2004 and
        2009, with particular care for the Xdialog support. Florent Rougon took
        over maintainership again starting from 2009...
        
        .. 
          # Local Variables:
          # coding: utf-8
          # fill-column: 72
          # End:
        
Keywords: dialog,Xdialog,text-mode interface
Platform: Unix
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3
Classifier: Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable
Classifier: Environment :: Console :: Curses
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Developers
Classifier: License :: OSI Approved :: GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
Classifier: Operating System :: Unix
Classifier: Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules
Classifier: Topic :: Software Development :: User Interfaces
Classifier: Topic :: Software Development :: Widget Sets
