This document describes how to fetch and install Pmw, and how to run the demonstrations and tests.
Pmw.0.6.2 requires the _tkinter and Tkinter modules. It works with python 1.5 (not 1.4) and Tk 4.2 or 8.0.
If the BLT extension to Tk is present, Pmw will use the BLT busy command during modal dialogs to display a clock cursor. Also, the Pmw.Blt interface to the BLT busy, graph and vector commands will be available.
Releases of the Pmw distribution are available via ftp from
ftp.dscpl.com.au
. This release is available at
pub/pmw/Pmw.0.6.2.tar.gz
, released on 23 February 1998.
This is a compressed tar file which can be unpacked like this:
gunzip Pmw.0.6.2.tar.gz tar xvf Pmw.0.6.2.tar
This will unpack into a directory named Pmw. This directory (or a
symbolic link to it) can be placed in your standard python
site-packages
directory, which by default is
/usr/local/lib/python1.5/site-packages
.
If you do not have access to the site-packages
directory,
place the Pmw directory somewhere on your PYTHONPATH
. If
this is not possible, place the Pmw directory somewhere else and add
the parent directory to your PYTHONPATH
or
sys.path
.
If you have previously installed Pmw version 0.6 or later, then the
new version can share the same Pmw
directory as the
previous versions. You will need to perform the tar
extraction in the directory containing (that is, the parent directory
of) the existing Pmw
directory. By default, your
applications will use the most recent version of Pmw. If required,
the function Pmw.setversion()
can be used to specify a
version to be used. See the reference manual for details. If you are
no longer using the older versions, you can safely remove the
corresponding subdirectories from the Pmw
directory.
The doc
directory for each Pmw version contains all the
documentation for that version of Pmw. See the local home page for a complete list of documents. The
files in this directory are also available from the official Pmw home page.
A good way to get an overview of the functionality provided by Pmw
is to run the demonstrations and tests and look at the demonstration
code. To view a comprehensive demonstration of many of the features
of Pmw run the All.py
script, which can be found in the
demos
subdirectory of each version of Pmw.
You do not have to install Pmw to run the demonstrations and tests,
simply change into the appropriate directory and run the file
All.py
. See Demonstrations and tests for more
information about running the demonstrations and tests and how to
create your own.
If you create some whiz-bang megawidgets and would like to contribute
them to Pmw, they will be most welcome. You should be able to get
some idea of the coding style used in Pmw code by reading How to build Pmw megawidgets and by looking
at the Pmw library code itself in the lib
directory of
each Pmw version.
If you would like to contribute a megawidget, it would be preferable if it also came with a simple demonstration and a test script. See Demonstrations and tests for information about how to create new demonstrations and tests.
Each megawidget should also have a reference manual describing its
options, components and methods. The released reference manuals are
automatically generated by merging specially marked-up text with the
output from megawidget query methods, such as
components()
, options()
and
componentaliases()
, and various other introspective
devices. If you would like to create documentation using this system,
let me (gregm@iname.com)
know and I will send it to you.
The initial ideas for Pmw were blatantly stolen from the itcl extensions [incr Tk] by Michael McLennan and [incr Widgets] by Mark Ulferts. Several of the megawidgets are direct translations from the itcl to python.
The base classes and most megawidgets were written by Greg McFarlane and Peter Munnings. The TimeCounter megawidget was contributed by Joe VanAndel. A big thank you to the following people for their bug reports, fixes, enhancements and suggestions: Joe Saltiel, Andreas Kostyrka, Case Roole, Michael McLay, Clemens Hintze, Magnus Lycka, Roman Sulzhyk and Guido van Rossum. Special thanks to Case Roole and Michael McLay for help with getting Pmw to work with python 1.5 packages and many other nifty features. My deepest apologies if I have forgotten anyone. Please let me know.
The Pmw web and ftp site is made available courtesy of Dumpleton Software Consulting Pty Limited.
The current maintainer is Greg McFarlane. If you have any comments, enhancements or new contributions, please contact me at gregm@iname.com.
Home. Pmw 0.6.2 Maintainer gregm@iname.com. 23 Feb 1998