limitedinteraction 0.0.1a0

Provides simple, backend-independant GUI tools for simple user interaction.

limitedinteraction

Provides simple, backend-independant GUI tools for simple user interaction.

This module provides simple GUI tools that run in their own process, so that it cannot conflict with the current running event loop. It has no external dependency, and updates the matplotlib event loop in background (if matplotlib is installed) while waiting for user action.

Statement of need

This module may interest people transitionning from Matlab to python, who miss Matlab's simple ui functions such as msgbox, menu, etc. I could not find equivalent functions in python that are both blocking when needed, but still continue to refresh matplotlib in an interactive IPython session, and do not interfere with the current backend.

This module is a no-brainer. It has no dependencies and runs its own tkinter event loop in its own process, and is therefore compatible with any interactive backend.

Usage

At the moment, only one function is implemented (button_dialog).

import limitedinteraction as ltdi

choice = ltdi.button_dialog(message="Please select an option.",
                            choices=["Cancel", "OK"],
                            title="Window title",
                            picture=path/to/picture.png):

Matlab equivalents

MATLAB <--> LIMITEDINTERACTION

msgbox(message, title) <--> ltdi.button_dialog(message, ['OK'], title)

menu(header, item1, item2, ...) <--> ltdi.button_dialog(header, [item1, item2, ...])

Warning

This is still in early development. It will be great, but later.

Known issues

If you are using macOS Mojave* or Anaconda python on Linux*, you may have these problems:

• On macOS Mojave, tkinter is known to be seriously broken. If you use a Mac, please use any other OS version than Mojave.

• On Linux, tkinter fonts are ugly under anaconda python. It works, but it looks ancient.