sciwidgets

PySide6 widgets for scientific desktop apps: math labels rendered with LaTeX/mathtext, dialogs, and parameter inputs such as sliders, range sliders and validated number fields.

Right-click menu, Set Value and Edit Configuration:

The widgets were written for Maxwell Bloch Studio and moved into this package so other apps can share them.

Features

• Math labels: MathLabel renders LaTeX through Matplotlib and scales cleanly as SVG. It uses your system LaTeX when installed and falls back to Matplotlib's mathtext otherwise.
• Sliders: integer, float, array, range and multi-variable sliders with LaTeX names and units, optional range labels, a default-value marker and a right-click menu (save/reset default, set value, ±inf, edit range and format).
• Scientific number format: "{:.3S}" displays values as 1.23×10⁴.
• Validated input: NumericLineEdit checks numbers and limits while typing and marks invalid input with a red frame.
• Parameter widgets: line edit, combo box and toggle sharing one interface with the sliders (get_value / set_value, get_config / set_config) and name/value columns that line up across a panel.
• Parameter panels: build groups, columns and tabs of parameter widgets from a JSON-style description, with templates and shared defaults, and read or restore all values as one dict.
• Plot canvas: Matplotlib panels, twins, legends and markers from a description; data by curve id; a right-click style menu for curves, grids and spans whose changes save as plain data.
• Dialogs: information, warning, error, question, rich-text and About dialogs.
• Splash screen: your picture with the app name and version drawn on it, sharp on Retina, and start-up messages from anywhere in the app.

Components

Installation

pip install sciwidgets

Requires Python 3.10+, PySide6 6.5+, Matplotlib and NumPy (installed automatically). A LaTeX installation is optional. The table widgets need pandas: pip install "sciwidgets[table]".

Quick start

import sys

from PySide6.QtWidgets import QApplication, QVBoxLayout, QWidget

from sciwidgets.params import FloatRangeSlider, FloatSlider
from sciwidgets.style import apply_sci_style

app = QApplication(sys.argv)
apply_sci_style(app)  # required, see "Style" below

win = QWidget()
layout = QVBoxLayout(win)

t1 = FloatSlider(
    label="T_1", unit=r"\mathrm{ms}",
    min_val=0.1, max_val=10.0, init_val=1.0, val_fmt="{:.2f}",
    min_limit=0.0, min_limit_inclusive=False,
)
band = FloatRangeSlider(
    label=r"\nu", unit=r"\mathrm{GHz}",
    min_val=6.60, max_val=6.75, init_vals=(6.65, 6.70), val_fmt="{:.3f}",
)
layout.addWidget(t1)
layout.addWidget(band)

t1.valueChanged.connect(lambda v: print("T1 =", v))
band.valueChanged.connect(lambda v: print("band =", v["range"]))

win.show()
sys.exit(app.exec())

Labels and units are written in LaTeX math mode, without the $ signs.

Style

The widgets rely on SciStyle, a Fusion-based Qt style, for part of their behaviour: clicking a slider groove moves the handle there, disabled sliders get a flat groove, and invalid numeric input gets a red frame. Apply it once at startup:

from sciwidgets.style import apply_sci_style

apply_sci_style(app, my_app_style_sheet)  # your own rules are appended

Signals

valueChanged, defaultChanged and configChanged are emitted only for user actions (dragging, typing, the context menu, dialogs). Setting values from code with set_value, set_config and similar methods is silent, so loading saved parameters never triggers your handlers. Read the new state with get_value() / get_config() after setting it.

Demos

Each subpackage has a runnable demo:

python -m sciwidgets.labels
python -m sciwidgets.dialogs
python -m sciwidgets.params
python -m sciwidgets.params.sliders
python -m sciwidgets.window
python -m sciwidgets.panel
python -m sciwidgets.plot
python -m sciwidgets.splash

Versions

Versions follow semantic versioning; what changed in each is in CHANGELOG.md. Pin a compatible range in your app's requirements (for example sciwidgets~=0.10.4) and move to a newer version when you are ready to test it.

Development

From the repo root:

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

The tests run without a window (Qt's offscreen platform) and take a few seconds. Pushing a tag vX.Y.Z publishes a GitHub Release with that version's section of CHANGELOG.md.

Citing

If you use sciwidgets in published work, please cite it; GitHub's Cite this repository button gives the reference (from CITATION.cff).

License

MIT License. See LICENSE.

Author

Vahid Anari · GitHub · LinkedIn

Related projects: mbsolver · Maxwell Bloch Studio · linecat