thonny-py5mode 0.3.3a0

py5 mode plugin for Thonny

thonny-py5mode

A py5 plug-in for Thonny

Use the Thonny Python IDE as a Processing PDE alternative for creative coding. Thonny-py5mode is a plug-in that installs and configures Thonny for use with py5, a Python (3.8+) framework that leverages Processing's core libraries.

Instructions

If you already have some version of Thonny that includes Python 3.8+ on your computer, you can skip straight to step 4.

1. Download and install the Thonny 3.3.7 -alt version of the Thonny IDE (for Python 3.9 support) from github.com/thonny/thonny/releases/tag/v3.3.7:

   • thonny-3.3.7-alt.exe <- for Windows
   • thonny-3.3.7-alt.pkg <- for MacOS
   • thonny-3.3.7-x86_64-alt.tar.gz <- for Linux

   The Thonny 4 IDE (currently in beta) ships with Python 3.10. The thonny-py5mode plug-in should run fine on Thonny 4 for Linux, but macOS and Windows support are in progress. Expanding the Assets for any release will reveal the downloads for Windows/macOS/Linux --

   

2. Start Thonny. If you're running it for the first time, just accept the Standard settings.

   

3. Once Thonny is open, select Tools > Manage plugins...

   

   Then search for and install thonny-py5mode plug-in --

   

   You must restart Thonny after this step.

4. When you've restarted Thonny, select py5 > Imported mode for py5 --

   

   This will download, extract, and set up JDK-11 for you (if you need to know: the plug-in installs JDK in the Thonny user-config directory). Thonny only needs to download JDK the first time you switch to imported mode. Thonny will appear to freeze for a while when it's downloading JDK (I have plans to develop a proper progress indicator later).

   

   You'll be notified once the download is done --

   

5. This step is optional. There are several Thonny settings that I recommend you apply for working with py5 (including a Processing 4 inspired theme, Kyanite). You can apply those settings in one simple step using py5 > Apply recommended py5 settings

   

6. When the py5 Imported mode for py5 option is checked, Thonny will run your code (using py5's run_sketch command line tool) --

   

   Try out an imported mode sketch using the green play button (or the F5 or Ctrl+R keyboard shortcuts).

   def setup():
       size(300, 200)
       rect_mode(CENTER)
   
   def draw():
       rect(mouse_x, mouse_y, 10, 10)
   

   

   NOTE: This mode also runs static mode sketches (when you don't need a draw() function for animation).

   NOTE: If you're having trouble running any sketch, click the stop-sign (🛑) button in the Thonny toolbar. Sometimes an old sketch process doesn't close off properly.

Module Mode Sketches

To run a py5 module mode sketch, deactivate/uncheck py5 > Imported mode for py5 first so that Thonny returns to its normal run behaviour (for running any Python script). As an example, you can try this code:

import py5

def setup():
    py5.size(200, 200)
    py5.rect_mode(py5.CENTER)

def draw():
    py5.square(py5.mouse_x, py5.mouse_y, 10)

py5.run_sketch()

Note that module mode requires an import py5 and run_sketch() line, and py5. prefixes for everything.

Useful py5 resources

py5 is a new version of Processing for Python 3.8+. It makes the Java Processing jars available to the CPython interpreter using JPype. It can do just about everything Processing can do, except with Python instead of Java code. Here are some useful py5 resources (alphabetically listed) --

• py5 cheatsheet
• py5 discussions/forum
• py5 documentation
• py5 examples
• Processing forum
• Villares' sketch-a-day archive

Credits

Thanks villares for inspiring me to develop this plug-in, hx2A for the awesome py5 project, and the Thonny folks for their fantastic IDE.

Todo List

See discussions on GitHub repo. This plug-in is still very much a work in progress ... please report issues here.