thonny-tunisiaschools

A Thonny plug-in for Tunisian computer-science secondary teachers and students: it lets a class build a PyQt5 interface without leaving Thonny, and it writes the Python that goes with it.

What it adds

A .ui editor inside Thonny — the QT UI Viewer view. Open a Qt Designer file and work on it directly: place, move, duplicate and delete widgets, put them in a layout, rename them (with the names the pupil will type in his own program), edit text, placeholder, window title, colours and fonts, resize tables, and save. Every gesture is written back into the .ui file in the form Qt Designer and loadUi() expect, so a file produced here opens in Designer unchanged and a file produced in Designer opens here.

A PyQt5 menu with four commands:

• Ajouter Annexe — pastes the skeleton of a PyQt5 program (imports, QApplication, loadUi(), show(), one clicked.connect, exec_()) with three blanks for the pupil to fill — Nom_Interface.ui, Nom_Bouton, Nom_Module — for the exercises that come with no interface file.
• Ajouter Annexe + interface — opens a .ui file and inserts the matching program: the loadUi() call, windows.show(), and for each button a clicked.connect plus its empty handler.
• Ouvrir dans Designer — hands the current .ui to Qt Designer, looking for Designer in the places it can actually be (PATH, the pyqt5-qt5-designer package, the Qt binaries next to Thonny's own, the folder a teacher chose) and offering to install the package when nothing is found.
• Configurer Designer — remembers the Designer executable in Thonny's own configuration.

The menu also grows one command per widget of the file currently open, for the calls the curriculum uses on a QLabel or a QLineEdit: text(), setText(), clear(), show().

The exam folder. Thonny's working directory becomes C:\bac<session>, where the session is that of the next June baccalaureate — a class working in the 2026-2027 school year is prepared for June 2027 and files into C:\bac2027. Reopening the previous session's files at startup is turned off, so students cannot overwrite each other's work.

Requirements

Thonny 3.2.1 or newer, and PyQt5 in the interpreter Thonny uses — the generated programs import it. The viewer itself is pure Tk, so editing a .ui file needs no Qt at all; Qt Designer is optional, and the plug-in can install the pyqt5-qt5-designer package for you.

Installing

pip install thonny-tunisiaschools into the Python Thonny uses (or, in Thonny, Tools → Manage packages). Thonny discovers it under the thonnycontrib namespace on the next start; the commands appear in a PyQt5 menu and the view in View.

Running the test battery

The repository carries 29 headless suites and 7 mutant graders under tests/. They drive the real UIViewer/__init__ sources and, for the Qt-side checks, an offscreen PyQt5 — so run them with an interpreter that can import PyQt5, which on a school machine means Thonny's own bundle:

<Thonny>\python.exe -u -B tests\run_all.py

Paths are derived, not hardcoded: the plug-in is found relative to the repository, and the Thonny bundle from THONNY_BUNDLE, else the interpreter running the suites, else %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Thonny. Nothing needs to be installed first.

The graders are separate (tests/mutants_*.py): each deliberately breaks one guard in a copy of the sources and checks that a suite notices.

<Thonny>\python.exe -B tests\mutants_actions.py

Screenshots

The screenshots that used to sit here showed the first version of the viewer, which only rendered labels, inputs and buttons. Fresh ones are owed.

Licence

GPL version 3.