Background

PocketPyGui is a native GUI toolkit for PythonCE, it is an 'almost from scratch' rewrite of the VensterCE toolkit with a brand new API.

Indeed, even knowing a bit the Win32 API from a C++ point of view, I found tiresome to always do the same low-level stuff for simple GUIs and to always have to look in MSDN for some Win32 API reference.

Besides, even if I did write a tutorial for it, I admit it is quite difficult to get in VensterCE for a python dev without Win32 API experience. The lack of API docs for VensterCE was not a problem for ones used to dig in MSDN, but was a pain for all others.

Anyway, porting Venster to WinCE was a good experience as I learned a lot from it, and it was my first open-source contribution.

So I decided to take the good stuff of VensterCE (native, ligthweight and pure python library) and create a toolkit by python developers for python developers.

The major features of PocketPyGui are:

• Rich common-controls library (almost all VensterCE widgets supported and more). with pythonic APIs (i.e. zero knowledge of Win32 API).
• Transparent event-handling: you associate gui events to your callbacks, and ppygui will call them at the right time.
• Flexible layout system: ppygui revamps the VensterCE layout system and you can now let ppygui compute the size of your controls based on their contents and fonts.
• Automatic unicode coercion: you can use raw and unicode strings.

Requirements

• PythonCE >= 2.4.
• HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: a WinCE task manager for really closing windows when pressing the X button is really advised for better experience with ppygui. I suggest you tMan, which is freeware, but any other task mananger should be ok.

Archive contents

Ppygui will come in three packages:

• ppygui.zip package

  The core library, docs and a simple demo.

  • install.py: the graphical installer (start with this).
  • doc/: contains the quick-start tutorial and its scripts, the API reference and auto-generated docs.
  • ppygui/: the toolkit source.
  • demo.py: a simple demo application for an overview of ppygui controls.

• ppygui-samples.zip package

  Useful applications to learn ppygui from sources.

  • demo/canvas/: the WIP canvas control.
  • demo/app/outliner/: a tree-view based task outliner.
  • demo/app/restEditor/: a simple reStructuredText editor for html/latex generation (requires docutils).
  • demo/app/mpc/: a MPD (Music Player Daemon) client.
  • demo/app/jabberce/: a simple Jabber client (requires tlslite and xmpppy).

• ppygui-3rdparty-tools.zip

  Libraries and tools tweaked to run with PythonCE or gathered here for convenience. Be sure to read the respective licenses of these great tools.

  • tlslite/: implementation of SSL/TLS and other security protocols (required for JabberCE).
  • xmpppy/: a Jabber protocol library (required for JabberCE).
  • docutils/: API and command line tools for reStructuredText processing (required for restEditor).

Installation

• Grab the latest release from SourceForge
• Extract the archive on your pda (warning some sd-mmc card readers tends to uppercase some files ...).
• Run install.py and let the graphical installer guide you !

Documentation

PocketPyGui documentation is splitted in:

• a tutorial.
• the API reference.

Contact

You can post your questions/suggestions on the ppygui sourceforge forum page (http://sf.net/projects/ppygui).

Copyright

PocketPyGui is released under the BSD License. Samples and 3rd party apps shipped with PocketPyGui are subject to their own licenses.

Credits

Special Thanks to Mirko "D@ten" Vogt.