Pyjamas-Desktop 0.1

Pyjamas-Desktop

Pyjamas-Desktop is a cross-platform framework and applications widget set, based on WebKit. PyWebkitGtk is currently the basis for Pyjamas-Desktop, and it is conceivable that there will exist a PyWebkitQt4, and Pyjamas-Desktop will run on top of that, as well.

Pyjamas-Desktop is similar to KiWi in that it provides an easy-to-use API, where you need not know - at all - that you are running PyGTK underneath.

Pyjamas-Desktop is actually a port of Pyjamas which is a web toolkit, so you also have the option of running PyjamasDesktop applications as web applications - unmodified.

The Pyjamas Widget set is exceptionally comprehensive and yet is easy to use, providing:

• Simple, Horizontal, Vertical, Docking, Decking, Popup, Stack, Tab, Grid, Flow, Table and HTML Panels

• Text Labels and HTML including full CSS Stylesheet support and full CSS properties

• Input, Password and Textarea input boxes

• List drop-downs including Multi-selection

• Buttons, Checkboxes and Radio-Buttons including groups.

• Form Submit Panel (providing file upload).

• Treeview, Menu and Menubar (vertical and horizontal).

Additional features, thanks to the underlying use of webkit, include:

• Full CSS Stylesheet functionality, both local, remote and direct and simple API manipulation.

• Option of executing javascript, for full and complete manipulation of the application.

• Loading of complete HTML Pages, both local and remote; full URL support.

• Plugin support for multimedia plugins such as Flash (obsoleting the need for gtk-mozplugin)

• Access to XML, XSLT and AJAX.

• (Future: full SVG Canvas support, like HippoCanvas)

It’s specifically worth noting that due to Pyjamas-Desktop’s history, it purely provides the “V” in “MVC” applications design, and that one option presently in use is the JSONRPC proxy client included, for communicating with the “MC” in the back-end of your application. In this way, the same application front-end source code can be compiled with PyJamas (into Javascript/AJAX) - with no modifications - to run with exactly the same back-end HTTP server that your Pyjamas-Desktop application uses.

Requirements

Pre-built amd64 .debs are available for download, providing pywebkitgtk-1.0, libwebkit-1.0-2 and libwebkit-dev, here:

• http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=236659

Currently, Pyjamas-Desktop requires patched versions of both Webkit and PyWebkitGtk, as of 01-Sep-2008. The patches are here:

• https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16401

• http://code.google.com/p/pywebkitgtk/issues/detail?id=13

Documentation

The Pyjamas api is documented here:

• http://pyjd.sf.net/api/

Also, as Pyjamas is based on Google’s WebKit, the documentation for GWT 1.5 may prove useful:

• http://google-web-toolkit.googlecode.com/svn/javadoc/1.5/index.html

Download

Pyjamas-Desktop is available for download from Pypi and Sourceforge. PLEASE NOTE that you will still need, at this point, modified versions of PyWebkitGtk and Webkit (see Requirements, above).

• http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=236659

• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pyjamas-Desktop

• http://sf.net/projects/pyjd

Source Code

Pyjamas-Desktop is available as a git repository:

• git://github.com/lkcl/pyjamas-desktop.git

More information

• http://advogato.org/article/981.html

• http://code.google.com/p/pyjamas

• http://sf.net/projects/pyjd

• http://lkcl.net/pyjamas-desktop