[Pythonmac-SIG] ANN: DrawBot, an environment for programming 2D graphics

[Just van Rossum]

I'm happy to announce a first public version of "DrawBot", an
environment for 2D graphics programming.

DrawBot is a minimal "IDE", that allows you to write simple Python
scripts that generate two-dimensional graphics. The builtin graphics
primitives are currently pretty braindead, this version only supports
rectangles, ovals and (bezier) paths and polygons. A future version will
also support text and images.

DrawBot is written in Python. The binary download is fully
self-sufficient (ie. it doesn't need a Python install around), but if
you use or build it from the source you'll need Python.framework 2.3 as
well as PyObjC 1.0b1 or later. In either case, you need MacOSX 10.2 or
later.

Binary:
    http://just.letterror.com/~just/drawbot.dmg

Source:
    http://just.letterror.com/~just/drawbot.tgz

It contains an "Examples" folder with some, well, examples.

Note that you don't _have_ to use the drawing primitives I provide:
they're just thin wrappers around Cocoa's NSColor and NSBezierPath, so
you can also use the latter (or anything else from Cocoa, like NSImage)
directly.

To an extent it's intentionally sparse with features: DrawBot is being
developed as part of a course that teaches a bit of Python to visually
oriented non-programmers (ie. design students), and I don't want to
overload these people with stuff that'll confuse them; there's enough of
that in Python itself already...

DrawBot is released under an MIT-style license. It contains a more or
less reusable Python editor widget that supports syntax coloring and
smart/auto indentation.

Have fun,

Just