[Edu-sig] mac python graphics

[davelist at mac.com]

On Dec 7, 2011, at 12:45 PM, Andrew Harrington wrote:

> I just got my first Mac.  I know issues with Mac graphics have been discussed before, but I'm not sure what is relevant with OSX Lion.
> 
> With the active state Tcl and the standard python.org python and idle appears fine.  
> Still if I try running a Zelle graphic program inside or outside idle I get a freeze.
> 
> The massive installation through MacPorts, that uses X11 for graphics makes my Zelle graphics library Tk based programs  work fine, but the X11 version of Idle has many of the common keyboard shortcuts not working, and is (intensionally) not the standard Apple menu setup.
> 
> What am I missing?
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> Dr. Andrew N. Harrington
>   Computer Science Department 
>   Loyola University Chicago
> Lakeshore office in the Math Department: 205 Loyola Hall
> http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh
> Phone: 773-915-7999
> Fax:    312-915-7998
> aharrin at luc.edu

Are you closing the GraphWin window before exiting your program?

from graphics import *
win = GraphWin()

# do other stuff

win.close() # this is the important line (without it, I think it does freeze)

I keep forgetting to ask John about this to see if there's something we could do to modify graphics.py so this isn't necessary.

I don't think I've done anything else to the standard python.org (i.e., I installed Python 3.2.2 on Lion, but didn't download anything extra such as Tcl). You do need a newer Tcl than comes with Snow Leopard (Idle tells you this in the shell window when you open it), but I think it works fine with Leopard as long as you close the window.

HTH,
Dave