[Pythonmac-SIG] newbie questions about Mac APIs in Python

[Joe Strout]

On Oct 14, 2008, at 4:06 PM, Joe Strout wrote:

> Poking around in Foundation, sure enough, NSSpeechSynthesizer isn't  
> there.  A lot of other stuff is, like NSError, though.  Where should  
> NSSpeechSynthesizer be imported from, and why don't I need any other  
> imports in my PyObjC source file?

Sheesh, I really need to find an email client with a 5-minute outgoing  
mail delay... somehow, pressing the "Send" key always seems to kick my  
brain into gear.

In this case, I discovered the "Find Selected Text in Documentation"  
contextual menu command in XCode, which led me to the  
NSSpeechSynthesizer Class Reference, which points out that this is in  
the AppKit framework.  So, modifying my earlier attempt a bit...

 >>> import AppKit
 >>> synth = AppKit.NSSpeechSynthesizer.alloc().initWithVoice_(None)
 >>> synth.startSpeakingString_(u"Hello world!")
True

...and it works!  Certainly not as easy as "speak", but easy enough.   
And in its own way, it's very cool that you can read the Apple docs  
for any (?) Cocoa class and just use it as-is from Python.

Man, it's good to be back!

Cheers,
- Joe


--
Joe Strout
joe at strout.net

Words of wisdom from Helen Philpot:
<http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/maverick-my-ass/>