The (J)oys of programming

[vakkotaur]

After Midwest FurFest in 2005 I edited the photos and arranged them, and built up pages for them and the result was MFF 2005. After this past Midwest FurFest I did about the same, but with some help from python and the html, if nothing else, was generated faster. I still spent a chunk of time hand-editing the pages of MFF 2006.

A while ago I decided that I was doing too much work (still hand entering width and height attributes, for instance) and started looking around. I found the Python Image Library (python-images) and that took care of the width and height attribute issue nicely. A closer look and the thumbnail images were auto-generated.

And that was pretty good, but it was still command line stuff and I was still hand-editing the python file to adjust constants. Thus I started down the road of tkinter and things got GUI. I have now have something that can generate the index files.

As can be seen, there is work to be done still. The program needs a name and that placeholder ("This program needs a better name") will not become permanent. The TEST button needs to be something else, like GENERATE or DO IT or some such.

I want to add a menu bar (the bit with File and such) and that's been a headache most of the day. The examples around the web are nice for trivial cases, but not for doing things how I'd like to do them. I know it can be done without a complete re-write of my program, but I have yet to figure out just how. I suspect it's something painfully simple. I expect a "D'oh!" moment when I discover what it is.

One thing in the File menu would be a means of selecting a working directory, rather than depend on the program being in the required directory along with the images.

A nicety would be the ability to save and load the fields. That would save re-typing. While that's just a convenience for something I'll probably only use a few times a year, during testing it became apparent doing that bit first would have made things a bit easier.

The big one, though, will almost certainly be a separate program. This one only generates the index file(s). It does not make the individual linked pages with the full size images. It could (I do have a command line program that does a significant amount of the work), if I didn't want to add individual commentary and alt attributes. I do want to do that, so that will likely be another adventure. An adventure that will wait until I have this one about finished.

While there have been snags and frustrations, there has also been the satisfaction of seeing things work when those are overcome. It's not quite programming for the joy of programming as I do have a problem I want solved. But it does feel good to program for me again.