README

README for the Pensool application
==================================

About
-----

Yet another 2D drawing app.  Compare to Skencil, Inkscape, XFig,  Karbon, Draw.

Emphasis is on direct-manipulation GUI. Pensool keeps you focused where the mouse is in the drawing.  Pensool avoids menubars, scrollbars, tools, selections and modes.  Pensool uses handles and a new GUI technique called a handle menu: an iconic menu on the edge of symbols.  The handle menu technique is publicly disclosed at ip.com.

Emphasis on portability, reusing other open source components such as pycairo.

Status is strictly a development prototype, for experimentation.  Only a thin slice works and there are many bugs.  For now it is an experiment in user interface.  You can't even reopen a document that you saved, although it does save and print.

See doc/UserManual.html for more discussion.

Installation
------------

No installation required.  Execute pensool.py.

Dependencies
------------

Requires Python.  Usually a Python distribution includes pyGTK and pycairo, also required.

Documentation
-------------

The directory 'doc' includes a user's manual in HTML and a 'html' directory which documents the source code.

For Programmers
---------------

Pensool is pure python (no C extensions, yet.)   It uses pycairo.  I used Texttest, Pyusecase, Epydoc tools in development.

To generate the source code documentation.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Install the tools epydoc and graphviz (the 'dot' program). 
Also install rst2html.
Then:

>make docs

Note that the source directory is a package (has an empty __init__.py)

To run functional test
++++++++++++++++++++++

Functional test of pensool is a work in progress.  It supports agile programming.

Install the tools texttest and pyusecase.
Follow the instructions in test/pyusecase/README.

Then run texttest.  Choose the top level test suite.  Choose 'Run'.