Meeting Minutes - Chennaipy Nov 2018 Meetup

Introduction to PyGTK

Speaker: Ashok Kumar

The author used PyGTK in their Digital Signage Project to manage many LCD and LED devices. They need to display images, videos, and webpages.

They used Xibo, an open-source software to manage remote displays and schedule content. Each player was a remote node.

PyGTK

Built on the GTK+ library, PyGTK exposes most of the features available in GTK+.
Works on Windows, MacOS, Linux.
Several advantages over GTK+:
No need to worry about pointers and memory management.
Quick prototyping and easy development.
Widgets: Components for building interfaces.
Control and display widgets.
Containers for holding widgets (e.g., Window, frames).

Glade

GUI creation using drag-and-drop.
The exported XML can be used directly in PyGTK to build the program, saving hours of coding.

Accessing Spreadsheets in Python

Speaker: Praveen Kumar

Praveen emphasized using virtualenv to clone the Python environment and avoid conflicts with the system Python.

Steps to Access Spreadsheets Programmatically:

Connect to the workbook.
Access the worksheet and read/write cells.
Modify and save cells.

Spreadsheet from Scratch in Python

Automates manual tasks.
Uses MS Excel or LibreOffice spreadsheets.
Data stored in text files (e.g., Yaml for version control).

Lightning Talks

Spicing up the Command Line

Speaker: Aziz

Aziz demonstrated how to enhance the command line using Python libraries: - getpass: Prompt the user for a password without echoing. - colorama: Simple cross-platform API for printing colored terminal text. - tabulate: Pretty-print tabular data. - tqdm: Show a smart progress meter. - jinja: HTML formatted output.

Contributing to Open Source Projects

Speaker: Karthick

Karthick encouraged contribution to Python projects, especially for bug triaging, documentation, and community building. He emphasized that anyone can contribute without being a "coding ninja."

DataDeux

Speaker: Deepak

Deepak introduced DateDeux, a library for advanced calendar operations, including date arithmetic and finding the start/end of months.

The meetup ended with engaging talks and valuable learning opportunities for all attendees.

Meeting minutes contributed by Suresh. Chennaipy Meetup.

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