5.3 Configuration variables
Many configuration variables can be set interactively from the GUI, and the user may prefer to do it that way. Some variables however can not (yet) be set from th GUI. And real programmers may prefer to do it with an editor anyway. So here are some guidelines for setting some interesting variables. The user may take a look at the installed pyFormex default configuration file for more examples.
- General section
- syspath = []: Value is a list of path names that will be appended to the Python's sys.path variable on startup. This enables your scripts to import modules from other than default Python paths.
- scriptdirs = [ ('Examples',examplesdir), ('MyScripts',myscriptsdir) ]: a list of tuples (name,path). On startup, all these paths will be scanned for pyFormex scripts and these will be added in the pyFormex menu under an item named name.
- autorun = '.pyformex.startup': name of a pyFormex script that will be executed on startup, before any other script (specified on the command line or started from the GUI).
- editor = 'kedit': sets the name of the editor that will be used for editing pyformex scripts.
- viewer = 'firefox': sets the name of the html viewer to be used to display the html help screens.
- browser = 'firefox': sets the name of the browser to be used to access the pyFormex website.
- uselib = False: do not use the pyFormex acceleration library. The default (True) is to use it when it is available.
- Section [gui]
- splash = 'path-to-splash-image.png'): full path name of the image to be used as splash image on startup.
- modebar = True: adds a toolbar with the render mode buttons. Besides True or False, the value can also be one of 'top', 'bottom', 'left' or 'right', specifying the placement of the render mode toolbar at the specified window border. Any other value that evaluates True will make the buttons get included in the top toolbar.
- viewbar = True: adds a toolbar with different view buttons. Possioble values as explained above for modebar.
- timeoutbutton = True: include the timeout button in the toolbar. The timeout button, when depressed, will cause input widgets to time out after a prespecified delay time. This feature is still experimental.
- plugins = ['surface_menu', 'formex_menu', 'tools_menu']: a list of plugins to load on startup. This is mainly used to load extra (non-default) menus in the GUI to provide extended functionality. The named plugins should be available in the 'plugins' subdirectory of the pyFormex installation. To autoload user extensions from a different place, the autorun script can be used.
Release 0.8-a1, documentation updated on 9 June 2009.