ayab

Involving to the end-user

The Knit Editor software aims to be installable and usable by end-users. In the whole summer of code, we focused on development and code documentation from the perspective of a developer. In this blog post we will discuss how the Knit Editor is presented to the end user. So, you reading this blog: Please comment with your thoughts on the sketches. Currently, a site is in the making that shall present the Knit Editor software as is state of the art. The inspiration came from the talk by Tracy Osborn at PyCon 2016: "Web Design for Non Designers". The site is currently in the making at fossasia.github.io/kniteditor. If you click on the following images, you get redirected to the implementation of the concept. The Main Page First thing that comes into view is the download button. This leads to the download site. Then, wen can see three popular use-cases of the knit editor. At the bottom, new developers can see that they can contribute. End users are knitters of all ages. As tested with my mom, they expect the language to be at the top-right of the page. Both, the download and the start developing button are highlighted in a different color to make certain that they are an action the user is expected to perform. When you access the site you get automatically redirected to your browsers configured language. The Download Site When you click the download button on the main page, you reach the download site. Depending on the operating system information the browser sends, your download starts automatically, below, this is  sketched for Windows. Next to the download page, you may want to find other versions of the software or not. This is to be evaluated. Maybe a slightly less visible button is right for that or it can be left out. Usually, no-one uses the old software. At the bottom, you can see that there is a predecessor of the software which is called "AYAB-Apparat". Some people may expect to find this software, too. The Developer Site If you clicked "Start Developing" on the main page, you will be confronted with the site for development. There are two ways main flavors of contributing. Either you translate or you write program code. Therefore, we have two buttons that skip to the corresponding sections. At the bottom, you can see that there are tutorials on how to set up the environment for development. Videos for this can be found under this Youtube playlist. Summary At the end of GSoC we should document the code. Since we did documentation-driven development, there was already a focus on the developers from the start. End-user involvement fell short during the development phase. "Documentation is the way of informing people." - this is something I learned from a talk. Thus, I create the new site for the knit editor as a documentation about the project fit for non-developers.

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Introducing new Developers to Your Project

You may want to introduce new developers into your project. This is either to get help or to allow the community to guide the project. In this blog post, I want to present how I believe an introduction can be designed. (1) A Landing Page For the knitting projects, I have designed a landing page, knitting.fossasia.org. It features all related projects with links to documentation and source code as well as a short summary what it is about. You can read more about the landing page in this blog post. The idea is to to add short snippets of information that allow new developers to explore all available options to enter the projects. This may be contact information, documentation and videos. (2) Setup Instructions Especially for the projects I worked on, I created a introduction videos on how to set up your development environment. This could have been in text form, too. The problem for new developers is often that the start takes a long time. Instead of focusing on the issue they would like to solve, it sometimes takes several hours to set up the environment with lots of possibilities to make mistakes. In order to speed up the development environment setup, you can provide additional information. The CoderDojo Zen platform has its own landing page for new developers and a description of the steps to take to setup the development environment. In the case of the knitting projects, we have YouTube video tutorials which show the necessary steps. (3) Introduction Events You can participate in events to show your projects to other people. With the knitting projects, we will participate at the Maker Faire Berlin 2016.There may be local user groups where you can present the work and the learnings from them. Google Code-In is an excellent opportunity to allow new young developers to add code to your projects and document them. You can apply as a mentor and add tasks. A first task for beginners may be to get the project running on their computer. Another task could then be to either use it in a special way and document it or to solve an issue which is easy enough. In the following Google Summer of Code your project can be used again. You can apply as a mentor for your project and help other students to work on what you left behind. Summary I listed some ways I will perform to get the projects I worked on into the community. I hope they may have been an inspiration for other people who read this. If you like to contribute new ways, you can comment :)

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Knit Editor Package Overview

In this years Google Summer of Code, we created several Python package. They are all available on the Python Package Index (PyPi) and installable via "pip install". They are listed on knitting.fossasia.org but their interconnections are shown here. In the following figure, you can see the different packages created during GSoC with a solid line. Other packages that are used by the "kniteditor" application are shown here with a dotted line.   Overall, five packages we created. The design is driven by responsibility. Thus the responsibilities of each packages should be clearly separated from the other packages. We describe the responsibilities of the packages as follows: knittingpattern is the library for converting, loading, saving and manipulating knitting patterns. These patterns include in formation abour how to knit. Unlike a picture this includes more than a color: adding meshes, removing meshes, types of holes, the possibility of non-planar knit pieces ad more. ObservableList is a list whose content can be observed. Whenever elements are added or removed, this list notifies the observers. This is used by the rows of instructions to provide a more convenient interface. crc8 computes the crc8 hash from bytes. I did not find a Python library implementing ths functionality so I created it myself. The design follows the design of the hash functions in the Python standard library. This package is used by the AYABInterface package. Through creating a new package, this is also usable by other applications. AYABInterface controls the knitting machines connected to the AYAB hack. Through the serial interface, it can send messages to the controllers and receive answers. It also provides hint for actions which the user should take in order to produce the desired outcome. kniteditor contains the user interface to edit knitting patterns and control the knitting machines with the AYAB shield. All these packages also include installation instructions.

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AYABInterface – a Python Module for the AYAB shield

In the Google Summer of Code effort on knitting machines with AYAB, we created the AYABInterface module. This module allows us to control machines like the Brother KH-910. Click here to see it in action. The development process for small changes worked like this: Talk about uncertainty in the issue. Write the specification. Write the tests. Write the code. Of cause these steps were mixed but the objective is clear to first specify and then let the implementation follow. From my perspective this made sure that other people can implement this protocol, too. After all, it should be specific enough now, to write source code for it. The underlying Communication relies on a byte stream to communicate. This abstracts from the serial protocol and enables us to plug in e.g. sockets if someone wants to communicate via WIFI or LAN. The communication walks through several states. They are documented in the states module. Here you can see an overview over the different states: If you click it, you are redirected to an interactive documentation web page where you can click the different states and messages to view their implementation. Summary After all, communication is important, not only between the shield and the computer but also for the developers. Since the Shield is around for a while, this protocol is now documented in a way that allows us to use it also for other applications. A specification driven implementation allows us both: a complete specification where we know what is possible to implement an implementation that follows the specification and as such is exchangeable and a reference for other library developers.  

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Knitting with the Knit Editor – First Success

With AYAB we are working on an editor which also has the ability to control a knitting machine. Here is the progress we made: one can control the needles and get some instructions on what to do: Views of the Editor The editor has several view. To begin with, you can either load or save patterns as knitting patterns or images: This is the incomplete editor view, where you are able to add and remove instructions and rows and build your knit work: Once, your pattern is done, you go over to the knit settings. Currently, there is only one ability to knit, knitting with the AYAB hack. You can choose your machine type and the connection and start knitting. After you started knitting, you see the pattern which you want to knit. Right next to the pattern, you can see the instructions for you. You can follow these to create the knit peace. You can also open the settings menu by pressing F1. There you can choose your language: At the current state, all this is rather sketchy. The basics work. For the best user experience, there is still a lot to do.

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Awesome Kivy Revelations

We are using kivy for the GUI of the knit editor. It can be used to create Android, Windows, Linux, Mac and IOS apps. You can divide UI-design and code by using the kv language. In this blog post, I want to share some revelations I had when using kivy. This includes showing you how you can update translations automatically when the configuration changes and subtracting values. This awaits you: Automatic Update of Translated Text in the Kivy UI In projects like Django, there is the "_" function that allows translations of text. The implementation usually look calls a "gettext" function of some sort, which takes a string and returns its translation as a string. What we have in the kniteditor, is an observable translation, with the same interface: def _(string): """Translate a string using the current language. :param str string: the string to translate :return: the translated string :rtype: str """ return _locales.gettext(string) _ = ObservableTranslation(_) The difference is that the observable translation can be used like the "_" function but has additional methods that allow the UI to register and be notified when the language changes. When the language is changed, the global "gettext" is replaced by the "gettext" in the new language and, inthe last line, the observers are notified about the change. def change_language_to(new_language): """Change the language to a language from the translations folder. :param str new_language: the language code of the new language """ global _locales, _current_language _locales = gettext.translation(DOMAIN, _locale_dir, languages=[new_language]) _current_language = new_language _.language_changed() To see what this does, we can look at the whole implementation. I would like to give the whole picture, first, as it clarifies the context and discuss them below. """Observable Translations for kivy that change when the language changes. The functionality of this module is highly inspired by `kivy-gettext-example <https://github.com/tito/kivy-gettext-example>`. """ from kivy.lang import Observable class ObservableTranslation(Observable): """This class allows kivy translations to be updated with the language.""" def __init__(self, translate): """Create a new translation object with a translation function. :param translate: a callable that translates the text. Even when the language is changed, it returns the text for the current language. """ super().__init__() self._translate = translate self._observers = [] def __call__(self, text): """Call this object to translate text. :param str text: the text to translate :return: the text translated to the current language """ return self._translate(text) def fbind(self, name, func, args, **kwargs): """Add an observer. This is used by kivy.""" self._observers.append((name, func, args, kwargs)) def funbind(self, name, func, args, **kwargs): """Remove an observer. This is used by kivy.""" key = (name, func, args, kwargs) if key in self._observers: self._observers.remove(key) def language_changed(self): """Update all the kv rules attached to this text.""" for name, func, args, kwargs in self._observers: func(args, None, None) __all__ = ["ObservableTranslation"] The constructor takes the "_" function. When the object is called like a function, the "__call__" method is invoked, translating like "_". If we only have these two methods, the observable translation works just like the "_" function. "fbind" and "funbind" are the methods…

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The new AYABInterface module

One create knit work with knitting machines and the AYAB shield. Therefore, the computer communicates with the machine. This communication shall be done, in the future, with this new library, the AYABInterface. Here are some design decisions: Complete vs. Incomplete The idea is to have the AYAB seperated from the knittingpattern format. The knittingpattern format is an incomplete format that can be extended for any use case.  In contrast, the AYAB machine has a complete instruction set. The knittingpattern format is a means to transform these formats into different complete instruction sets. They should be convertible but not mixed. Desciptive vs. Imperative The idea is to be able to pass the format to the AYABInterface as a description. As much knowledge about the behavior is capsuled in the AYABInterface module. With this striving, we are less prone to intermix concerns across the applications. Responsibilty Driven Design I see these separated responsibilities: A communication part focusing on the protocol to talk and the messages sent across the wire. It is an interpreter of the protocol, transforming it from bytes to objects. A configuration that is passed to the interface Different Machines types supported. Actions the user shall perform. Different Representations I see these representations: Commands are transferred across the wire. (PySerial) For each movement of a carriage, the needles are used and put into a new position, B or D. (communication) We would like to knit a list of rows with different colors. (interface) Holes can be described by a list of orders in which meshes are moved to other locations, i.e. on needle 1 we can find mesh 1, on needle 2 we find mesh 2 first and then mesh 3, so mesh 2 and mesh 3 are knit together in the following step The knitting pattern format. Actions and Information for the User The user should be informed about actions to take. These actions should not be in the form of text but rather in the form of an object that represents the action, i.e. ["move", "this carriage", "from right to left"]. This way, they can be adequately represented in the UI and translated somewhere central in the UI. Summary The new design separates concerns and allows testing. The bridge between the machine and the knittnigpattern format are primitive, descriptive objects such as lists and integers.

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Transcript from the Python Toolbox 101

At the Python User Group Berlin, I lead a talk/discussion about free-of-charge tools for open-source development based on what we use GSoC. The whole content was in an Etherpad and people could add their ideas. Because there are a lot of tools, I thought, I would share it with you. Maybe it is of use. Here is the talk: Python Users Berlin 2016/07/14 Talk & Discussion   START: 19:15 with Nicco Kunzmann https://niccokunzmann.github.io Agenda 1min END: 19:15 ====== - Example library - What is code - Version Control   - Python Package Index - ..., see headings - discussion: write down, what does not fit into my structure Example Library (2min)  19:17 ====================== At https://pypi.python.org/pypi/knittingpattern What is Code (2min) 19:19 =================== .. note:: This frames our discussion - Source files .py, .pyw - tests - documentation - quality - readability - bugs and problems - <3 Configurationsfiles plain Text for editing Version Control (2min) 19:21 ====================== .. note:: Sharing and Collaboration - no Version Control:   - Dropbox   - Google drive   - Telekom cloud   - ftp, windows share - Version Control Tools:   - git     - https://github.com     - https://gitlab.com     - gitweb own server     -    - mecurial     - https://bitbucket.org   - svn     - http://sourceforge.net/   - perforce (proprietary)                   Python Package Index (3min) 19:24 --------------------------- .. note:: Shipping to the users hosts python packages you develop. Example: "knittingpattern" package     https://pypi.python.org/pypi/knittingpattern pip     http://pip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ Installation from Pypi:     $ python3 -m pip install knittingpattern # Linux     > py -3.4 -m pip install knittingpattern # Windows Documentation upload included! http://pythonhosted.org/knittingpattern/ Documentation (3min) 19:27 ==================== .. note:: Inform users I came across a talk: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5rGUqRWlK8 - Thoughts of Nicco Kunzmann: http://niccokunzmann.github.io/blog/2016-06-10/Documentation-Driven-Development Documentation can be: - tutorials - how to - introduction to the community/development process - code documentation!!! - chat -  Building the documentation (3min)  19:30 --------------------------------- Formats: - HTML - PDF - reRST - EPUB - doc strings in source code - test? Tools: - Sphinx - doxygen - doc strings - pep257: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/   - standard how to put in docstrings in Python     -  Example: Sphinx  3min 19:33 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - Used for Python - Used for knittingpattern - Several themes available http://www.writethedocs.org/guide/tools/sphinx-themes/ Python file:     https://github.com/AllYarnsAreBeautiful/knittingpattern/blob/master/knittingpattern/Mesh.py Documentation file with sphinx.ext.autodoc:     https://github.com/AllYarnsAreBeautiful/knittingpattern/blob/master/docs/reference/knittingpattern/Mesh.rst Built documentation:     http://knittingpattern.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/knittingpattern/Mesh.html#knittingpattern.Mesh.Mesh.__repr__     See the return type str, Intersphinx can reference across documentations.     Intersphinx uses objects inventory, hosted with the documentation:         http://knittingpattern.readthedocs.io/en/latest/objects.inv Testing the documentation:     - TODO: link       - evertying is included in the docs       - everything that is public is documented              syntax       - numpy        - google        - sphinx Hosting the Documentation (3min) 19:36 -------------------------------- Tools: - pythonhosted   only latest version   example: http://pythonhosted.org/knittingpattern/ - readthedocs.io   several branches, versions, languages   Example: http://knittingpattern.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ - wiki pages -  Code Testing 2min 19:38 ============ .. note:: Tests show the presence of mistakes, not their absence. What can be tested:…

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Deploying a Kivy Application with PyInstaller for Mac OSX with Travis CI to Github

In this sprint for the kniteditor library we focused on automatic deployment for Windows and Mac. The idea: whenever a tag is pushed to Github, a new travis build is triggered. The new built app is uploaded to Github as an ".dmg" file. Travis Travis is configured with the ".travis.yml" file which you can see here: language: python # see https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/multi-os/ matrix: include: - os: linux python: 3.4 - os: osx language: generic allow_failures: - os: osx install: - if [ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "osx" ] ; then mac-build/install.sh ; fi script: - if [ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "osx" ] ; then mac-build/test.sh ; fi before_deploy: - if [ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "osx" ] ; then cp mac-build/dist/KnitEditor.dmg /Users/travis/KnitEditor.dmg ; fi deploy: # see https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/deployment/releases/ - provider: releases api_key: secure: v18ZcrXkIMgyb7mIrKWJYCXMpBmIGYWXhKul4/PL/TVpxtg2f/zfg08qHju7mWnAZYApjTV/EjOwWCtqn/hm2CfPFo= file: /Users/travis/KnitEditor.dmg on: tags: true condition: "\"$TRAVIS_OS_NAME\" == \"osx\"" repo: AllYarnsAreBeautiful/kniteditor Note that it builds both Linux and OSX. Thus, for each step one must distinguish. Here, only the OSX parts are shown. These steps are executed: Installation. The app and dmg files are built. Testing. The tests are shipped with the app in our case. This allows us to execute them at many more locations - where the user is. Before Deploy. Somehow Travis did not manage to upload from the original location. Maybe it was a bug. Thus, a absolute path was created for the use in (4). Deployment to github. In this case we use an API key. One could also use a password. Installation: #!/bin/bash # # execute with --user to pip install in the user home # set -e HERE="`dirname \"$0\"`" USER="$1" cd "$HERE" brew update echo "# install python3" brew install python3 echo -n "Python version: " python3 --version python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip echo "# install pygame" python3 -m pip uninstall -y pygame || true # locally compiled pygame version # see https://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame/issues/82/homebrew-on-leopard-fails-to-install#comment-636765 brew install sdl sdl_image sdl_mixer sdl_ttf portmidi brew install mercurial || true python3 -m pip install $USER hg+http://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame echo "# install kivy dependencies" brew install sdl2 sdl2_image sdl2_ttf sdl2_mixer gstreamer echo "# install requirements" python3 -m pip install $USER -I Cython==0.23 \ --install-option="--no-cython-compile" USE_OSX_FRAMEWORKS=0 python3 -m pip install $USER kivy python3 -m pip uninstall -y Cython==0.23 python3 -m pip install $USER -r ../requirements.txt python3 -m pip install $USER -r ../test-requirements.txt python3 -m pip install $USER PyInstaller ./build.sh $USER The first step is to update brew. It cost me 4 hours to find this bug, 2 hours to work around it before. If brew is not updated, Python 3.4 is installed instead of Python 3.5. Then, Python, Pygame as the window provider for Kivy is installed, and the other requirements. It goes on with the build step. While installation is executed once on a personal Mac, the build step is executed several times, when the source code is changed. #!/bin/bash # # execute with --user to make pip install in the user home # set -e HERE="`dirname \"$0\"`" USER="$1" cd "$HERE" ( cd .. echo "# removing old installation of kniteditor" python3…

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How to create a Windows Installer from tagged commits

I working on an open-source Python project, an editor for knit work called the "KnitEditor". Development takes place at Github. Here, I would like to give some insight in how we automated deployment of the application to a Windows installer. The process works like this: Create a tag with git and push it to Github. AppVeyor build the application. AppVeyor pushes the application to the Github release. (1) Create a tag and push it Tags should reflect the version of the software. Version "0.0.1" is in tag "v0.0.1". We automated the tagging with the "setup.py" in the repository. Now, you can run py -3.4 setup.py tag_and_deploy Which checks that there is no such tag already. Several commits have the same version, so, we like to make sure that we do not have two versions with the same name. Also, this can only be executed on the master branch. This way, the software has gone through all the automated quality assurance. Here is the code from the setup.py: from distutils.core import Command # ... class TagAndDeployCommand(Command): description = "Create a git tag for this version and push it to origin."\ "To trigger a travis-ci build and and deploy." user_options = [] name = "tag_and_deploy" remote = "origin" branch = "master" def initialize_options(self): pass def finalize_options(self): pass def run(self): if subprocess.call(["git", "--version"]) != 0: print("ERROR:\n\tPlease install git.") exit(1) status_lines = subprocess.check_output( ["git", "status"]).splitlines() current_branch = status_lines[0].strip().split()[-1].decode() print("On branch {}.".format(current_branch)) if current_branch != self.branch: print("ERROR:\n\tNew tags can only be made from branch" " \"{}\".".format(self.branch)) print("\tYou can use \"git checkout {}\" to switch" " the branch.".format(self.branch)) exit(1) tags_output = subprocess.check_output(["git", "tag"]) tags = [tag.strip().decode() for tag in tags_output.splitlines()] tag = "v" + __version__ if tag in tags: print("Warning: \n\tTag {} already exists.".format(tag)) print("\tEdit the version information in {}".format( os.path.join(HERE, PACKAGE_NAME, "__init__.py") )) else: print("Creating tag \"{}\".".format(tag)) subprocess.check_call(["git", "tag", tag]) print("Pushing tag \"{}\" to remote \"{}\"." "".format(tag, self.remote)) subprocess.check_call(["git", "push", self.remote, tag]) # ... SETUPTOOLS_METADATA = dict( # ... cmdclass={ # ... TagAndDeployCommand.name: TagAndDeployCommad }, ) # ... if __name__ == "__main__": import setuptools METADATA.update(SETUPTOOLS_METADATA) setuptools.setup(**METADATA) # METADATA can be found in several other Above, you can see a "distutils" command that executed git through the command line interface. (2) AppVeyor builds the application As mentioned above, you can configure AppVeyor to build your application. Here are some parts of the "appveyor.yml" file, that I comment on inline: # see https://packaging.python.org/appveyor/#adding-appveyor-support-to-your-project environment: PYPI_USERNAME: niccokunzmann3 PYPI_PASSWORD: secure: Gxrd9WI60wyczr9mHtiQHvJ45Oq0UyQZNrvUtKs2D5w= # For Python versions available on Appveyor, see # http://www.appveyor.com/docs/installed-software#python # The list here is complete (excluding Python 2.6, which # isn't covered by this document) at the time of writing. # we only need Python 3.4 for kivy PYTHON: "C:\\Python34" install: - "%PYTHON%\\python.exe -m pip install docutils pygments pypiwin32 kivy.deps.sdl2 kivy.deps.glew" - "%PYTHON%\\python.exe -m pip install -r requirements.txt" - "%PYTHON%\\python.exe -m pip install -r test-requirements.txt" - "%PYTHON%\\python.exe setup.py install" build_script: - cmd: cmd /c windows-build\build.bat test_script: # Put your test command here. # If you don't need to build C extensions on 64-bit Python 3.3 or 3.4,…

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