Python GUI Setup

Here is the procedure I used to get "Fourier" working on Windows and Linux.

I wanted to use BLT for xy-plotting, partly because we used it with tcl in the sss project, and partly because I couldn't understand how to position the plots in wxPython (the main alternative).

The only interface to BLT from Python seemed to be through Pmw (now it is claimed that you can get to BLT directly, but I haven't figured out how). So, I

Downloaded the most recent version of Python (2.2) into C:\Python22 (Windows)
Downloaded the required packages (Numeric, FFT, etc.) and noticed that they installed into C:\Python22\Lib\site-packages
Downloaded the corresponding release of Pmw into C:\Python22\Lib\site-packages

On the Debian Linux Windows system in B3 set up by Dan Freedman, this sufficed. On the CCMR RedHat system I've yet to get it to work. On Windows, I had to install the current version of BLT. Following instructions from http://www.ifi.uio.no/~hpl/Pmw.Blt/doc/links.html, as suggested by Peter Brown at phbrown@acm.org, I

installed BLT into C:/Python22 using its installer: this made bin, include, and lib subdirectories of C:/Python22/tcl
copied the directory C:/Python22/tcl/lib/blt2.4 into C:/Python22/tcl/tcl8.3
copied the BLT DLL's into my PATH, specifically C:\Program Files\Tcl\bin.

Now my scripts worked on Windows. I now wished to roll them into a binary form that I could distribute. Chris Myers advised me to try the more advanced "Freeze" methods developed at http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/install1.html. This took some time, until I read the documentation: on the first page of the Pmw documentation, it says that freezing is tricky, and gives a link to doc/dynamicloader.html.

Downloaded the installer and installed it in the Fourier directory (Linux) or into C:\Python22\Lib\site-packages (Windows)
Make directory FourierFreeze in that same directory
Make Pmw.py in that directory: python ..\Pmw\Pmw_0_8_5\bin\bundlepmw.py ..\Pmw\Pmw_0_8_5\lib
copy Fourier.py, PmwBlt.py and PmwColor.py into FourierFreeze (instructions from dynamicloader?)
MAKE SURE for Linux that you remove all ^M's from the file. Also, the freeze program doesn't like tabs mixed with spaces, I think. The error message is inscrutable
python ../Installer/Makespec.py --onefile --tk --debug --noconsole Fourier.py
python ../Installer/Build.py Fourier.spec

Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity, now available at Oxford University Press (USA, Europe).