[Pythoncard-users] Re: Loading/splash screens

[Thomas H. <th...@py...>]

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX writes:

> On 30/12/05 01:22, Alex Tweedly wrote:
>> I don't know if this is a solution or not .... but I've always
>> noticed that the wxPython demo gets the splashscreen up there pretty
>> quickly, and then the real window follows a while later.
> <snip>
>
> I'd forgotten about the demo...wxPython (and wx in general) is still a
> bit of a blind spot for me. But the splashscreen part looks pretty
> straightforward.
>
>> That may or may not help - depends how much time is just getting the
>> base interpreter up and going.
>
> Quite a large proportion of the loading by the look of it. The demo
> splashscreen takes an age to appear on my cold-booted NT box (Pentium
> 3 700MHz, 640MB RAM, 5400rpm ATA/100 drive...not an unusual spec. for
> where I have to distribute my application).

I have a 800MHz P3 box with 512 MB with XP SP2 for testing.

Times are for py2exe created applications.
An application with a custom GUI based on ctypes takes far less than a
second to show the window.  A wxPython app takes about 3 seconds.
If this is too slow for you, or your system is slower, see below.

>> If that doesn't help, you might consider a lightweight "main"
>> program (not in Python) which simply displays the splashscreen and
>> then runs the real app ... there are certainly shareware apps that
>> do this, and a thorough search may well find a freeware one (for
>> Windows - probably also for Mac or Linux but I don't know)
>> See http://www.intrepidmouse.com/products/ssm/index.asp for a
>> shareware example.
>
> I'm an old school C programmer and had considered creating a "stub"
> that launches a py2exe/McMillan installer-created Python
> executable. It was a bit of a last resort though ;-)

For a C programmer it should not be a problem to extend the py2exe
sources to include a dialog resource, then call CreateDialog somewhere
to create the spash screen.  The C code could DestroyWindow the dialog
just before starting the Python main script, or you could even expose
a DestroySplashscreen function to Python which would then destroy the
dialog after the GUI is initialized.

Thomas