codeboje - Guiding developers since 1869 - Guaranteed Bullshit-Free by Tag python

The Ultimate Collection of Markdown Editors - Curated

2018-05-28T22:15:01+02:00

Last Update May 2018

I’ve been a long time user of Markdown now and still enjoy its simplicity. So i thought it is time to rewrite the collection and add some more information.

Yada, yada, just take me to the list

What is Markdown?

Markdown is an easy to use markup language and is written in a plain text format. Writing in it feels very natural and with the tools around it you got a powerful helper, like a tiny wizard in your pocket :-). The main benefits are

natural writing, it looks and feels like plain text, here is an example
```
# This is my first header

He is the prince of the land of fife.
```
the text content is separated from the actual presentation, which simplifies the presentation of your work in different formats, i.e., transform it to HTML, Word, PDF, LaTeX, and more

As I said it is plain text, and basically you could write it with any text editor on any platform. I write it on a Mac, my colleague can change it on Windows. And all with the simplest plain text editors. But when you want to transform it into HTML, you can use one of the many command line tools or an editor. And same of the editors I’ll present you now.

Python based Markdown editors

This site has a strong history on Python, so Markdown Editors implemented in Python, get their special section.

ReText Open source; written in Python and QT
Niw Markdown Editor Open source; written in Python and QT
Markdown Editor written in Python and QT, more a tech demo but working
Python-Markdown-Editor runs a local server and you edit in a browser
Markie - a WYSIWYG-Markdown editor Open source; written in Python and wxWidgets

Markdown Editor for Windows

Anomade C++ and QT
CuteMarkEd C++ and QT; Open Source; Windows, Linux
MarkdownSharp Open source; C#
SmartDown Commercial; Windows
MarkPad C#, Supports Metaweblog API
Texts Commercial;Windows, Mac; a more visual editing as you don’t write markdown by yourself, but the editor does it in the background.
MdCharm ~~Commercial~~ Open Sourced; Windows, Linux
MarkdownPad Free + Commercial version; Windows
Haroopad Freeware; Windows, Linux, Mac
Typora Commercial, free beta; Windows, Mac, Linux. Visual editing with a mix of writing and live preview.
Moopato eBook Writer Disclaimer: it is my own tool; Commercial Windows & Mac. Focused on distraction free writing and publishing of ebooks
ghostwriter Open Source; Windows and Linux
Marxico Online, Chrome App, Windows Client, Mac Client, Stores docs in Evernote
SmartDown II Commercial, Windows
Abricotine Open Source, Windows, Linux and Mac
MOEDITOR Open Source, Mac, Windows, Linux
PileMd Free, Mac,Windows, Linux, Notes taking app

Markdown Editor for Linux

Typora Commercial, free beta; Windows, Mac, Linux. Visual editing with a mix of writing and live preview.
UberWriter Open source; Linux distraction free writing
CuteMarkEd C++ and QT; Open Source; Windows, Linux
MdCharm ~~Commercial~~ Open Sourced; Windows, Linux
Remarkable Free; Linux, Windows announced
ghostwriter Open Source; Windows and Linux
Abricotine Open Source, Windows, Linux and Mac
MOEDITOR Open Source, Mac, Windows, Linux
PileMd Free, Mac,Windows, Linux, Notes taking app

Markdown Editor for Mac

Typora Commercial, free beta; Windows, Mac, Linux. Visual editing with a mix of writing and live preview.
Haroopad Freeware; Windows, Linux, Mac
Texts Commercial;Windows, Mac; a more visual editing as you don’t write markdown by yourself, but the editor does it in the background.
Mou Commercial; Mac
Moopato eBook Writer Disclaimer: it is my own tool; Commercial Windows & Mac. Focused on distraction free writing and publishing of ebooks
ByWword 2 Commercial Mac, iOS
MacDown Open Source, Mac
Marked 2 Commercial, Mac
Marxico Online, Chrome App, Windows Client, Mac Client, Stores docs in Evernote
Abricotine Open Source, Windows, Linux and Mac
TextNut Freemium, Mac, iOS
Write for Mac Commercial, Mac
MOEDITOR Open Source, Mac, Windows, Linux
PileMd Free, Mac,Windows, Linux, Notes taking app
Paragraphs Commercial, Mac
MWeb for Mac Commercial Mac, Supports Static Site Generators
LightPaper Commercial Mac

Markdown Editors Online or browser extenions

Textdown Chrome extension
StackEdit Chrome extension
ShareBrain Chrome extension
Memofon Online; Write markdown and get a mindmap
StackEdit Open source & Online
Dillinger.io Open source & Online
markable Online & you need an account
Markdown Edit Open source & online
Marxico Online, Chrome App, Windows Client, Mac Client, Stores docs in Evernote

If you know a good one, just post it in the comments and i’ll add it.

2d and 3d Game and Rendering Engines for Python - A Curated Collection

2018-05-28T06:16:28+02:00

Thanks to the nice feedback i got for 2D Game Engines for Python i decided to compile a list of 2d and 3d game development possibilities with Python i found so far. It might not be complete, but i’ll maintain the list from time to time when i find new engines or get tips from you. Your feedback is generally very appreciated.

Wow, I first created this list on 26th August 2008. It’s almost ten years now and still going.

Last update on May 2018

2D Game and Rendering engines:

Python Arcade Arcade is built on top of Pyglet and OpenGL
PyGame Python binding for sdl and more
pyglet 2D games with opengl. No external dependencies, besides python of course ;-) Uses OpenGL
Pycap The PopCap Game Framework for Python
SpriteCraft Small game engine with python bindings
ika RPG game engine with python scripting
FIFEngine platform independent game engine with python scripting
cocos2d framework for 2d game and graphical/interactive applications; uses pyglet
Construct Gamebuilder like tool which supports Scripting in python, uses directx - windows only
marishco A 2D casual game framework (DirectX & OpenGL).
Pilas full game engine based on pygame; with editor gui (spanish only docs)
kivy UI lib for creating apps and games, supports 2d and 3d, apps run on Linux, Windows, OS X, Android and iOS, MIT

Tile and Sprite engines for Pygame and pyglet

PGU - Phil’s pyGame Utilities supports isometric and hex too
Waldi Tile Engine simple tile engines with sprite support (incl. animation) and collision detection. stores map in xml
Rabbyt fast sprite engine, can use either pygame or pyglet
Spryte is a sprite enigne for pyglet and can be found in their svn

3D Game and Rendering engines

PyOpenGL pure binding to opengl
Python-Ogre Ogre 3D for python, supports various libs like ODE too
Panda3D full game engine in C++ with python integration
Pyrr binding to the irrlicht engine
Blender Game Engine
Soya 3D object oriented “high level” 3D engine for Python
Delta3D Open Source Game and Simulation engine with python scripting
PyCrystal binding for Crystal Space
Sylphis3D commercial game engine with GPL version available
pyglet Uses OpenGL and can therefor do 3D too
Construct Gamebuilder like tool which supports Scripting in python, uses directx - windows only
PySoy 3D game engine based on C/python. AGPLv3
Eden Eden is a high-level wrapper and extender for the Panda 3D rendering engine. BSD/LGPL
kivy UI lib for creating apps and games, supports 2d and 3d, apps run on Linux, Windows, OS X, Android and iOS, MIT
Engendro3D OpenGL 3D Game Engine for Python, LGPL and Work in Progress

Review: Python Hunting Book

2017-07-28T21:10:13+02:00

I recently stumbled up on a book about game programming with PyGame for beginners. Even I am not the target audience it did catch my attention and my desire to play a bit again with game development and Python. And I had a fantastic time so far :-)

TLDR: I think it is a great book for learning python and game development at the same time. The author duo does a great job in explaining the concepts involved and at the right time and pace.

Disclaimer: I got a review copy for free. However, it was at my request, and my opinion is still my own.

Python Hunting: A beginner’s guide to programming and game building in Python for teens, tweens and newbies.

Link to Amazon*

This is for you?

If you have never programmed before but are curious about developing your first simple games or learning Python. It’s written in a conversational style with younger folks as the readers; nonetheless, it’s even a good fit for the older (like me :-)).

What will you learn?

You will start with building an animated scene of falling rain, adding a cloud and a guy with his umbrella.

Shortly after, this is turned into a space invaders game.

You’ll then develop pong, a fly catching game and last but not least a tank game. Along with developing the games step by step you’ll learn how Python works, what variables are, tuples, list and all the other stuff you need to know for developing these games. They’ll also cover some simple math; fear not, it is simple and with good explanations.

Which leads me to the biggest benefit this book has. It’s way of explaining things. It’s clear, concise, with a good pace, and just in time, so you never feel overwhelmed.

On the game developing side, you learn the concept of a game loop, animation, moving stuff around, collision detection and a bit more.

Conclusion

I love this book, and it was a fun time for me to write the first two games and I’ll definitely finish the others too. Sure, as an experienced developer I am not the target audience, but I have fun nonetheless.

The explanation and teaching are great, and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning Python and/or games.

This Problem with PySide, Py2App and Brew drove me Nuts

2017-05-23T15:33:05+02:00

I build several desktop applications using PySide. It works like a charm on Windows. However, I found a nasty bug in the Mac version which I could not reproduce on my local machine. This one drove me nuts. It was hard to analyze, I own just one Mac and do not have access to another machine. Luckily, with the help of some very long googling (guessing symptoms) and the help of a user of one of my applications, I could fix the issue. As a reminder for myself and help for you, I document it.

Problem

I build the application using PySide, Py2App and Python 3 on a Mac using a virtualenv. I used Brew for installing PySide and Python, and PySide was also installed inside my virutaenv.

The application builds and runs fine on my machine.

However, on a different Mac, the application crashed without any useful traces in the system logs.

My application also writes a separate log file, but this was empty. So it seemed like the application crashed before even reaching my code.

After some google and adjusting my log outputs, however, I found out that it started to execute my code and then crashed when initializing PySide.

First, I thought it was just a problem on this single users machine, but I got a similar bug report which gave me some hints it might be a general problem.

Now, better equipped I found the culprit after some additional googling.

The application could not load the QT binaries.

The problem is a combination of installing PySide and with Brew and using PySide inside a virtualenv. While building the application Py2App can’t pick up the correct library path, and the generated application includes the libraries but with an incorrect path in the Mac specific descriptors.

otool -L <my-app>/Contents/Resources/lib/python3.4/lib-dynload/PySide/QtGui.so

It should list the file with @executable_path and not with an absolute path only valid for your machine.

In my case, the binaries were referenced by absolute paths which were of course not valid on someone else machine.

Solution

I do not know who exactly is causing this issue, but the following workaround did help me.

Deinstall Python and PySide
Deinstall Brew
Install Macport
Install Python and PySide with Macport
PySide is installed in the main python site-packages
Create a new virutalenv and let it use the main site-packages

And then continue building the application as before. This time the lib references were fine in the application.

Guess what?

It worked now. Yippie.

Integrate Your Own License Generator With Paddle

2016-12-15T12:26:00+01:00

Paddle is a payment processor for selling things online and specially targeting software developer and their needs. They even support trial version and license activating through their SDK. Unfortunately, last year as I started to use them for my eBook Writing Software Moopato the Windows SDK was dotnet only and not suitable for a python application (They now offer a non dotnet version too). But there was another solution I am going to show you now.

Paddle allows a Webhook to be called when someone buys your software and whatever response the Webhook provides will be added to mail sent to your customer. This was all I needed to run my own licensing generator.

On my side of the webhook, I build a simple LicenseGenerator with Flask. But let’s start with the Paddle part.

Paddle WebHook

Go to the Edit your Project screen, and you will see an entry called Set Webhook URL. Click on change and the following button and your ready to set up the hook.

You will need your url, and in the next step, we will build our app responding there. You can define the request method too and add custom values to the request, like customer name, customer email address or even static ones of your own like application name and version. All predefined field are described in the docs - Fulfilment Webhooks.

And the most important part in setting this up the first time the “Test Webhook” Button. Clicking on it will make Paddle send you a webhook request with a dummy customer.

LicenseGenerator

When using an HTTP Post for the Webhhok, Paddle will send a form-encoded request. They also build a hash code of all field values and your secret API key (Displayed on the Webhook site) and send this hash value with the message in the field msg_id. You should build that hash value too and check if the request is a valid one from Paddle.

The code is pretty straight forward. We create a simple Flask app with only one endpoint. We extract the form values we get, validate the message and if it seems to be from Paddle , we build our license key. How to implement that is up to you and your need. My version just generates the key and returns it, but you could also add it to a database or add the user to a mailing list. Your imagination is the limit.

from flask import Flask, request, abort
from moopato.editor.license import build_license_key, format_license
import hashlib
import urllib

api_secret= 'your API secret'

app = Flask(__name__)
application = app


@app.route("/register_license", methods=['POST','GET'])
def get_license():
    data = request.form
    customer_name = data['customer_name']
    customer_email = data['customer_email']

    # private fields omitted

    msg_id = data['msg_id']

    # Build msg hash
    m = hashlib.md5()
    m.update(urllib.parse.quote(customer_email).encode('utf-8'))
    m.update(api_secret.encode('utf-8'))

    #Check if codes are equal
    if m.hexdigest() == msg_id:
        return "your license key generation here"

    abort(403)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()