Tutorial to aid adding a new e2program to the e2projectmanager.py

This tutorial covers the necessary steps to incorporate a e2program into the projectmanager.

Modifications to the e2program itself

Canonical e2programs must maintain the following standards

  1. Options are handled via EMArgumentParser, which is a subclass of Python's argparse module (version 2.7 and higher). For more information on argparse, see the python documentation. http://docs.python.org/dev/library/argparse.html

  2. Arguments are handled via EMArgumentParser.
  3. A line usage = """blah, blah, blah...""" must be present to give help info on the e2program
  4. A line progname = os.path.basename(sys.argv[0]) must be present

To illustrate what an e2program should look like, here is an example program: 

   1 #!/usr/bin/env python
   2 #
   3 # GPL licensing info goes here
   4 #
   5 
   6 from EMAN2 import *
   7 
   8 def main():
   9     progname = os.path.basename(sys.argv[0])
  10     usage = """prog arg1, arg2, [options] 
  11             This is an exmaple program """
  12 
  13     parser = EMArgumentParser(usage=usage,version=EMANVERSION)
  14     parser.add_argument("--option1",type=str,help="This is the first option",default="myvalue")
  15     parser.add_argument("--option2",type=int,help="This is the second option",default=1)
  16     parser.add_argument("--option3",type=float,help="This is the third option",default=3.14)
  17     parser.add_argument("--option4",action="store_true",help="This is the fourth option",default=False)
  18 
  19     (options, args) = parser.parse_args()
  20 
  21     print "Arguments are", args
  22     print "Options are", options
  23 
  24 if __name__ == __main__:
  25     main()

To enable this program to be integrated into the GUI the following item must be implemented:

  1. For each argument the method: parser.add_pos_argument()
  2. To add dividing lines with help info into the GUI, add the method: parser.add_header()
  3. To all parser 'add' methods the following keyword arguments must be added
  4. guitype="", this specifies what type of widget we want to use for this GUI
  5. row="", this specifies what row the widget should appear in
  6. column="", this specifies what column the widget should appear in
  7. rowspan="", this specifies how many rows the widget should span
  8. columnspan="", this specifies how many columns the widget should span
  9. browser="", if the widget represnts and option that refers to a file, this keyword argument lists a filebrowser to use.