Programming

Python

• excel xlsx file read/write
• PyInstaller Manual
  • Issues in using PyInstaller with Tkinter

TKinter is used in easygui for creating GUIs. Somehow when installing PyInstaller, the system will use the python in Panda package if it is installed on the system, which may not have all the required modules. Therefore, a quick solution is to first remove all Panda installations on the system, and then install the PyInstaller package again. There is sometimes also a warning saying that:

WARNING: file already exists but should not: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI86402\Include\pyconfig.h

This is caused by repetitive importing of the pyconfig.h in the current release of PyInstaller. To fix it, one can manually "patch" the problem by adding the following lines into the *.spec file (generated after using python makespec.py <yourfile.py>):

for d in a.datas:
    if 'pyconfig' in d[0]: 
        a.datas.remove(d)
        break

Not as convenient as one would hope, but it works (see similar issue here).

---

• PsychoPy
  • More issue with pyglet/avbin

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<input>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\UserHomes\PsychoPy2\lib\
site-packages\psychopy-1.74.01-py2.6.egg\psychopy\sound.py", line 48, in <module>
    import pyglet
  File "C:\UserHomes\PsychoPy2\lib\site-packages\pyglet\__init__.py", line 70, in <module>
    lib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('avbin')
  File "C:\UserHomes\PsychoPy2\lib\ctypes\__init__.py", line 431, in LoadLibrary
    return self._dlltype(name)
  File "C:\UserHomes\PsychoPy2\lib\ctypes\__init__.py", line 353, in __init__
    self._handle = _dlopen(self._name, mode)
WindowsError: [Error 998] Invalid access to memory location

• Using Chinese Fonts

The Chinese font name (e.g., 標楷體) is not easily used by python scripts. However, with softwares such as Microsoft font editor, one can find the "Unique name" of the font files in %windowspath%\Fonts\. For example, "標楷體" has an unique name "DFKai-SB", which is just like "Arial" that can be used in the script.

welcome[0] = psychopy.visual.TextStim(winobj, 
	text='歡迎您來玩「尋找大方向」遊戲！'.decode(syscode),  
	pos=[0.0, 0.15], color=(1.0, 1.0, 0.0), rgb=None,
	colorSpace='rgb', opacity=1.0,height=0.20, font='DFKai-SB', 
	alignHoriz='center', bold=True, wrapWidth=0.3)

• Problem in installing packages
  • "error: Unable to find vcvarsall.bat"[1] when running

pip install cffi

But vcvarsall.bat exists on the system. This is because python 2.7 does not support MS Visual Studio ver > 8.0. To fix it: modifing the Lib\distutils\msvc9compiler.py can make it support vs 10.0 change 304 line

VERSION = get_build_version()

to

VERSION = 10.0

and add,

ld_args.append('/MANIFESTFILE:' + temp_manifest) #line 684
ld_args.append('/manifest')

Version Control

• introduction to version control