Make Pretty GUI Apps Fast with Python-Qt - page 3

A Minimal Window, Signals and Slots

Fortunately, QLabel can display images as well as names. So that's the first change: for each suit, make a "pixmap" to display an image. Here are some images you can download with a right-click and "Save image as..."

Back in PokerWindow.__init__, prepare the images like this:

        # Images for the suits:
        self.suitpics    = ["diamond.png", "spade.png",
                            "heart.png", "club.png" ]
        self.suitpixmaps = [None, None, None, None]

        # Read in the suit pixmaps
        for i in range(0, len(self.suitpics)) :
            self.suitpixmaps[i] = QPixmap(self.suitpics[i])

Use them like this, checking to make sure each image got set correctly:

    def dealNewHand(self) :
        for i in range(0, 5) :
            rank = random.randint(0, 12);
            self.ranks[i].setText(self.ranknames[rank])

            suit = random.randint(0, 3);
            if self.suitpixmaps[suit].isNull() :
                self.suits[i].setText(self.suitnames[suit])
            else :
                self.suits[i].setPixmap(self.suitpixmaps[suit])

Much better! (Figure 4.)

figure 4

But it would look better still if the suit names were boldface, twice as big and centered. That's easy to fix with a QFont and some alignment:

        self.font = QFont("", 0, QFont.Bold, False)
        self.font.setPointSize(self.font.pointSize() * 2)

and

        # Create the labels for the card ranks and suits:
        for i in range(0, len(self.ranks)) :
            self.ranks[i] = QLabel()
            self.ranks[i].setFont(self.font)
            self.ranks[i].setAlignment(Qt.AlignCenter)

Hey, I like this code a lot better (Figure 5) -- I got a full house!

figure 5

 

Links

Python-Qt isn't as well documented as one might hope, and you'll see a lot of out-of-date examples on the web that no longer work. The links I've found most helpful are:

• PyQt's Classes
• GUI Programming with Python: QT Edition
• The PyQt4 tutorial (which includes a nifty Tetris game)

Also try a web search for qt widget gallery -- there are quite a few sites with collections of screenshots so you can find out what all those widgets really look like.

 

Akkana Peck is a freelance programmer and writer and the author of Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional. You can download a more complete example of the Python-Qt poker game from her blog.