Author Archives: Matej Salković

About Matej Salković

Matej is a C++ programmer currently working on cross-platform CAD applications in Python.

Riding the Bézier wave

When working on 2D/3D graphic applications, animating various objects and moving them across the screen is very often a requirement. As a programmer or designer, sometimes you would like to have the freedom to move objects not only along straight, but also along curved lines. Solution to this problem – the Bézier curve – has been known for decades. Still, people unfamiliar with curves may find them a bit confusing at first. This article is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of Bézier curves; rather, it should give a beginner just enough knowledge to get her/him started.
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A quick introduction to Python decorators

Decorators were introduced in Python 2.4 to provide a clean syntax for function wrappers. New syntax was not only applied to already existing Python built-in wrappers, but also enabled programmers to elegantly wrap any function or method with additional functionality.

According to the Python Glossary, a decorator is a function returning another function. This is a pretty vague description, so maybe it’s best to take a look at some code.
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PyGTK widgets and custom signals

For readers not familiar with Python development, PyGTK is a set of Python wrappers for the GTK+ graphical user interface library. GTK+ derives it’s name from a seemingly endless array of acronyms: GTK stands for GIMP ToolKit, where GIMP in fact means GNU Image Manipulation Program, and finally, GNU is shorthand for ‘GNU’s Not Unix!’. In this article, I will describe a problem we faced while working on a Python-based CAD application. I believe that the simple solution we came up with provides a good introduction to PyGTK widgets and custom signals. Read more

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