PyGTS - A python package for the manipulation of triangulated surfaces Copyright (C) 2009 Thomas J. Duck All rights reserved. Thomas J. Duck <tom.duck@dal.ca> Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 3J5 CONTENTS 1. LICENSE 2. SOFTWARE DESCRIPTION 3. IMPORTANT FILES 4. BUILD ENVIRONMENT 5. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS 6. DOCUMENTATION 1. LICENSE Usage of this library is subject to the GNU Library General Public Licence (LGPL) version 2 or higher. See the file "LICENSE" for information on the terms & conditions for usage of this software, and a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES. 2. SOFTWARE DESCRIPTION PyGTS is a python package used to construct, manipulate, and perform computations on triangulated surfaces. It is a hand-crafted and "pythonic" binding for the GNU Triangulated Surface (GTS) Library. PyGTS lives on-line at http://pygts.sourceforge.net/ . 3. IMPORTANT FILES README - This file README.developers - Information for PyGTS developers/authors LICENSE - The software's license terms setup.py - The module setup script PKG-INFO - Python package info (auto-generated) src/* - PyGTS source files test/test.py - Unit tests for PyGTS doc/gts.html - Documentation for python module gts examples/polyhedrons.py - plots standard shapes examples/set_operations.py - union, difference, intersection examples/isosurface.py - function isosurfaces examples/plotgts.py - plots a gts file examples/seashell.gts - a sample gts file to use with plotgts.py 4. BUILD ENVIRONMENT PyGTS should, in principle, work with any python distribution with version 2.2 or greater, and on any unix-like operating system (including linux and Mac OS X). The possibility for use with Windows is unknown. PyGTS is known to work with the following python versions and platforms: python 2.3 - Mac OS X (10.4) python 2.5 - Debian Linux (Lenny), Mac OS X (10.4) To build PyGTS, you will need to be sure that Python.h is installed with your python distribution. For linux this often requires installing the python-dev or python2.5-dev (or other version, as appropriate) package. The setup.py script requires the following utility, which is used to locate C header files and libraries: pkg-config - http://pkg-config.freedesktop.org/wiki/ The following libraries must be installed: gts - http://gts.sourceforge.net/ glib-2.0 - http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/index.html PyGTS has been verified to work with GTS 0.7.6 and numpy 1.1.1. The following libraries are optional: numpy - http://numpy.scipy.org/ Some advanced features may be disabled if the optional libraries are not found. The following python package (and all of its dependencies) is required for the examples: mayavi2 - http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Mayavi/3.2.0 There are reports that at least one earlier version of mayavi2, v2.2, does not have the capabilities that PyGTS needs. Please note that this is still a very early release of PyGTS, and if better (or alternative) display options become known, they will be used instead (or in parallel). 5. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS Please help by reporting any difficulties you have installing PyGTS to the mailing lists found at http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=262159 To upgrade from version 0.2.0 or earlier, first remove any installed PyGTS modules (gts.py, _gts.so) from python's site-packages directory. Unpack the distribution by entering tar -zxvf pygts.XX.XX.XX.tar.gz on the command-line. Replace the XX's with the appropriate version numbers. To build PyGTS, cd into the distribution's directory and execute the following: python setup.py build Install the software (as root) by entering: python setup.py install To test your installation, cd into the test directory and execute: python test.py You may also want to run the example programs as a further test: cd examples python polyhedrons.py python set_operations.py python isosurface.py python plotgts.py seashell.gts 6. DOCUMENTATION The documentation/api is provided in the python module. To access it, type: 1) "pydoc gts" - under bash to obtain a 'man'-like help file 2) "pydoc -w gts" - under bash to write the file gts.html 3) "help(gts)" - at the python prompt, after importing gts A pre-compiled gts.html file is given in the doc/ directory.