Things
Copyright (C) 2009 Donn.C.Ingle
donn.ingle@gmail.com

Things comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
see the COPYING file.  This is free software, and you are welcome
to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the COPYING file 
for details.

README
======

The best demos are 'clouds' and 'slider'. Run them as:
python clouds.thingum.py
python slider.thingum.py

DEPS
====

You may require some extra software:
1. pyparsing [Now included in Things] (http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/message/view/home/5698048)
2. python-cairo (http://cairographics.org/pycairo/)
3. python-librsvg (in Gnome-Desktop) (http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gnome-python-desktop/GNOME_PYTHON_DESKTOP_2_21_3/COPYING?revision=477&view=markup&pathrev=477)
4. python-GTK 
5. python-pango
6. Python < 3.x [Written with Python 2.5]

INSTALLATION
============

Right now there is none. You just drop it somewhere and run the demos.

PLEASE HELP
===========

Things is cool, but it's slow. It's also not properly time-based for the animation. It simply goes "hell for leather" at Python warp-speed which is pretty pathetic really. So, the main recursive and stack loops need to become something much faster. Perhaps a Things library can be writte in C or C++ to replace this bag of scruffy code.

Another idea is to start an IDE of some kind. A canvas per Thing which lets you draw into SVG format. A timeline control for the frames. That sort of thing. It would then generate the Python code (and repo) needed to run that animation. Perhaps it could even go-on to be a web-browser plugin from there. Who knows?

I also need help with:
1. The FollowThing -- my path algorithm is broken.
2. I'd like to do a path-tween Thing (shape changer) somehow. It would move nodes from one path to another path; thus changing shape.


Donn Ingle
South-South West Cape someplace
May 2009
