So I've been away for a while. Well not really, I'm on FA pretty much every day, I just haven't had anything to post. I wanted to share with you all, the cool new thing I've been doing.

So this is a mock-up of a program I'm working on. I made this before I started programming anything, it was just to help me visualize my idea and show others what I wanted to do. If the text doesn't make a lot of sense, well it shouldn't, it's mostly a bunch of jargon. It's stuff that I have to write down for my job.

So I've started a new job recently, it's pretty boring stuff so I wont go into it, but I noticed that I was writing down a lot of the same stuff and it was (and still is) very tiring to do, also if I had to go back and add something to a previous entry it was hard to write everything clearly with the little space left on my pad of paper. I figured I could automate most of it by making a little program to run on a cheap, little hand-held computer (that's also why my mock-up is so small). As you can see on the right, I've got a bunch of buttons that will automatically enter text when I press them (that's why PNL is lit up in green) Those buttons will be able to handle the most common words I've been having to write with just the press of a button, while I can still go in and type the less common things myself.

It's been a really fun challenge to make this thing, I've dabbled with programming, but I've never "really" made anything before, at least not a proper program like this. I definitely got in over my head and I've had to google everything. I'd have to say, the hardest part was trying to figure out how to even start. (I'd recommend NOT trying to make a graphical user interface on your first program) I had a blank canvas and had to do a lot of googling before I found my first step into making my idea a reality. Once I got started though and learned more about programming I started working in chunks.

The first step ended up being making a screen the size I needed it to be. Then I had to figure out a way to make the background the twelve buttons appeared on, but I also couldn't just make a black rectangle in photoshop, because if I wanted to be able to resize my window, then the picture would look ugly if I scaled it up too large. So I used to program to make the rectangle and told it what size to be and where it would appear depending on the size of the window. Then I had to rinse and repeat for the twelve buttons.

Once I got the buttons in place, the next step was to make them highlight when you mouse over them, not too hard, then I made the buttons turn dark when clicked and also made them function. (Only the save and open buttons still don't work) After I got the buttons working I added pages so I could have 8 more custom buttons to work with (that's what the 1/2 button is, it selects the page and I can have virtually unlimited pages just by changing a couple lines of code)

Okay good, now the buttons work, so what's left? Well two things, the text editor that you see on the left side and making the window actually resizable so I can make it fit on any sized screen. At the moment I can change the size of the screen and the user interface scales accordingly, but only if I alter the code itself. I want to be able to make the window any size I want by dragging the edges of it like any normal program you use on your computer today. Boy was that hard to figure out, it took me a couple days before I could get it working, I even thought about giving up on it a couple times, looking for other compromises that might work. But I did it and I was so proud.

Aside from the save and open buttons (which should be easy to get working) the only thing left to do is make the text editor. This is where I'm stuck right now. After all this work I've done, I'm stuck. There is a great text editor module for the code I'm using, but the problem is that it doesn't really like integrating with the thing I'm using to make pretty much everything else work. So, unless I can find a better way pretty soon, I'm going to have to make it all from scratch. I have found one that's already been made, but integrating it into my program is still going to be rough.

Whew, that was a lot, but that's what I'm currently up to. If you guys would like, I could post a picture of my current progress, but there's no real need, it's almost identical to my original mock-up (I'm so proud of myself for managing to stay so close to my original idea) It's been so much work, but I've enjoyed nearly all of it, every problem has been a blast to solve and I've been learning a lot along the way.

For those curious I'm using Python 3.5 and the module Pygame to make all this. Let me know any thoughts you might have and if you can help me, please send me all your wisdom, I desperately need it! XD

I also have to add: A common phrase you hear is programs only do what you tell them to do, they never do what you don't tell them to do. The problem with me is that for the most part I don't know what I'm doing, so on top of me telling them what to do, I don't know what a lot of the stuff I'm writing even does! I've really tried to understand, but there are still some things that aren't clear to me at all. So it's like trying to talk in a forgien language, but with really bad grammar and you don't know why it's bad :p