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Code Project: monitor /proc with Python and Clutter

If you already read our beginner's guide to the Clutter toolkit and wished it were available in something other than C, then good news: we're putting together a tutorial series covering PyClutter, the Python binding to Clutter, which merges all the power and beauty of the Clutter toolkit with the simplicity and brevity of Python.

So, let's start with a simple project to get things going: you're going to produce a network monitor that monitors data transfer and displays it all on the screen using Clutter. It's nice and easy, but we're going to be adding more involved PyClutter tutorials in the coming months, so you should get started while the learning curve is shallow!

The first thing you need to get to grips with in Clutter is the basic terminology. Unlike other GUI toolkits, which usually define objects like windows or panel, Clutter refers to the visual area as a 'stage'. To continue the analogy, objects that appear on (or actually, in, but it sounds weird to say it) the stage are called 'actors'. It makes more sense when you start coding it, and the names don't seem so strange after a while. The thing about the actors is that they have more properties than a standard widget because they actually exist in a 3D environment, rather than a 2D one.

What should I care about Clutter?

Clutter is a GPL graphics and GUI library that was originally developed by the OpenedHand team. It was later sold to Intel, which is committed to further development and deployment.

The great thing about Clutter is that it's a simple, fast and powerful way to deliver 3D or 2D graphics on a number of platforms. The back-end is essentially OpenGL, but by using the Clutter library developers can take advantage of a fast, efficient and friendly way to develop graphically rich apps without messing around with more technical aspects of the OpenGL libraries.

Clutter also forms an integral part of Moblin, the latest attempt to deliver a lightweight but powerful graphical version of Linux to run on mobile devices. Moblin is primarily aimed at Intel Atom based devices, although it will run on other hardware.

When you're done, click in the Close gadget on the window that opened. I know it didn't do anything amazing, but it does have the potential to! Let's take a look at what just happened. The first line obviously loaded the Clutter module. In turn, Clutter opens a few more modules itself - back-end stuff that links into display libraries to be able to put things on the screen. Next up we created a stage object. the stage is like a viewport - an area where your actor objects can play.

It's a bit dark in here... could be the promising start of a 3D
adventure game, perhaps. Or your first Clutter effort!

Setting the attributes is as simple as calling some methods for the stage class, in this case a size and a colour. The parameters for the size method are x and y dimensions, and the colour is taken from the clutter.Color object (which takes values for RGB and alpha). As with other GUI toolkits, we should cause the object to be shown before any of it is drawn on the screen, which is what the final command does.