Lost in a sea of documentation...can you point me in the right direction?

[MooMaster]

I'm a complete beginner in Python, but I've been fooling around with
Java for a couple years, so I have decent programming experience...
Anyway, I was sitting around playing with Python, when I thought to
myself: "I know! I'd like to write a program that I can pass a path to
(say: My Pictures) and at a timer interval will pick a picture from it
and set my wallpaper to that" So I started reading about os, threads,
and the path for the special folders in the archives and in the Python
docs and I'm kind of lost because there aren't many concrete examples
in the documentation. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to
where I might find info that can help me write this?

Thanks!

 

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

MooMaster a écrit :
(snip)

I'd like to write a program that I can pass a path to
(say: My Pictures) and at a timer interval will pick a picture from it
and set my wallpaper to that" So I started reading about os, threads,
and the path for the special folders

What's a "special folder" ???

in the archives and in the Python
docs and I'm kind of lost because there aren't many concrete examples
in the documentation. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to
where I might find info that can help me write this?

There are 2 problems to solve:
1/ change the 'wallpaper'
2/ run as a background task (a 'service' on Win32, a 'daemon' on unix-likes)

The 2nd one is already solved by your os (use Windows' task scheduler or
*n*x's cron).

So the main thing you have to do is find out how to 'change the
wallpaper' on *your* system. For this, you first have to search in your
system's API.

 

[Andrew Durdin]

So I started reading about os, threads,
and the path for the special folders in the archives and in the Python
docs and I'm kind of lost because there aren't many concrete examples
in the documentation. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to
where I might find info that can help me write this?

For changing the wallpaper, and getting the path to the "My Pictures"
folder, you'll need to use Win32 API functions:
SHGetSpecialFolderPath() and SystemParametersInfo().

To call these, you'll need to use either the Python Win32 extensions
or some other module for calling functions in a .dll.

 

[Simon Brunning]

There are 2 problems to solve:
1/ change the 'wallpaper'
2/ run as a background task (a 'service' on Win32, a 'daemon' on unix-likes)

The 2nd one is already solved by your os (use Windows' task scheduler or
*n*x's cron).

I was playing about with the 1st problem a couple of years ago:
http://www.brunningonline.net/simon/blog/archives/winDesktop.py.html