Multi-Screen Applications

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Overview

All of the tools needed for a multiscreen application have been provided in this manual already: tools to import multiple screens, tools to run multiple screens, tools to hide and show screens. These have all been compiled together into this section for ease of reference.

Designing the secondary screen:

The process to design the secondary screen is identical to designing the main screen - except under GUI Properties, the dropdown for 'Window Hierarchy' must be set to 'Child Window'

Running your second screen.

Import: Just as you imported your first GUI, you can import the second one the same way.

from gui import gui
from secondScreen import secondScreen

Do so for all GUI files

Run: Call the run() method on the main screen only. The run statement must be the final line of the file.

gui.run()

In total, the final parent script would look like this

from gui import gui

from secondScreen import secondScreen

# all other code goes here

gui.run()

Hiding and showing each screen.

Call the hide() and show() methods on each screen to open and close them.

Popups

At the moment, both screens would open simultaneously. To create windows that appear and disappear at will - otherwise known as a popup - the hide/show functions must be used. The easiest way to implement this is to use a button. Create a button in GUI Pie that runs an event. For the sake of this example, this will be called "runPopup"

def runPopup(name):

secondScreen.show()

Then create a button on the second screen to close it. For this example, the function attached to that button will be called "close"

def close(name):

secondScreen.hide()

Adding these all together forms

from gui import *

from secondScreen import *

def close(name):

secondScreen.hide()

def runPopup(name):

secondScreen.show()

# add all other code here

secondScreen.hide()

gui.run()

Accessing elements from screens

Accessing elements works the same way as it would with a single screen. Use the name of the screen, followed by .<widgetName>. This allows you to access elements from any screen of choice. E.g you could access two elements both named Label1, one with gui.Label1, and one with secondScreen.Label1

Summary

To add a second screen, import it with the import statement at the top. There is no need to call the run method on any secondary screen. To manipulate it, use the hide and show functions.