Getting RLE in Golly

[Nathaniel]

I'm probably just being dense here or somehow completely missing a command in the documentation, but I want to be able to manipulate a pattern's RLE string in a Golly Python script, and I can't seem to find a way to retrieve the current pattern's RLE string in any less of a roundabout way than calling golly.store() to save the RLE string as a file on the harddrive, and then having Python read in the RLE string from that file. Thoughts?

[calcyman]

Can you copy it into the clipboard and retrieve it from there?

[Nathaniel]

Can you copy it into the clipboard and retrieve it from there?

There seems to be a Python library that lets you retrieve clipboard data on Windows machines, but I haven't come across a cross-platform way of doing it.

[Andrew]

What you're doing is probably the best (only?) way in 2.0. In 2.1 Dave Greene has added a getclipstr() command which makes it very easy:

import golly as g
g.select(g.getrect())
g.copy()
rle = g.getclipstr()

There's also a setclipstr(string) command for putting arbitrary text into the clipboard. Golly 2.1b4 should be available in a couple of days.

[Nathaniel]

What you're doing is probably the best (only?) way in 2.0. In 2.1 Dave Greene has added a getclipstr() command which makes it very easy:

import golly as g
g.select(g.getrect())
g.copy()
rle = g.getclipstr()

There's also a setclipstr(string) command for putting arbitrary text into the clipboard. Golly 2.1b4 should be available in a couple of days.

Awesome, thanks Andrew. As if I needed another reason to want 2.1

Also (this is more of a curiosity than anything) is there a way in a script to determine which version of Golly the user is running?

[Andrew]

Also (this is more of a curiosity than anything) is there a way in a script to determine which version of Golly the user is running?

You can do things like this:

Code: Select all

import golly as g
try:
   rle = g.getclipstr()
   # if we get here then we're using Golly 2.1 or later
   ...
except:
   # we're using Golly 2.0 or older
   ...