PrintHere’s a brief explanation of the main parts of PyScripter. Before you begin reading, be sure to have PyScripter open, so you can follow along.
When PyScripter opens, you’ll see a large text editor in the right side of the window. We'll come back to this part of the PyScripter interface in a moment. For now, focus on the pane in the bottom called the Python Interpreter. If this window is not open, and not listed as a tab along the bottom, you can open it by going to the top menu and selecting View> IDE Windows> then select Python Interpreter. This console is much like the Python interactive window we saw earlier in the lesson. You can type a line of Python at the In >>> prompt, and it will immediately execute and print the result if there is a printable result. This console can be a good place to practice with Python in this course, and whenever you see some Python code next to the In >>> prompt in the lesson materials, this means you can type it in the console to follow along.
We can experiment here by typing "import arcpy" to import arcpy or running a print statement.
>>> import arcpy
>>> print ("Hello World")
Hello world
You might have noticed while typing in that second example a useful function of the Python Interpreter - code completion. This is where PyScripter, like Pro's Python window, is smart enough to recognize that you're entering a function name, and it provides you with the information about the parameters that function takes. If you missed it the first time, enter print(in the IPython window and wait for a second (or less) and the print function's parameters will appear. This also works for arcpy functions (or those from any library that you import). Try it out with arcpy.Buffer_analysis.
Now let's return to the right side of the window, the Editor pane. It will contain a blank script file by default (module1.py). I say it's a blank script file, because while there is text in the file, that text is delimited by special characters that cause it to be ignored when the script is executed We'll discuss these special characters further later, but for now, it's sufficient to note that PyScripter automatically inserts the character encoding of the file, the time it was created, and the login name of the user running PyScripter. You can add the actual Python statements that you'd like to be executed beneath these bits of documentation. (You can also remove the function and if statement along with the documentation, if you like.)
Among the nice features of PyScripter's editor (and other Python IDEs) is its color coding of different Python language constructs. Spacing and indentation, which are important in Python, are also easy to keep track of in this interface. Lastly, note that the Editor pane is a tabbed environment; additional script files can be loaded using File > New or File > Open.
Above the Editor pane, a number of toolbars are visible by default. The File, Run, and Debug toolbars provide access to many commonly used operations through a set of buttons. The File toolbar contains tools for loading, running, and saving scripts. Finally, the Debug toolbar contains tools for carefully reviewing your code line-by-line to help you detect errors. The Debugging toolbar is extremely valuable to you as a programmer, and you’ll learn how to use it later in this course. This toolbar is one of the main reasons to use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) instead of writing your code in a simple text editor like Notepad.