pyprototypr

pyprototypr is a utility written in Python for designing and creating simple, regular, graphical outputs in PDF (or PNG/GIF) format via a script.

pyprototypr has been primarily created to handle the prototyping of cards, counters, tiles and boards for board games, but can be also used for creating any simple design that has regular or repetitive elements; typically a mix of graphics and text.

You do not need to know the Python language to be able to use pyprototypr but you do need Python installed on your machine!

Documentation

The online documentation for pyprototypr starts with the Table of Contents

If you're not familiar with any kind of programming or scripting, you should probably read some of the introductory sections, and especially the installation before proceeding...

Requirements

pyprototypr requires Python (version of 3.11 or higher) to be installed and running on your machine.

If this is not your current Python version, or Python is not installed on your machine, may want to use uv which is a cross-platform tool able to install both Python and pyprototypr.

Quick Start (for the impatient)

Assuming that Python 3.11 or higher is installed on your machine, you can then install pyprototypr via:

pip install pyprototypr

To check that pyprototypr is working, you can use one (or more) of the files from any of the various examples sub-directories.

As a quick test, make a copy of example1.py script from the examples/manual directory. To do so, open the example1.py link in your browser, click on the Raw button (near the top right), and then save the web page as a file into a local directory on your machine.

Open a command-line window (also known as a terminal or a console), change to the directory where you saved the above file and type:

python example1.py

and press the Enter key.

This script is very simple - it just contains these lines:

# `example1` script for pyprototypr
# Written by: Derek Hohls
# Created on: 29 February 2016
from pyprototypr import *
Create()
PageBreak()
Save()

and is designed to produce a single, blank, A4-sized page in a PDF file.

It should create an output file called example1.pdf, which will appear in the same directory as the script. You should be able to open and view this file using any PDF-capable program or application.

If this works, then download and try out other scripts from any of the examples sub-directories (note some examples may require additional files such as images, CSV files, or spreadsheets). You can download all examples as a ZIP file.

If it does not work, you may want to look in more detail at the installation guide.

Contributions

Please see the list of contributors.

Work-in-Progress

These features are not guaranteed to be implemented, but they are current / potential areas of work or development that have been identified.

• New shapes:
  • Diamond shape
  • Parallelogram shape
  • Wave shape
  • Cross shape
  • Pod shape
• Common objects:
  • Cube (Rhombus composite)
  • Domino (DotGrid inside Rectangle outline)
  • Die (6-sided with dots; 3D)
  • Picture Frame (Trapezoid composite)
• Hexagons: 18xx tile example (requires Arcs below!)
• Line:
  • end style
  • join style
• Polyline: define arcs along the path
• Arcs (pathways) inside a hexagon (in progress)
• Shortcut notation for styling of: area, line, text, etc.
• Track: layout shapes along a rectangle, circle or polygon (in progress)
• Stripes: interior "areas" for a Rectangle
• Rotation:
  • text along a line
  • shape labels (at centre of shape)
  • Polygon
  • Stadium
  • Trapezoid
  • Triangle
• Cards:
  • allow for card backs
• Color:
  • add support for CMYK

Planned/Potential Board Examples

• Abstract boards: Ludo, 9 Mens Morris, Wari
• Wargame board: Squad Leader with terrain features (vector and bitmap)
• Traveller board: show a fully-styled Star system (demo a custom Shape?)
• WarpWar board: show a fully-styled sector
• 18xx board: show a basic map with tracks, towns, cities and off-map areas

Acknowledgements

The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it. "Snow Crash", Neal Stephenson.

As always, with Python, you are building "on the shoulders of giants". In this case, the ReportLab PDF Toolkit provides all of the core infrastructure used to do the underlying graphics processing and PDF file creation; pyprototypr is effectively a highly customised wrapper to simplify common uses around its existing and extensive capabilities.

Additional libraries in use include:

• svglib https://pypi.org/project/svglib/ - support for drawing SVG images
• bgg-api https://pypi.org/project/bgg-api/ - support for access to the BoardGameGeek API
• xlrd https://pypi.org/project/xlrd/ - support for access to Excel .xls files
• openpyxl https://pypi.org/project/openpyxl/ - support for access to Excel files
• pymupdf https://pymupdf.io/ - support for exporting PDF to PNG images
• imageio https://pypi.org/project/imageio/- support for compiling PNGs into a GIF
• jinja https://jinja.palletsprojects.com - template logic with variables (for cards)

License

pyprototypr is licensed under the GNU General Public License.