[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Oct 8, 9:19 am, goldtech <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> from win32com.shell import shell, shellcon >>> desktop = shell.SHGetFolderPath (0, shellcon.CSIDL_DESKTOP, 0, 0) >>> </code> >> Tim, >> >> How did you learn Win32com? >> >> Other than the O'Reilly book, I've never found a lot of >> documentation. >> >> Trying to browse COM in PythonWin is tough - there's tons of stuff in >> there. I've never been able to find the Win32com classes, methods, >> usage examples when I browse COM in PythonWin. >> >> For example where is, shell.SHGetFolderPath and shellcon.CSIDL_DESKTOP >> officially documented? >> >> Did you learn from using Visual C++ or VB? How did you learn this >> stuff? >> >> Thanks, >> Lee G. > > Pretty much the only place to learn stuff that's not in the PyWin32 > docs is on one of the MSDN sites. Yes, that can suck. Here's the > general page: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx > > You can google for them too to get direct links to the MSDN page. > > The ActiveState Python (AKA ActivePython) has an IDE that allows you > to browse the COM module. It also has a help file that allows you to > browse the PyWin32 docs locally. I think you can download that without > downloading ActivePython. > > Mike
FWIW, the pywin32 distribution itself also comes with a local .chm file. But aside from that, there have been several abortive attempts -- including by Mike & myself! -- to get some kind of online help going for pywin32, but nothing's really gained traction, and we've all got more interesting things to be doing... One point to bear in mind that, more or less, the pywin32 stuff just wraps the MS API really closely, mostly doing just enough of the messy plumbing to present the API "objects" as Python objects. That's to say: find out how to do it from a C++ or VB or Delphi tutorial and translating into Python often isn't hard. As it happens I've been using Windows APIs for a few years, so I have a bit of a head start. But I've answered quite a few questions on python-win32 by putting the subject line into Google, picking a likely-looking response and translating it into Python. In this case ("How to create a file on users XP desktop") the question was too broad and tended to throw up user-oriented answers. I tried a few permutations, including limiting the search to msdn.microsoft.com, none of which showed much on the first couple of pages. A search of the pywin32.chm files does point in the right direction, but the fact is that the shell functionality exposed by Windows which does this kind of stuff is non-intuitive. While I think everyone agrees that the Windows side of Python could benefit from more and better docs, the general answer to: How do I do X in Python under Windows? is: How do I X under Windows? TJG -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list