On Sun, Aug 02, 2026 at 05:02:46AM +0000, The Traveller Mailing List wrote:
>
> ============================================================
>
> I'm running Win11 Home on my laptop.
>
> What do I need to do to get this up & running.
>
> TIA,
>
> p.s. forgive my cluelessness!  ;-)
>

Right now I'm not distributing it because it really isn't ready. However, my question is
pertainent to you because my entire reason for trying to make the program work on Windows is
to be able to distribute Windows `.exe` executables that can run directly. My goal is to set
things up so you could download the program from the internet and run it, assuming you can
trust me. I'll be honest that I'm not going to invest in code signing programs for
Microsoft, or Apple unless they are uber cheap.

## Overall

My program is written in pure python. It's designed to run out of a python virtual
environment. It should work with any python from 3.9 to current. I'm testing mostly on
python 3.11. No promises but I'd like to:

 * Release it as both binary packages, and as source code.

 * Three kinds of binary packages will be available:

     - An x86 Mac Application bundle compatible with OS X 10.15.x Catalina or later.
	 - An Arm Mac Application bundle compatible with MacOS Sequoia or later.
	 - An x86 Windows Executable built on Windows 10.

  * Full python source code will also be distributed as a `.tar.gz` file.

The Application bundles and Windows Executables will be self contained. If you want to run
it from source, you need Python 3.11 or later installed on your machine you will also need
to install Tkinter and Python's json libraries although I think that Json is stock
now. You'll need to be comfortable with python to the point of being able to use virtual
environments as my program runs out of a venv.

## Details

My program is a [Tkinter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tkinter) based GUI program for
setting the options on CT Book 5 style ships. Right now you can control all the weapons that
you could put on a starship and it does the basic calculations. It's not that good at
validating the design and the user interface certainly has a few warts. For example if you
specify a 15000 dton hull, you imply at least a Model 4 computer. My program doesn't
enforce this.

## Publishing:

When I publish it, it will be on my github.

### Architecture

I'm a Unix guy so my program is written in two pieces:

  * A Python library for describing HG starships by adding elements to a class. The ship is
    the _"container class"_ and the Jump drive, Power plant, Computer and all else are
    modules withing the ship. To maintain exclusivity every module type has a slot where it
    _"plugs in"_to the ship. So, Fusion Guns, Plasma guns, both plug into the Energy weapons
    slot. Beam and Pulse lasers, the same. The modules tightly follow the USP format in Book
    5 and there are pseudo Modules where needed for such things as crew, fuel tanks. The
    library architechture lets me reduce the ship to consumers and providers. Each module
    either provides or consumes resources: space, energy points, crew, etc. Hardpoints
    should be on this list but aren't.

  * A Tkinter GUI that wrappers the library and provides controls for the user to manipulate
    the ship design. The GUI can read a ship from a file, it's stored as JSON, and write a
    JSON description of a ship to a file. It currently provides the USP of the ship as well
    as it's design parameters in human readable text format on the computer's clipboard.

The library is written with later projects in mind. For example, there are several websites
that let you track maritime ship on the web. Traveller makes this somewhat useless,
causality and all that, but I'm thinking along those lines.

-- Chris

--
Chris

      __o          "All I was trying to do was get home from work."
    _`\<,_           -Rosa Parks
___(*)/_(*)____.___o____..___..o...________ooO..._____________________
Christopher Sean Hilton                    [chris/at/vindaloo/dot/com]