I used “Add to Home Screen” to put a link to my app on my iPad. If I use the link, it starts up the app fine; if I switch to something else, and then hit the link again, it starts up a second (or third, etc.) instance of my app on top of the previous instance.

If I use the X in the upper left corner to close the latest instance, the older instance is underneath, still working.

How can I tell whether or not my app is already running, and not open a new instance but rather just let the existing instance display?

I’ve looked at the list from globals() and don’t see anything obvious there.

Thanks. Both of these work great.

In Pythonista my app resides in its own folder ("Book Notes"). While doing the initial testing, of course, the initial working directory when running the app was always the same, since I was always starting up from the same .py file.

Now that I’ve saved my app to the home screen, it seems to sometimes start up with the initial working directory set to the folder the app’s main file is in; and sometimes with the initial working directory set to Pythonista’s Documents folder (Pythonista3/Documents).

So what I do currently is check to see if the current working directory ends in "/Book Notes", and if it does not, using os.chdir to change into "/Book Notes".

Is there something else I should be doing to ensure a consistent initial working directory?

I have the following text in a document I often view in Editorial:

L’esprit has other meanings as well, but, of course, so does *mind*—and, for that matter, in English at least, so does *brain*.

Editorial emphases everything from the beginning of “mind” to the end of “brain”. I’m guessing that it is the lack of what Editorial sees as an approved word-break character, causing it to ignore the asterisk after “mind”. A space, comma, or period, for example, will cause the second asterisk to end italicization. But a bracket, brace, or parenthesis does not. (Nor am I sure that they should, since I don’t know what they would mean without a space in front of them.)

I notice that the markdown interpreter in the preview as I type this post recognizes an asterisk followed by a Chicago em dash as a valid place to end italicization:

L’esprit has other meanings as well, but, of course, so does mind—and, for that matter, in English at least, so does brain.

Thank you! That was the issue. For future reference, here is the code that works:

from scene import *
import photos

class MyScene(Scene):
    def __init__(self, mapimage):
        self.mapimage = mapimage.convert('RGBA')
        super(MyScene, self).__init__()

    def setup(self):
        self.mapimage = load_pil_image(self.mapimage)

    def draw(self):
        background(1, 1, .5)
        image(self.mapimage, 0, 0)
    
        # Draw a red circle for every finger that touches the screen:
        fill(1, 0, 0)
        for touch in self.touches.values():
            ellipse(touch.location.x - 50, touch.location.y - 50, 100, 100)
    
mapimage = photos.pick_image(show_albums=True)
if mapimage:
    scene = MyScene(mapimage)
    run(scene, frame_interval=1)
else:
    print 'Canceled or invalid image.'

Yes, mapimage.show() displays it in the console. I made this change to test it:

if mapimage:
    scene = MyScene(mapimage)
    run(scene, frame_interval=1)
    mapimage2 = mapimage.convert('RGBA')
    mapimage.show()
    mapimage2.show()
else:
    print 'Canceled or invalid image.'

I tried this on all of the images I'd been using for testing, and in each case, I saw the image twice in the console after hitting the "x" in the upper right of the scene. But it still displays just a white rectangle (surrounded by yellow) in the scene (which I can move red dots around on).

Are you sure you didn’t make any other changes to get it to work? I verified before adding the super() call that I was able to drag red dots across the screen; and after adding super() I still see only a white rectangle in the lower-left where the image ought to be. (Dragging red dots continues to work.)

I’m playing around with displaying a photo from the photo library in a very simple script; however, I’m doing something wrong: where the image should be, it displays white in the shape that the image ought to be:

from scene import *
import photos

class MyScene(Scene):   
    def __init__(self, mapimage):
        mapimage2 = mapimage.convert('RGBA')
        self.mapimage = load_pil_image(mapimage2)

    def draw(self):
        # This will be called for every frame
        background(1, 1, .5)
        fill(1, 0, 0)
        
        image(self.mapimage, 0, 0)

        # Draw a red circle for every finger that touches the screen:
        for touch in self.touches.values():
            ellipse(touch.location.x - 50, touch.location.y - 50, 100, 100)
    
mapimage = photos.pick_image(show_albums=True)
if mapimage:
    scene = MyScene(mapimage)
    run(scene, frame_interval=1)
else:
    print 'Canceled or invalid image.'

Touching the screen drags one or more red circles around, but the image doesn’t appear.

If you need a portable keyboard, I like the iWerkz folding keyboard. It takes a little getting used to if you’re a touch-typist due to the gap where the fold is, but it is very easy to carry around and reasonably solid for what it is.

If your need isn’t portable, I absolutely love the Logitech K760. It’s solar-powered, and has three bluetooth identifiers, chosen by three buttons up top. So, right now I’m typing on my iMac using it; if I take it onto the porch, I hit the second button and it it pairs with my iPad; occasionally I use it with my iPhone by hitting the third button. As far as the Mac, iPad, and iPhone are concerned, it’s three different keyboards, so they never conflict when one device happens to be near another device when I turn the keyboard on.

(I review these two keyboards on my blog.)

If you’re basically looking for a Markdown editor and workflows, I use iA Writer (for Markdown) and ThisService (for creating text-based services). Automator comes closer to the ease of creating service workflows, of course.