[JOSS] GUI issues on linux

[kandersolar]

I ran into two issues with BifacialSimu_src/GUI.py on linux. The first is that the filepaths for logos, help text, configuration files, etc use hardcoded backslashes, but linux (and Mac OS) use forward slashes, and so I get errors like this:

TclError: couldn't open "/home/kevin/projects/BifacialSimu/BifacialSimu_src\Lib\Button_Images\Button-Info-icon.png": no such file or directory

and

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/kevin/projects/BifacialSimu/BifacialSimu_src\\Lib\\input_albedo\\Albedo.json'

Editing GUI.py to use forward slashes gets it working for me, but of course that might break on Windows. To be cross platform you can use os.path.join or the pathlib standard library (new in python 3.4).

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The second issue is that tkinter doesn't like the .ico files even after fixing the filepath. For example I get this:

_tkinter.TclError: bitmap "/home/kevin/projects/BifacialSimu/BifacialSimu_src/Lib/Button_Images/info_logo.ico" not defined

But os.path.exists confirms the file is there, so it must be some incompatibility that I don't understand. Anyway this prevents some things from working, for example the button_SP() window is empty until I comment out the pop_SP.iconbitmap(...) line. I did not try to find a better fix since I assume omitting the icons will not break any functionality.

Cross-reference: openjournals/joss-reviews#4443

[EwaGomez]

With the newest version #30 BifacialSimu now also works on Linux.