Is there a way to convert indentation in Python code to braces?

I am a totally blind programmer who would like to learn Python. Unfortunately the fact that code blocks are represented with different levels of indentation is a major stumbling block. I was wondering if there were any tools available that would allow me to write code using braces or some other code block delimiter and then convert that format into a properly indented representation that the Python interpreter could use?

Solution 1:

There's a solution to your problem that is distributed with python itself. pindent.py, it's located in the Tools\Scripts directory in a windows install (my path to it is C:\Python25\Tools\Scripts), it looks like you'd have to grab it from svn.python.org if you are running on Linux or OSX.

It adds comments when blocks are closed, or can properly indent code if comments are put in. Here's an example of the code outputted by pindent with the command:

pindent.py -c myfile.py

def foobar(a, b):
   if a == b:
       a = a+1
   elif a < b:
       b = b-1
       if b > a: a = a-1
       # end if
   else:
       print 'oops!'
   # end if
# end def foobar

Where the original myfile.py was:

def foobar(a, b):
   if a == b:
       a = a+1
   elif a < b:
       b = b-1
       if b > a: a = a-1
   else:
       print 'oops!'

You can also use pindent.py -r to insert the correct indentation based on comments (read the header of pindent.py for details), this should allow you to code in python without worrying about indentation.

For example, running pindent.py -r myfile.py will convert the following code in myfile.py into the same properly indented (and also commented) code as produced by the pindent.py -c example above:

def foobar(a, b):
if a == b:
a = a+1
elif a < b:
b = b-1
if b > a: a = a-1
# end if
else:
print 'oops!'
# end if
# end def foobar

I'd be interested to learn what solution you end up using, if you require any further assistance, please comment on this post and I'll try to help.

Solution 2:

I personally doubt that there currently is at the moment, as a lot of the Python afficionados love the fact that Python is this way, whitespace delimited.

I've never actually thought about that as an accessibility issue however. Maybe it's something to put forward as a bug report to Python?

I'd assume that you use a screen reader here however for the output? So the tabs would seem "invisible" to you? With a Braille output, it might be easier to read, but I can understand exactly how confusing this could be.

In fact, this is very interesting to me. I wish that I knew enough to be able to write an app that will do this for you.

I think it's definately something that I'll put in a bug report for, unless you've already done so yourself, or want to.

Edit: Also, as noted by John Millikin There is also PyBraces Which might be a viable solution to you, and may be possible to be hacked together dependant on your coding skills to be exactly what you need (and I hope that if that's the case, you release it out for others like yourself to use)

Edit 2: I've just reported this to the python bug tracker

Solution 3:

Although I am not blind, I have heard good things about Emacspeak. They've had a Python mode since their 8.0 release in 1998 (they seem to be up to release 28.0!). Definitely worth checking out.

Solution 4:

You should be able to configure your editor to speak the tabs and spaces -- I know it's possible to display whitespace in most editors, so there must be an accessibility option somewhere to speak them.

Failing that, there is pybraces, which was written as a practical joke but might actually be useful to you with a bit of work.

Solution 5:

If you're on Windows, I strongly recommend you take a look at EdSharp from: http://empowermentzone.com/EdSharp.htm It supports all of the leading Windows screenreaders, it can be configured to speak the indentation levels of code, or it has a built in utility called PyBrace that can convert to and from braces syntax if you want to do that instead, and it supports all kinds of other features programmers have come to expect in our text editors. I've been using it for years, for everything from PHP to JavaScript to HTML to Python, and I love it.