Sikuli Guide

New in version 1.1.1.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

The Guide feature has been completely revised. The following original documentation might give an impression about the intention and the principally available features, but might not work as expected in 1.1.1+

For information about the API you currently have to look into the sources (Lib/guide/guide.py for Python and org.sikuli.guide.xxx for Java). The revision focused on the static features (annotation types), so the interactive features might not work as expected.

This feature has the state experimental, meaning it might change at any time without notice and without any guarantee to be fully backwards compatible.

New in version X1.0-rc2.

Sikuli Guide is an extension to Sikuli that provides a revolutionary way to create guided tours or tutorials for GUI applications. The revolutionary aspect is that the content of the tours or tutorials can be displayed right on the actual interface, rather than in a video or a series of screenshots on a web page. All this can be combined with guided user activities directly in the respective GUI applications using all the other Sikuli features.

Quick Start

First Example

In our first example, suppose we want to create a guided tour of this very documentation page you are currently reading. We want to bring your attention to the logo picture to the right. Using the functions provided by Sikuli Guide, we can write the following script to accomplish this:

1from guide import *
2text(, "This is Sikuli's logo")
3show(5)

When you run this script, Sikuli Guide will search for the logo’s image on the screen, highlight it, and display the text ‘’This is Sikuli’s logo’’ below the image, like the figure below:

../../_images/sikuli-logo-highlight.png

Again, this happens in the actual interface, rather than in a video or a screenshot. The logo image that is highlighted is the actual interface element users can click on.

Let’s explain the script line by line. The first line is an import statement that tells Sikuli to load the Sikuli Guide extension. The secod line uses the text(pattern, text) function to add text next to a given pattern, in this case, the logo image. Note that by default the text added is not displayed immediately, it is only internally added to the visual element. In the third line, we call show(secs) to explicitly tell Sikuli Guide to now display all registerd annotation elements (in this case only the text) for the duration specified by secs.

Below is a YouTube video of this example.

Adding Multiple Annotations

It is possible to add text or other annotations to multiple visual elements before calling show(secs) in order to show them on the screen at the same time.

1from guide import *
2text(, "This is Sikuli's logo")
3tooltip(,"Previous")
4tooltip(,"Next")
5tooltip(,"Index")
6show(5)

The script above uses the function tooltip(text) to add tooltips to three links in addition to the text annotation. The result of running this script is shown below:

../../_images/multiple-annotations.png

Rather than showing the annotations all at once, we can also show them one by one using separate show() statements. Below is an example where we cycle through the three links and show the tooltip of each link one at a time.

1from guide import *
2while True:
3        tooltip(,"Previous")
4        show(3)
5        tooltip(,"Next")
6        show(3)
7        tooltip(,"Index")
8        show(3)

The result of running this script is shown below (sorry, no animation):

../../_images/animated-tooltips.png

Adding Interaction

Another way to control the flow of a guided tour is to display a dialog box and let users click on a button to continue to the next part of the tour. Sikuli Guide provides a function dialog(message) to accomplish this easily. Below is an example using this function to create a two-part guided tour.

1from guide import *
2text(,"Use these to jump to other parts")
3dialog("Part 1: Navigation Links")
4show()
5text(,"Use this to go back to Home")
6dialog("Part 2: Logo")
7show()

The tour presented by the script above introduces the navigation links above and the Sikuli’s logo as a shortcut to go back to the documentation’s HOME page. The function call dialog("Part 1") indicates the tour will show a dialog that displays the message specified by the string argument (i.e., Part 1: Navigation Links). The following call to show() will actually display the dialog along with the text elements spcified earlier.

The figure below shows what happens after Line 3:

../../_images/step1.png

After users click on the Next button, the tour moves to the next part. The screen will look like below:

../../_images/step2.png

Making a Region clickable

You might use the feature clickable(PSRM), to make a region sensitive for clicks.

1from guide import *
2logo = find()
3text(logo, "To proceed click this red ...")
4clickable(logo)
5index = logo.above().right().find()
6text(index, "... or click this red")
7clickable(index)
8show()

The script waits until the user clicks one of the two highlighted areas.

../../_images/annotation-clickable.png

Function References

element: when used as a parameter, it can either be something that can be used with a find() (Pattern or string as image file name or just plain text), a Region or Match object or another Guide element.

All funtions return the created element, so later the layout can be changed by specific setters or they can be used as target elements for other elements

Static Annotations

guide.rectangle(element)

Add a rectangular overlay as frame on the specified element’s region.

Parameters:element – a suitable
guide.circle(element)

Add a circle around the specified target’s region.

Parameters:element – a pattern, string, region or match
guide.text(element, txt)

Add some text to one edge of the specified element

Parameters:
  • element – a suitabel element
  • txt – a string as text to display
guide.tooltip(element, txt)

Add a tooltip (small font in a light yellow box). same as text(), but with predefined layout. As usual for tooltips: the text should be a short oneliner

Parameters:
  • element – a suitabel element
  • txt – a string as text to display

Interactive Elements

guide.button(element, name)

A clickable button showing it’s name as the button text.

Parameters:name – a string as text to display, later used as reference to check how the button was used

Control

guide.show([seconds])

Show static and interactive components added so far for the specified amount of time.

Parameters:seconds – a decimal number as display duration in seconds

The default duration is 10 seconds. If interactive elements (either one or more clickable elements or a dialog box) were previously added, it waits until the user interacts with one of these elements. At this time all elements vanish and are discarded.