Prevue™ Quick Start

✨ Introducing Prevue™

Prevue™ will draw an innovative flowchart that hugs your Python code. This flowchart lets you see the flow of control within your script. An SVG image file is created by Prevue™ for this purpose. The image file can be seen in a browser or document viewer.

✨ Prevue™ Quick Start

1. Visit: https://github.com/gezmanick/Prevue

2. Click the green [ <> Code ] button

3. Click on Download ZIP at bottom of drop-down menu

4. Save and extract the ZIP file:
• Windows: right-click → Extract All…
• macOS: double-click the ZIP
• Linux: download Prevue-main.zip

5. Further Terminal commands for Linux:
cd ~/Downloads
mv Prevue-main.zip ~/prevue.zip
cd ~
unzip prevue.zip
cd prevue
ls -l

6. Among other files in folder `prevue` you will find:
• pv.py – the `main` Prevue™ program
• pvi.py – a module that pv imports
• prevue_documentation.html and supporting files

7. Install svgwrite via this Terminal command:

pip install svgwrite

8. Run Prevue™ from the extracted folder, for example:

python3 pv.py sort_fcns.py

✨ Extra Steps For A Better Way To Run Prevue™

9. Do steps 1 to 6 in the Quick Start (see above)

10. If you don't have a folder named bin in your home
folder, then create it via 2 Terminal commands:

cd ~
mkdir bin

11. Copy two Prevue™ files to bin via 3 Terminal commands:

cd ~/bin
cp /path/to/prevue/pv .
cp /path/to/prevue/pvi.py .

12. Run Prevue™ from within any folder that contains sort_fcns.py:

pv sort_fcns.py

✨ Test Prevue™

13. Step 12 will create a file named sort_fcns.py.svg
To check that Prevue™ is working, execute the following
Terminal `compare` command:

cmp sort_fcns.py.svg sort_fcns.svg

If no output is generated, it means that the two
files are identical.

✨ To See Image Files

14. Both .svg and .pdf image files can be viewed on most browsers
including Chrome, Chromium, Firefox and Brave.

✨ Why Prevue™ Is Cool

• It draws flow diagrams to enhance Python code
• Works offline, with no dependencies beyond svgwrite
• Useful for teaching, debugging, and documentation
• Offers powerful benefits with an easy learning curve
• Can make general-purpose flowcharts not just Python
• Can be used as a flow-chart framework for writing
better pseudo-code in any programming language

✨ To Learn More

Read the unzipped README.txt and
prevue_documentation.html files.

✨ Contact / Feedback

r.e.hilburger@gmail.com