SkoolKit requires Python 2.5, 2.6 or 2.7. (SkoolKit has not been tested with Python 3.x; it almost certainly will not work.) If you’re running Linux or one of the BSDs, you probably already have Python installed. If you’re running Windows, you can get Python here.
In addition to the stock Python distribution, it is strongly recommended that you install one of the following image-processing libraries:
Either one will do. gdmodule seems to be slower than PIL, but it creates smaller image files. gdmodule is available in Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE and Mandriva in the package python-gd; it is apparently not packaged for Fedora. It is also available in FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD in the package graphics/py-gd. PIL is available in Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mandriva and Fedora in the package python-imaging. It is also available in FreeBSD and NetBSD in the package graphics/py-imaging, and in OpenBSD in the package graphics/py-Imaging. Windows users will probably want to use PIL, since it has downloads readily available.
SkoolKit will use gdmodule in preference to PIL if it is available. If neither gdmodule nor PIL is available, SkoolKit will be unable to create image files.
SkoolKit can be used wherever the zip archive or tarball was unpacked - it does not need to be installed in any particular location. However, if you would like to install SkoolKit as a Python package, you can do so by using the supplied setup.py script. After installation, the command scripts included in SkoolKit can be run from anywhere, instead of just the directory in which the SkoolKit zip archive or tarball was unpacked.
To install SkoolKit as a Python package on Windows, open a command prompt, change to the directory where SkoolKit was unpacked, and run the following command:
> setup.py install
This should install the SkoolKit command scripts in C:\Python2X\Scripts (assuming you have installed Python in C:\Python2X), which means you can run them from anywhere (assuming you have added C:\Python2X\Scripts to the Path environment variable; see here for details).
To install SkoolKit as a Python package on Linux/*BSD, open a terminal window, change to the directory where SkoolKit was unpacked, and run the following command as root:
# ./setup.py install
This should install the SkoolKit command scripts in /usr/local/bin (or some other suitable location in your PATH), which means you can run them from anywhere.
Throughout this documentation, commands that must be entered in a terminal window (‘Command Prompt’ in Windows) are shown on a line beginning with a dollar sign ($), like this:
$ some-script.py some arguments
On Windows, and on Linux/*BSD if SkoolKit has been installed as a Python package (see above), the commands may be entered exactly as they are shown. On Linux/*BSD, a dot-slash (./) prefix should be added to some-script.py if it is being run from the current working directory.