oh, there is indeed no progress callback on saveImage(..)

Doing some googling on 'progress' and 'ffmpeg' does not results in a clear solution.

DrawBot has a small wrapper around ffmpeg to generate movies: see https://github.com/typemytype/drawbot/blob/master/drawBot/context/tools/mp4Tools.py

there are plenty of options to have some sort of process bar that gets updated for each frame:

see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3173320/text-progress-bar-in-the-console#

If this doesn't makes sense I can narrow it down to an simpler example!

good luck!

you can use a clipPath(path) to clip a drawing inside a given bezierPath: see http://www.drawbot.com/content/shapes/drawingPath.html#drawBot.clipPath

you could save the result to disk and open the result in an specified app with:

from drawBot import *

fill(random(), random(), random())
rect(10, 10, 100, 100)

path = "~/Desktop/test.pdf"
saveImage("~/Desktop/test.pdf")

import os
os.system(f"open --background -a Preview {path}")

The tutorial is awesome! Really cool to see the usage of DrawBot from the perspective of an animator!

see also
http://pythonfordesigners.com/how-to-keep-doing-things-until-you-need-to/
http://robofont.com/documentation/building-tools/python/collections-loops/#while-loops

You just have to use the proper unicode and the font should of course support it:

# a collection of space unicodes
spaces = [
    (0x0020, "normal space"),    
    (0x2000, "en space"),
    (0x2001, "em space"),
    (0x2008, "hair space"),
    (0x2009, "thin space"),
    (0x200B, "zero width space"),    
]

y = 20
fontSize(60)
# start loop over all spaces
for space, name in spaces:
    # draw the space as text
    # using the py3 f-string formatting!!!
    text(f"draw{chr(space)}bot\t\t({name})", (10, y))    
    y += 100

use language('nl') to switch between languages, as DrawBot is typesetting environment...

font('/Users/frederik/Downloads/source-code-pro-2.030R-ro-1.050R-it/OTF/SourceCodePro-Regular.otf')

char = "б"

fontSize(200)
text(char, (10, 100))

language("sr")
text(char, (150, 100))

The 'preview' view only shows the pdf. The animation is generated from the pdf where pages are frames.

You can preview/open the animation at the end of your script with:

# draw something

path = "path/to/my/animation.gir"
saveImage(path)

# open the animation
import os
os.system(f"open -a Safari {path}")