Python glutCreateWindow error 'wrong type'

Question

I'm trying to create a window with glut in python and have the following code:

glutInit()
    glutInitWindowSize(windowWidth, windowHeight)
    glutInitWindowPosition(int(centreX - windowWidth/2), int(centreY - windowHeight/2))
    glutCreateWindow("MyWindow")
    glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_SINGLE | GLUT_RGB | GLUT_DEPTH)
    glutDisplayFunc(displayFun)
    glutIdleFunc(animateFun)
    glutKeyboardFunc(keyboardFun)
    glutPassiveMotionFunc(mouseFun)

    glutReshapeFunc(reshapeFun)
    initFun()
    #loadTextures()
    glutMainLoop()

I get an error on the 'glutCreateWindow' line saying this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "F:\MyProject\main.py", line 301, in <module>
    glutCreateWindow("MyWindow")
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\OpenGL\GLUT\special.py", line 73, in glutCreateWindow
    return __glutCreateWindowWithExit(title, _exitfunc)
ctypes.ArgumentError: argument 1: <class 'TypeError'>: wrong type

the documentation on this function specifies

int glutCreateWindow(char *name);

Answer 1

I just encountered exactly the same problem and found this blog entry:

http://codeyarns.com/2012/04/27/pyopengl-glut-ctypes-error/

Basically you need to specify that you are passing byte data rather than a string using b'Window Title'

Answer 2

Apart from add a b before the string:

b"MyWindow"

You can also convert the string to ascii bytes with this:

bytes("MyWindow","ascii")

---

For more details, you could refer to these links:

PyOpenGL GLUT ctypes error

ctypes.ArgumentError with file_reader on Python 3

Answer 3

def glutCreateWindow(title):
    """Create window with given title

    This is the Win32-specific version that handles
    registration of an exit-function handler 
    """
    return __glutCreateWindowWithExit(title.encode(), _exitfunc)

To solve the issue finally, you need to change lib/site-packages/OpenGL/GLUT/special.py file's content like this, or like this:

def glutCreateWindow(title):
    """Create window with given title

    This is the Win32-specific version that handles
    registration of an exit-function handler 
    """
    return __glutCreateWindowWithExit(bytes(title,"ascii"), _exitfunc)

Answer 4

on the Windows 7 64-bit with intel core duo

installed : python-3.4.0.amd64.exe

pip install image
pip install numpy

downloaded wheel pack from : http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#jpype

having PyOpenGL-3.1.1-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl

tried to install pip install PyOpenGL-3.1.1-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl

got message :

PyOpenGL-3.1.1-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl is not supported wheel on this platform

upgraded pip:

python -m pip --upgrade pip

after upgrading it was succesfully installed

pip install PyOpenGL-3.1.1-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl

pip install PyOpenGL_accelerate-3.1.1-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl

wanted to run code from : http://noobtuts.com/python/opengl-introduction

got error :

ctypes.ArgumentError: argument 1: <class 'TypeError'>: wrong type

changed function: glutCreateWindow("name") to glutCreateWindow(b'name') and got it running.

summarize:

python -m pip --upgrade pip

pip install image

pip install numpy

pip install PyOpenGL-3.1.1-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl

pip install PyOpenGL_accelerate-3.1.1-cp34-cp34m-win_amd64.whl

change call from glutCreateWindow("name") to glutCreateWindow(b'name')