Announcing ---------- The 2.8.8.0 release of wxPython is now available for download at http://wxpython.org/download.php. This release has had a number of further refinements and enhancements on the stable 2.8 source tree since the previous release. On Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) the Python 2.5 binaries of wxPython are able to be used with either Apple's system Python, or with the Python.org version.
Source code is available, as well as binaries for Python 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5, for Windows and Mac, as well some packages for various Linux distributions. A summary of changes is listed below and also at http://wxpython.org/recentchanges.php. What is wxPython? ----------------- wxPython is a GUI toolkit for the Python programming language. It allows Python programmers to create programs with a robust, highly functional graphical user interface, simply and easily. It is implemented as a Python extension module that wraps the GUI components of the popular wxWidgets cross platform library, which is written in C++. wxPython is a cross-platform toolkit. This means that the same program will usually run on multiple platforms without modifications. Currently supported platforms are 32-bit Microsoft Windows, most Linux or other Unix-like systems using GTK2, and Mac OS X 10.3+, in most cases the native widgets are used on each platform to provide a 100% native look and feel for the application. Changes in 2.8.8.0 ------------------ Added the PlateButton class from Cody Precord. Added wx.PyEvtHandler, which supports overriding the ProcessEvent method in derived classes. Instances of this class can be pushed onto the event handler chain of a window in order to hook into the event processing algorithm, and its ProcessEvent method will be called for every event sent to the window. With much help from Anthony Tuininga the code generated by the img2py tool is now cleaner, simpler and smaller. Instead of writing the data for the images as printable ascii with hex escapes it now uses base64 to encode the images into a string. In addition, instead of top-level functions for returning the image data and bitmaps, the embedded images now use a simple class with methods for returning the image as a bitmap, icon, or etc. By default in 2.8.x top-level aliases will be generated to make the code backward compatible with the old functional interface, but you can use -F to turn that off. In 2.9 and beyond the default will be to generate only the new class interface, but -f can be used to turn the old behavior back on. The PyEmbeddedImage class added for the new img2py support can also be used for image data that may be acquired from some other source at runtime, such as over the network or from a database. In this case pass False for isBase64 (unless the data actually is base64 encoded.) Any image type that wx.ImageFromStream can handle should be okay. See the wx.lib.embeddedimage module for details. Exposed the wx.GenericDatePickerCtrl to wxPython. On wxGTK and wxMac this is exactly the same as the normal date picker, but on wxMSW it allows you to avoid the native wx.DatePickerCtrl if so desired. Also fixed a bug that caused an assert if you tried to set the date to wx.DefaultDateTime even if wx.DP_ALLOWNONE was specified. Made a little hack in wx.lib.masked.TextCtrl that allows it to be wrapped around an already existing TextCtrl instead of always creating its own. This is useful for example with the wx.TextCtrl that is built-in to the customizable wx.combo.ComboCtrl, or with a textctrl that is part of an XRC layout. To use it you need to do a little trick like this:: existingTextCtrl = combo.GetTextCtrl() maskedCtrl = wx.lib.masked.TextCtrl.__new__(wx.lib.masked.TextCtrl) maskedCtrl.this = existingTextCtrl.this maskedCtrl.__init__(parent) Enhanced the Widget Inspection Tool with some new functionality. Added tools to the toolbar to expand and collapse the widget tree, which is very helpful for not getting lost in very large applications with many hundreds of widgets. Also added a toolbar tool for highlighting the currently selected widget or sizer in the live application. The tool will flash top-level windows and for all other items it will draw an outline around the item for a few seconds. Copied the sized_controls module to the wx.lib package as the first step of phasing out the wxaddons package. Added an implementation of wx.Window.SetDoubleBuffered on Windows. (GTK already has one, and Mac doesn't need one because everything is always double buffered by the system there.) Added a wrapper to wx.TopLevelWindow for MacGetTopLevelWindowRef to facilitate calling the Carbon APIs directly for things that are not supported in wx, similar to how we can use ctypes or PyWin32 with window.GetHandle() to do custom stuff on Windows. (On wxMac GetHandle returns the ControlRef, which is different than the WindowRef, hence the need for a 2nd method.) Here is an example to set the modified flag in the caption:: >>> import ctypes >>> carbon = ctypes.CDLL('/System/Library/Carbon.framework/Carbon') >>> carbon.SetWindowModified(frame.MacGetTopLevelWindowRef(), True) Added a new light-weight solution for embedding ActiveX controls in wxPython applications that uses ctypes and the comtypes package available from http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/comtypes/. Comtypes allows us to use and provide an interface with full dynamic dispatch abilities, much like PyWin32's COM interfaces but with much reduced external dependencies. See wx/lib/activex.py for more details. IMPORTANT: Be sure to get at least version 0.5 of comtypes, see the docstring in the wx.lib.activex module for details. The wx.lib.iewin, wx.lib.pdfwin, and wx.lib.flashwin modules were switched to use the new and improved activex module. The APIs provided by these modules should be mostly compatible with what was there before, except for how the COM events are handled. Instead of sending wx events it relies on you overriding methods with the same names as the COM events. You can either do it in a or derived class, or you can set an instance of some other class to be the event sink. See the ActiveX_IEHtmlWindow sample in the demo for an example. If you would rather continue to use the old version of these modules they are available in the wx.lib with "_old" added to the names. Added the wx.lib.resizewidget module. This module provides the ResizeWidget class, which reparents a given widget into a specialized panel that provides a resize handle for the widget. When the user drags the resize handle the widget is resized accordingly, and an event is sent to notify parents that they should recalculate their layout. -- Robin Dunn Software Craftsman http://wxPython.org Java give you jitters? Relax with wxPython! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list Support the Python Software Foundation: http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html
