Announcing ----------
The 2.8.9.0 release of wxPython is now available for download at http://wxpython.org/download.php. This release adds support for using Cairo for drawing on wx windows, adds a Win64 build, and various other fixes and enhancements. 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 and 64-bit Microsoft Windows, most Linux or other Unix-like systems using GTK2, and Mac OS X 10.4+. In most cases the native widgets are used on each platform to provide a 100% native look and feel for the application. Changes in 2.8.9.0 ------------------ Many minor bug fixes throughout wxWidgets and wxPython. Fixed wx.lib.embeddedimage to work with Python 2.3. Fixed PseudoDC hit testing when pure white or pure black are used. Added support for a 64-bit Windows build for the AMD64 architecture, (a.k.a. x64.) This is for Python 2.5 only and is available only as a Unicode build. Added the wx.EmptyBitmapRGBA factory function. Added the wx.lib.wxcairo module which allows the pycairo package to be used for drawing on wx window or memory DCs. In addition it is able to convert from a native wx.Font to a cairo.FontFace, and it also provides functions for converting to/from wx.Bitmap and cairo.ImageSurface objects. In order to use this module you will need to have the Cairo library and its dependencies installed, as well as the pycairo Python package. For Linux and other unix-like systems you most likely have what you need installed already, or can easily do so from your package manager application. See the wx.lib.wxcairo module's docstring for notes on where to get what you need for Windows or Mac. This module uses ctypes, and depending on platform it may need to find and load additional dynamic libraries at runtime in addition to cairo. The pycairo package used needs to be new enough to export the CAPI structure in the package namespace. I believe that started sometime in the 1.4.x release series. Added the wx.lib.graphics module, which is an implementation of the wx.GraphicsContext API using Cairo (via wx.lib.wxcairo). This allows us to be totally consistent across platforms, and also use Cairo to implement some things that are missing from the GraphicsContext API. It's not 100% compatible with the GraphicsContext API, but probably close enough to be able to share code between them if desired, plus it can do a few things more. Updated wx.Bitmap.CopyFromBuffer to be a bit more flexible. You can now specify the format of the buffer, and the CopyFromBufferRGBA is now just a wrapper around CopyFromBuffer that specifies a different format than the default. Also added the complement method, CopyToBuffer. See the docstring for CopyFromBuffer for details on the currently allowed buffer formats. The existing wx.BitmapFromBuffer factory functions are also now implemented using the same underlying code as CopyFromBuffer. Add wx.lib.mixins.listctrl.ListRowHighlighter for automatic highlighting of rows in a wx.ListCtrl. -- Robin Dunn Software Craftsman http://wxPython.org Java give you jitters? Relax with wxPython! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
