have been added to wxPython.
+wxName Change
+-------------
+
+The **wxWindows** project and library is now known as
+**wxWidgets**. Please see here_ for more details.
+
+.. _here: http://www.wxwindows.org/name.htm
+
+This won't really affect wxPython all that much, other than the fact
+that the wxwindows.org domain name will be changing to wxwidgets.org,
+so mail list, CVS, and etc. addresses will be changing. We're going
+to try and smooth the transition as much as possible, but I wanted you
+all to be aware of this change if you run into any issues.
+
+
Module Initialization
---------------------
The import-startup-bootstrap process employed by wxPython was changed
-such that wxWindows and the underlying gui toolkit are **not**
+such that wxWidgets and the underlying gui toolkit are **not**
initialized until the wx.App object is created (but before wx.App.OnInit
is called.) This was required because of some changes that were made
to the C++ wxApp class.
potential problems are that the C++ side of the "stock-objects"
(wx.BLUE_PEN, wx.TheColourDatabase, etc.) are not initialized until
the wx.App object is created, so you should not use them until after
-you have created your wx.App object. (In fact, until I find a better
-solution trying to use one of the stock objects before the app is
-created will probably result in a crash.)
+you have created your wx.App object. If you do then an exception will
+be raised telling you that the C++ object has not been initialized
+yet.
Also, you will probably not be able to do any kind of GUI or bitmap
operation unless you first have created an app object, (even on
self.Bind(wx.EVT_SIZE, self.OnSize)
self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnButtonClick, theButton)
- self.Bind(wx.EVT_MENU, self.OnExit, id=ID_EXIT)
-
-I hope to be able to remove the need for using IDs even for menu
-events too...
+ self.Bind(wx.EVT_MENU, self.OnExit, id=wx.ID_EXIT)
+
+
+The wx.Menu methods that add items to a wx.Menu have been modified
+such that they return a reference to the wx.MenuItem that was created.
+Additionally menu items and toolbar items have been modified to
+automatically generate a new ID if -1 is given, similar to using -1
+with window classess. This means that you can create menu or toolbar
+items and event bindings without having to predefine a unique menu ID,
+although you still can use IDs just like before if you want. For
+example, these are all equivallent other than their specific ID
+values::
+
+ 1.
+ item = menu.Append(-1, "E&xit", "Terminate the App")
+ self.Bind(wx.EVT_MENU, self.OnExit, item)
+ 2.
+ item = menu.Append(wx.ID_EXIT, "E&xit", "Terminate the App")
+ self.Bind(wx.EVT_MENU, self.OnExit, item)
+
+ 3.
+ menu.Append(wx.ID_EXIT, "E&xit", "Terminate the App")
+ self.Bind(wx.EVT_MENU, self.OnExit, id=wx.ID_EXIT)
+
+
If you create your own custom event types and EVT_* functions, and you
want to be able to use them with the Bind method above then you should
change your EVT_* to be an instance of wxPyEventBinder instead of a
Change it like so::
- myCustomEventType = wxNewEventType()
- EVT_MY_CUSTOM_EVENT = wxPyEventBinder(myCustomEventType, 1)
+ myCustomEventType = wx.NewEventType()
+ EVT_MY_CUSTOM_EVENT = wx.PyEventBinder(myCustomEventType, 1)
The second parameter is an integer in [0, 1, 2] that specifies the
number of IDs that are needed to be passed to Connect.
+
+
The wx Namespace
----------------
You shouldn't need to migrate all your modules over to use the new
package and names right away as there are modules in place that try to
provide as much backwards compatibility of the names as possible. If
-you rewrote the above sample using "from wxPython.wx import *", the
+you rewrote the above sample using "from wxPython.wx import * ", the
old wxNames, and the old style of event binding it will still work
just fine.
Blit(destPt, size, sourceDC, srcPt,
rop = wxCOPY, useMask = FALSE, srcPtMask = wx.DefaultPosition)
- SetClippingRegionXY SetClippingRegion(x, y, width, height)
+ SetClippingRegionXY(x, y, width, height)
SetClippingRegion(point, size)
SetClippingRect(rect)
SetClippingRegionAsRegion(region);
-If you have code that draws on a DC you **will** get errors because of
-these changes, but it should be easy to fix the code. You can either
-change the name of the *Type B* method called to the names shown
-above, or just add parentheses around the parameters as needed to turn
-them into tuples and let the SWIG typemaps turn them into the wx.Point
-or wx.Size object that is expected. Then you will be calling the new
-*Type A* method. For example, if you had this code before::
+If you have code that draws on a DC and you are using the new wx
+namespace then you **will** get errors because of these changes, but
+it should be easy to fix the code. You can either change the name of
+the *Type B* method called to the names shown above, or just add
+parentheses around the parameters as needed to turn them into tuples
+and let the SWIG typemaps turn them into the wx.Point or wx.Size
+object that is expected. Then you will be calling the new *Type A*
+method. For example, if you had this code before::
dc.DrawRectangle(x, y, width, height)
dc.DrawRectangle(p, s)
+Now before you start yelling and screaming at me for breaking all your
+code, take note that I said above "...using the new wx namespace..."
+That's because if you are still importing from wxPython.wx then there
+are some classes defined there with Draw and etc. methods that have
+2.4 compatible signatures. However if/when the old wxPython.wx
+namespace is removed then these classes will be removed too so you
+should plan on migrating to the new namespace and new DC Draw methods
+before that time.
Sizers
------
-The hack allowing the old "option" keyword parameter has been
-removed. If you use keyworkd args with wxSizer Add, Insert, or
-Prepend then you will need to use the "proportion" name instead of
-"option".
+The hack allowing the old "option" keyword parameter has been removed.
+If you use keyworkd args with wxSizer Add, Insert, or Prepend methods
+then you will need to use the "proportion" name instead of "option".
When adding a spacer to a sizer you now need to use a wxSize or a
2-integer sequence instead of separate width and height parameters.
wrappers will figure out what to do.
+PlatformInfo
+------------
+
+Added wx.PlatformInfo which is a tuple containing strings that
+describe the platform and build options of wxPython. This lets you
+know more about the build than just the __WXPORT__ value that
+wx.Platform contains, such as if it is a GTK2 build. For example,
+instead of::
+
+ if wx.Platform == "__WXGTK__":
+ ...
+
+you should do this::
+
+ if "__WXGTK__" in wx.PlatformInfo:
+ ...
+
+and you can specifically check for a wxGTK2 build by looking for
+"gtk2" in wx.PlatformInfo. Unicode builds are also detectable this
+way. If there are any other platform/toolkit/build flags that make
+sense to add to this tuple please let me know.
+
+BTW, wx.Platform will probably be deprecated in the future.
+
+
+
+ActiveX
+-------
+
+Lindsay Mathieson's newest wxActiveX_ class has been wrapped into a new
+extension module called wx.activex. It is very generic and dynamic
+and should allow hosting of arbitray ActiveX controls within your
+wxPython apps. So far I've tested it with IE, PDF, and Flash
+controls, (and there are new samples in the demo and also library
+modules supporting these.)
+
+.. _wxActiveX: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~blackpaw1/wxactivex.html
+
+The new wx.activex module contains a bunch of code, but the most
+important things to look at are ActiveXWindow and ActiveXEvent.
+ActiveXWindow derives from wxWindow and the constructor accepts a
+CLSID for the ActiveX Control that should be created. (There is also
+a CLSID class that can convert from a progID or a CLSID String.) The
+ActiveXWindow class simply adds methods that allow you to query some
+of the TypeInfo exposed by the ActiveX object, and also to get/set
+properties or call methods by name. The Python implementation
+automatically handles converting parameters and return values to/from
+the types expected by the ActiveX code as specified by the TypeInfo,
+(just bool, integers, floating point, strings and None/Empty so far,
+but more can be handled later.)
+
+That's pretty much all there is to the class, as I mentioned before it
+is very generic and dynamic. Very little is hard-coded and everything
+that is done with the actual ActiveX control is done at runtime and
+referenced by property or method name. Since Python is such a dynamic
+language this is a very good match. I thought for a while about doing
+some Python black-magic and making the specific methods/properties of
+the actual ActiveX control "appear" at runtime, but then decided that
+it would be better and more understandable to do it via subclassing.
+So there is a utility class in wx.activex that given an existing
+ActiveXWindow instance can generate a .py module containing a derived
+class with real methods and properties that do the Right Thing to
+reflect those calls to the real ActiveX control. There is also a
+script/tool module named genaxmodule that given a CLSID or progID and
+a class name, will generate the module for you. There are a few
+examples of the output of this tool in the wx.lib package. See
+iewin.py, pdfwin.py and flashwin.py.
+
+Currently the genaxmodule tool will tweak some of the names it
+generates, but this can be controled if you would like to do it
+differently by deriving your own class from GernerateAXModule,
+overriding some methods and then using this class from a tool like
+genaxmodule. [TODO: make specifying a new class on genaxmodule's
+command-line possible.] The current default behavior is that any
+event names that start with "On" will have the "On" dropped, property
+names are converted to all lower case, and if any name is a Python
+keyword it will have an underscore appended to it. GernerateAXModule
+does it's best when generating the code in the new module, but it can
+only be as good as the TypeInfo data available from the ActiveX
+control so sometimes some tweaking will be needed. For example, the
+IE web browser control defines the Flags parameter of the Navigate2
+method as required, but MSDN says it is optional.
+
+It is intended that this new wx.activex module will replace both the
+older version of Lindsay's code available in iewin.IEHtmlWindow, and
+also the wx.lib.activexwraper module. Probably the biggest
+differences you'l ecounted in migrating activexwrapper-based code
+(besides events working better without causing deadlocks) is that
+events are no longer caught by overriding methods in your derived
+class. Instead ActiveXWindow uses the wx event system and you bind
+handlers for the ActiveX events exactly the same way you do for any wx
+event. There is just one extra step needed and that is creating an
+event ID from the ActiveX event name, and if you use the genaxmodule
+tool then this extra step will be handled for you there. For example,
+for the StatusTextChange event in the IE web browser control, this
+code is generated for you::
+
+ wxEVT_StatusTextChange = wx.activex.RegisterActiveXEvent('StatusTextChange')
+ EVT_StatusTextChange = wx.PyEventBinder(wxEVT_StatusTextChange, 1)
+
+and you would use it in your code like this::
+
+ self.Bind(iewin.EVT_StatusTextChange, self.UpdateStatusText, self.ie)
+
+When the event happens and your event handler function is called the
+event properties from the ActiveX control (if any) are converted to
+attributes of the event object passed to the handler. (Can you say
+'event' any more times in a single sentence? ;-) ) For example the
+StatusTextChange event will also send the text that should be put into
+the status line as an event parameter named "Text" and you can access
+it your handlers as an attribute of the evnt object like this::
+
+ def UpdateStatusText(self, evt):
+ self.SetStatusText(evt.Text)
+
+These event object attributes should be considered read-only since
+support for output parameters on the events is not yet implemented.
+But that could/should change in the future.
+
+So how do you know what methods, events and properties that am ActiveX
+control supports? There is a funciton in wx.activex named GetAXInfo
+that returns a printable summary of the TypeInfo from the ActiveX
+instance passed in. You can use this as an example of how to browse
+the TypeInfo provided, and there is also a copy of this function's
+output appended as a comment to the modules produced by the
+genaxmodule tool. Beyond that you'll need to consult the docs
+provided by the makers of the ActiveX control that you are using.
+
+
Other Stuff
-----------
extensions that are linked independently, and then merged together
later into the main namespace via Python code.
-Because of the above, the "internal" module names have changed, but
-you shouldn't have been using them anyway so it shouldn't bother
-you. ;-)
+Because of the above and also because of the way the new SWIG works,
+the "internal" module names have changed, but you shouldn't have been
+using them anyway so it shouldn't bother you. ;-)
-The wxPython.help module no longer exists and the classes therein are
-now part of the core module imported with wxPython.wx or the wx
-package.
+The help module no longer exists and the classes therein are now part
+of the core module imported with wxPython.wx or the wx package.
wxPyDefaultPosition and wxPyDefaultSize are gone. Use the
wxDefaultPosition and wxDefaultSize objects instead.
Object Return) for a couple years now there should be no need to use
wxPyTypeCast at all.
+If you use the old wxPython package and wxPython.wx namespace then
+there are compatibility aliases for much of the above items.
+
+The wxWave class has been renamed to wxSound, and now has a slightly
+different API.
+
+wx.TaskbarIcon works on wxGTK-based platforms now, however you have to
+manage it a little bit more than you did before. Basically, the app
+will treat it like a top-level frame in that if the wx.TaskBarIcon
+still exists when all the frames are closed then the app will still
+not exit. You need to ensure that the wx.TaskBarIcon is destroyed
+when your last Frame is closed. For wxPython apps it is usually
+enough if your main frame object holds the only reference to the
+wx.TaskBarIcon, then when the frame is closed Python reference
+counting takes care of the rest.
+
+If you are embedding wxPython in a C++ app, or are writing wxPython
+compatible extensions modules, then the usage of wxPyBeginAllowThreads
+and wxPyEndAllowThreads has changed slightly. wxPyBeginAllowThreads
+now returns a boolean value that must be passed to the coresponding
+wxPyEndAllowThreads function call. This is to help do the RightThing
+when calls to these two functions are nested, or if calls to external
+code that are wrapped in the standard Py_(BEGIN|END)_ALLOW_THERADS may
+result in wx event handlers being called (such as os.startfile.)
+