those changes. Be sure to also check in the CHANGES.txt file like
usual to see info about the not so major changes and other things that
have been added to wxPython.</p>
+<div class="section" id="wxname-change">
+<h1><a name="wxname-change">wxName Change</a></h1>
+<p>The <strong>wxWindows</strong> project and library is now known as
+<strong>wxWidgets</strong>. Please see <a class="reference" href="http://www.wxwidgets.org/name.htm">here</a> for more details.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+</div>
<div class="section" id="module-initialization">
<h1><a name="module-initialization">Module Initialization</a></h1>
<p>The import-startup-bootstrap process employed by wxPython was changed
-such that wxWindows and the underlying gui toolkit are <strong>not</strong>
+such that wxWidgets and the underlying gui toolkit are <strong>not</strong>
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.</p>
(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. If you do then an exception will
-be raised telling you that the C++ object has not bene initialized
+be raised telling you that the C++ object has not been initialized
yet.</p>
<p>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
<p>All of the EVT_* functions are now instances of the wx.PyEventBinder
class. They have a __call__ method so they can still be used as
functions like before, but making them instances adds some
-flexibility.</p>
+flexibility that I expect to take advantave of in the future.</p>
<p>wx.EvtHandler (the base class for wx.Window) now has a Bind method that
makes binding events to windows a little easier. Here is its
definition and docstring:</p>
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 ID values:</p>
+example, these are all equivallent other than their specific ID
+values:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
1.
item = menu.Append(-1, "E&xit", "Terminate the App")
<p>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
-function. If you used to have something like this:</p>
+function. For example, if you used to have something like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
myCustomEventType = wxNewEventType()
def EVT_MY_CUSTOM_EVENT(win, id, func):
the contribs (gizmos, stc, xrc, etc.) rather than building local
copies of them. If you build your own copies of wxPython please be
aware that you now need to also build the ogl, stc, xrc, and gizmos
-libraries in addition to the main wx lib. [[TODO: update the
-BUILD.*.txt files too!]]</p>
+libraries in addition to the main wx lib.</p>
<p>The wxPython.h and other header files are now in
.../wxPython/include/wx/wxPython instead of in wxPython/src. You should
include it via the "wx/wxPython/wxPython.h" path and add
-.../wxPython/include to your list of include paths. [[TODO: Install
-these headers on Linux...]]</p>
+.../wxPython/include to your list of include paths. On OSX and
+unix-like systems the wxPython headers are installed to the same place
+that the wxWidgets headers are installed, so if you building wxPython
+compatible extensions on those platforms then your include path shoudl
+already be set properly.</p>
+<p>If you are also using SWIG for your extension then you'll need to
+adapt how the wxPython .i files are imported into your .i files. See
+the wxPython sources for examples. Your modules will need to at least
+<tt class="literal"><span class="pre">%import</span> <span class="pre">core.i</span></tt>, and possibly others if you need the definition of
+other classes. Since you will need them to build your modules, the
+main wxPython .i files are also installed with the wxPython headers in
+an i_files sibdirectory. It should be enough to pass a -I/pathname on
+the command line for it to find the files.</p>
+<p>The bulk of wxPython's setup.py has been moved to another module,
+wx/build/config.py. This module will be installed as part of wxPython
+so 3rd party modules that wish to use the same setup/configuration
+code can do so simply by importing this module from their own setup.py
+scripts using <tt class="literal"><span class="pre">import</span> <span class="pre">wx.build.config</span></tt>.</p>
<p>You no longer need to call wxClassInfo::CleanUpClasses() and
wxClassInfo::InitializeClasses() in your extensions or when embedding
wxPython.</p>
+<p>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 in other extension modules that
+are wrapped in the standard Py_(BEGIN|END)_ALLOW_THERADS may result in
+wx event handlers being called (such as during the call to
+os.startfile.)</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="two-or-three-phase-create">
<h1><a name="two-or-three-phase-create">Two (or Three!) Phase Create</a></h1>
<div class="section" id="sizers">
<h1><a name="sizers">Sizers</a></h1>
<p>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".</p>
-<p>When adding a spacer to a sizer you now need to use a wxSize or a
+If you use keyworkd args with w.xSizer Add, Insert, or Prepend methods
+then you will need to use the <tt class="literal"><span class="pre">proportion</span></tt> name instead of <tt class="literal"><span class="pre">option</span></tt>.</p>
+<p>When adding a spacer to a sizer you now need to use a wx.Size or a
2-integer sequence instead of separate width and height parameters.</p>
-<p>The wxGridBagSizer class (very similar to the RowColSizer in the
+<p>The wx.GridBagSizer class (very similar to the RowColSizer in the
library) has been added to C++ and wrapped for wxPython. It can also
be used from XRC.</p>
<p>You should not use AddWindow, AddSizer, AddSpacer (and similar for
Insert, Prepend, and etc.) methods any longer. Just use Add and the
wrappers will figure out what to do.</p>
</div>
+<div class="section" id="platforminfo">
+<h1><a name="platforminfo">PlatformInfo</a></h1>
+<p>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:</p>
+<pre class="literal-block">
+if wx.Platform == "__WXGTK__":
+ ...
+</pre>
+<p>you should do this:</p>
+<pre class="literal-block">
+if "__WXGTK__" in wx.PlatformInfo:
+ ...
+</pre>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>BTW, wx.Platform will probably be deprecated in the future.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="section" id="activex">
+<h1><a name="activex">ActiveX</a></h1>
+<p>Lindsay Mathieson's newest <a class="reference" href="http://members.optusnet.com.au/~blackpaw1/wxactivex.html">wxActiveX</a> 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.)</p>
+<p>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.)</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>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'll ecounter 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:</p>
+<pre class="literal-block">
+wxEVT_StatusTextChange = wx.activex.RegisterActiveXEvent('StatusTextChange')
+EVT_StatusTextChange = wx.PyEventBinder(wxEVT_StatusTextChange, 1)
+</pre>
+<p>and you would use it in your code like this:</p>
+<pre class="literal-block">
+self.Bind(iewin.EVT_StatusTextChange, self.UpdateStatusText, self.ie)
+</pre>
+<p>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 event object like this:</p>
+<pre class="literal-block">
+def UpdateStatusText(self, evt):
+ self.SetStatusText(evt.Text)
+</pre>
+<p>Usually these event object attributes should be considered read-only,
+but some will be defined by the TypeInfo as output parameters. In
+those cases if you modify the event object's attribute then that value
+will be returned to the ActiveX control. For example, to prevent a
+new window from being opened by the IE web browser control you can do
+this in the handler for the iewin.EVT_NewWindow2 event:</p>
+<pre class="literal-block">
+def OnNewWindow2(self, evt):
+ evt.Cancel = True
+</pre>
+<p>So how do you know what methods, events and properties that an 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.</p>
+</div>
<div class="section" id="other-stuff">
<h1><a name="other-stuff">Other Stuff</a></h1>
<p>Instead of over a dozen separate extension modules linked together
there are compatibility aliases for much of the above items.</p>
<p>The wxWave class has been renamed to wxSound, and now has a slightly
different API.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
</div>
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