[Pythoncard-users] state of the framework - widgets

[Kevin A. <al...@se...>]

I'll try and outline the current state of the framework in order to foster
discussion. I'm going to break up the description into several emails. I'm
not going to describe every method and attribute since I would just end up
repeating what is in the source code. These descriptions can also serve as
documentation.

The following widget types are currently supported. The are defined in
widget.py and the wxPython control they are based on is in parenthesis ():
  BitmapCanvas
    Provides a buffered bitmap. There is no direct equivelant in wxPython.
  Button         (wxButton)
  CheckBox       (wxCheckBox)
  Choice         (wxChoice)
  Image          (wxStaticBitmap)
  ImageButton    (wxBitmapButton)
  List           (wxListBox)
  PasswordField  (wxTextCtrl)
  RadioGroup     (wxRadioBox)
  Slider         (wxSlider)
  StaticLine     (wxStaticLine)
  StaticText     (wxStaticText)
  TextArea       (wxTextCtrl)
  TextField      (wxTextCtrl)

The following events are automatically bound and available for each widget:
  gainFocus
  loseFocus
  mouseContextDoubleClick
  mouseContextDown
  mouseContextUp
  mouseDoubleClick
  mouseDown
  mouseDrag
  mouseEnter
  mouseLeave
  mouseMiddleDoubleClick
  mouseMiddleDown
  mouseMiddleUp
  mouseMove
  mouseUp

There are additional events such as 'mouseClick', 'keyPress', etc. that are
specific to particular widgets. The complete list is available in spec.py.

The following attributes are available for each widget.
    backgroundColor
        color: tuple (r, g, b), "named color", or hex color string "#FF00FF"
        color is always returned as an rgb tuple
    command
        string
    enabled
        boolean
    font
        Font
    foregroundColor
        color: tuple (r, g, b), "named color", or hex color string "#FF00FF"
        color is always returned as an rgb tuple
    name    (mandatory, read-only)
        string
    position
        tuple (x, y)
           specifying -1 for either x or y will use the default x or y
position
    size
        tuple (width, height)
           specifying -1 for either width or height will use the default
           width or height
    toolTip
        string
    visible
        boolean

Additional attributes such as 'label' are defined for some widgets. The
attributes can be defined in the resource file as well as in user code.
PythonCard uses dot notation for widgets, rather than get/set methods. Here
is an example:
  self.components.field1.text = 'bob'
  txt = self.components.field1.text

Helper classes for widgets:
  Bitmap         (wxBitmap) - defined in graphic.py
    supported formats:
    BMP, GIF, JPG/JPEG, PCX, PNG, PNM, TIF/TIFF, XBM, and XPM
    also supports translation to/from Python Imaging Library (PIL) format
  Font           (wxFont)   - defined in font.py

In some case, the helper classes and widgets provide extra functionality
over their wxPython counterparts. Automatic binding of events and simplifed
initialization are the most obvious.

ka