Re: [Pythoncard-users] Kevin's PythonCard goals

[Robin D. <ro...@al...>]

> Richedit control
> Like multimedia this is another toughie due to cross-platform issues. It
> turns out that under Windows, wxWindows/wxPython uses a control limited to
> 32K of text for wxTextCtrl. In order to get a 2GB text limit and styled
text
> in the same control you have to specify the wxTE_RICH and wxTE_MULTILINE
> styles. However, under Linux the richedit control was coded specifically
for
> wxGTK and does not use a native control or have all the features of the
> richedit DLL under Windows, so the wxWindows rich text API is extremely
> limited. Typically, people are directed towards Neil's Scintilla in its
> wrapped form if they want more control, but Scintilla, while nice for
doing
> a text editor is not nice for simply mixing styled text in the same
control.
> I have no idea what the wxMac situation will be. What I do know is that an
> additional layer of logic is going to be needed to make styled text simple
> and easy to use in wxPython. For speed reasons, whatever Python logic is
> added to make the rich text control more useful will probably have to be
> moved back to C++ at some point. Neil or Robin, please correct me on any
> mistakes above.

AFAIK, the widget used for wxGTK's wxTextCtrl is a standard gtk+ widget, but
it is true that it is relativly limited in functionality.  There is a new
gtk+ widget coming in gtk+ 2.0 that will probably be used in wxGTK when it
is ported to the new gtk+, but I don't know anything else about it.

> Direct manipulation instead of Model View Controller?!
> This is a separate thread. I don't mind MVC in the framework, but I am
wary
> of exposing it such that user code has to do MVC. While powerful and quite
> standard these days, I still think that it is conceptually difficult to
> grasp and can make simple projects difficult because of extra planning
> required to do MVC right, but I'm an MVC newbie so what do I know? This
> really deserves its own thread. I'll get back to this later today or
> tomorrow.

My experience is that MVC is very difficult for newbies to grok, but very
powerful for those who do understand it.  If PC is to be a tool to help give
newbies and part-timers a leg up with Python and GUIs then I don't think it
should be MVC.  That's not to say that it shouldn't be there behind the
scenes for those that can handle it, but it shouldn't get in the way of
those who can't or don't want to.

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
ro...@Al...       Java give you jitters?
http://wxPython.org      Relax with wxPython!