[Pythoncard-users] release 0.8 progress report

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

Since at a minimum we're a couple of weeks away from being able to make 
a 0.8 release I thought it would be good to give a progress report. The 
short story is that we're making a lot of progress and the framework is 
already much cleaner and the API exposed to user code is more 
consistent. I was able to build a set of docs using epydoc that are 
suitable for framework developers and we might put that online or at 
least describe how to do it yourself; the last epydoc release needs a 
small patch to work with wxPython. I'm still trying to figure out if I 
can suppress particular subclasses and/or CamelCase methods to make it 
suitable for generating some user docs from source.

I have not started the migration guide yet, but it should be pretty 
clear from the changelog below where your own code will need to be 
changed. The nice thing about the new package name is that you can run 
PythonCardPrototype and PythonCard at the same time with the caveat 
that release 0.8 requires Python 2.3.x and wxPython 2.5.x. cvs is 
changing each day, usually multiple times a day, so if you're 
interested in keeping up with the changes and helping test stuff then 
you should probably contact me directly via email or the irc channel 
#pythoncard on irc.freenode.net. When cvs starts to stabilize I'll make 
another request for testers on various platforms.

There is an additional complication with the files in the 
pythoncard_config dir such as the stc-styles.rc.cfg file which is not 
compatible between PythonCardPrototype and PythonCard; that file is 
used if you run the codeEditor or run any sample with the runtime 
tools. I may rename that file to avoid a conflict when upgrading, but I 
haven't decided yet. The same issue might arise with other config 
files.

I'm in the midst of the 'selection' and 'stringSelection' attribute 
change below. It is a big change, so I'm doing it in stages.

As always, comments and questions are welcome. Any decision I deem 
worthy of discussion will get posted here, for the most part the stuff 
below are things where Rowland and I already knew the "right answer" or 
it had been covered in an earlier list discussion.

http://wiki.wxpython.org/index.cgi/PythonCard08


Release 0.8 2004-05-?? [progress as of 2004-04-22]
updated Choice, ComboBox, List, RadioGroup to use
   'selection' and 'stringSelection' attributes instead of
   mixed-capability 'selected' and 'selection' attribute
   see migration guide for more info
added templates sub-package to hold common backgrounds
   and dialogs
updated all samples and tools to use lowercase skip()
removed CamelCase methods from BitmapCanvas (Draw -> draw)
changed Component __init__
   init underlying control before Widget class
   added makeNewId function
   removed postInit
   event binding is now part of component init
removed getId() from Widget, using GetId() calls in framework
*ROWLAND describe binding and spec changes here*
added SetValue workaround for TextArea component on Windows
removed dispatch.py and moved classes to event.py
SetFocus -> setFocus
Hide/Show -> visible attribute
added visible, position, and size properties to tool windows
added Tom Jacobs' montyhall sample
added about.py module
   added About PythonCard dialog to codeEditor and resourceEditor
added singleton.py module
   used by configuration.py, log.py, registry.py, and resource.py
removed Ptr classes from isinstance checks
removed old addresses052.py sample
renamed res.py to resource.py
replaced the use of __getattr__ and __setattr__ in Font,
   StatusBar, and Widget classes with property(), so those
   classes and components no longer have restrictive
   attribute access
   this change also eliminated the need for the
   _createAttributes and _getAttributeNames methods
changed to wx.Frame for runtime tools on Windows to make
   them the same across platforms
removed conditional code check PyCrust since PyCrust
   is a standard part of wxPython now
added createStatusBar method to Background and
   CustomDialog classes so applications can override that
   method if they want to use a more complex StatusBar
made statusbar.StatusBar a direct subclass of wx.StatusBar
renamed PythonCardApp to Application
refactored config.py to configuration.py
removed PythonCardObject and all references to it
removed ObjectMap and all references to it
removed ObjectLookup and all references to it
changed on_openBackground to on_initialize
renamed pom.py to component.py
added test.py
added timer.py module and simple Timer wrapper
added deactivate event to Background
updated sound.py to use wx.Sound
changed model.py to require Python >= 2.3 and wxPython >= 2.5
converted DC methods to use tuples instead of separate
   x, y and width, height args
changed wx.NULL to None
switched to wx package
   from wxPython import changed to import wx
   changed wx.wx style prefixes to wx. except
     for wx.wxEVT constants
   changed wx.wxHtmlEasyPrinting to wx.html.HtmlEasyPrinting
changed default on Message Watcher to show unused events
PythonCardPrototype package renamed to PythonCard
   all references to Prototype updated in source and docs

ka