ANN: PythonCard 0.7

[Kevin Altis]

PythonCard is a GUI construction kit for building cross-platform desktop
applications on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Release 0.7 includes over 40 sample applications and tools to help users
build applications in Python, including codeEditor, findfiles, and
resourceEditor (layout editor). A list of changes since release 0.6.9 is at
the end of this message.

All the information you need about PythonCard can be found on the project
web page at:
http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/

The installation instructions and walkthroughs are available on the main
documentation page:
http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/documentation.html

You can download the latest release at:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=19015

For a list of most of the samples that have been built with PythonCard and
screenshots of them in action go to:
http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/samples/samples.html

The kind people at SourceForge host the project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pythoncard/

If you want to get involved the main contact point is the Mailing list:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pythoncard-users

PythonCard requires Python 2.2.x (2.2.2 recommended) or later and wxPython
2.3.3.1 or later (2.4.0.1 recommended). wxPython can be downloaded at
http://www.wxpython.org/

Additional Notes:
Remember to backup or just delete your old PythonCardPrototype directory
before installing a new version, so that the old files aren't still in the
package directory. If you installed a previous version of PythonCard on
Windows using the binary installer, then you should be able to remove the
old package via the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel.

The distutils installer will put the framework, components, docs, samples,
and tools in Python22\Lib\site-packages. Of course, on Linux and Mac OS X
that path will be slightly different and have forward slashes.

I built this release using distutils from Python 2.3a1. Thanks to Thomas
Heller for helping me get the build working. Windows users should get a
PythonCard menu in the Start->Programs menu with links to the documentation,
samples, codeEditor, findfiles, and resourceEditor.

The tools and most of the samples will now keep their config and data file
info in the ".pythoncard" directory created by the framework. On Unix, the
directory will be ~/.pythoncard. On Windows, the directory varies as
described in the following post:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/PythonCard/1496793

So, if you run a PythonCard app with any of the runtime tools and select
"Save Configuration" from the "Debug" menu, the window positions and sizes
of your runtime windows (Shell, Message Watcher, etc.) will be saved in
".pythoncard/pythoncard_config.txt" not the PythonCardPrototype directory.
Likewise, when you change the text style used by the codeEditor via the
"Styles..." menu item under the "Format" menu, the modification will be
saved in ".pythoncard/stc-styles.rc.cfg"

ka
---
Kevin Altis
altis at semi-retired.com
http://radio.weblogs.com/0102677/


--- changelog since release 0.6.9, 2002-10-23

Release 0.7 2003-01-15
added "Create Component Docs..." menu item to widgets
  sample for creating "component_documentation" directory
added home directory config support, so user configs
  are no longer stored in PythonCardPrototype
added numericArrayToImage function to graphic module
  BitmapCanvas can now draw numpy arrays
renamed all variables named list and dict to
  listX and dictX to avoid built-in type name confusion
numerous conversions to conform to PEP 290
  replaced use of types module for type checks with
    built-in type factory - isinstance(i, int)
  replaced string module functions with string methods
  replaced '== None' with 'is None'
    and '!= None' with 'is not None'
added many features to jabberChat sample
added additional *. wildcards for Linux like *.TXT
  *.JPG, *.JPEG since Unix filenames are case-sensitive
fixed stack in rpn calculator (Randy Lea)
added CodeEditor component to resourceEditor
added caseinsensitive_listKeySort function to util.py module
  used by flatfileDatabase for sorting list of dictionaries
added caseinsensitive_sort function to util.py module
added wordwrap function to util.py module
fixed command event in slider component
added new samples pages to main web site
added code folding to CodeEditor component
added openFileDialog and saveFileDialog wrappers to dialog.py
added clipboard module
added life sample
added spirograph sample
added wxNO_FULL_REPAINT_ON_RESIZE style to
  TextArea and CodeEditor components
added dirwalk generator function to utils.py
  changed findfiles to use dirwalk
fixed closeField event in RightTextField component
fixed script launching to handle spaces in directory names
added Phil Edwards' PySSHed sample
added simpleIEBrowser sample to test IEHtmlWindow component
added IEHtmlWindow component
fixed default backgroundColor handling in resourceOutput.py