ANN: Dabo 0.4.1

[Paul McNett]

We are happy to announce the release of Dabo 0.4.1, available for
download from:

http://dabodev.com/download

Dabo is a framework for developing 3-tier database applications, and
comes with database wrappers for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, and
SQLite. It wraps the wxPython GUI toolkit, making it easier to use and
more polymorphic, providing a nice property interface to the controls.

In addition to the main dabo-0.4.1 package, there are also updated
downloads for dabodemo-0.4.1 and daboide-0.2.1.

There have been numerous improvements in Dabo over the past few weeks
since 0.4, summarized here:

Improved test framework for uiwx. Now you can run ui/uiwx/test.py and
get almost all of the dabo controls in one form, and they are the same
tests that you get when you run an individual control directly.

Factored out the saving/restoring of user settings out of dApp into
the separate dUserSettingProvider class, which can be subclassed or
overridded by the developers. Added properties UserSettingProvider
and UserSettingProviderClass to dApp.

Dabo user settings are no longer saved to .userSettings.ini in the app
directory, but are saved to the user's home directory (in ~.dabo/) or
if on Windows, in <User Profile>/Application Data/Dabo/.

Support for SQLite added. As of this moment, Dabo supports several major
open-source database backends: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, and SQLite.
Next on the list should be Oracle, Sybase, and MS-SQL.

Started work implementing a Quick Report in the datanav library, which
replaces the old HTML Print Preview. This uses the fledgling Dabo Report
Writer to create a PDF rendition of the dataset.

Added new property for all controls: StatusText. When set, and when the
form has a status bar, that text will show in the form's status bar when
the mouse enters the control.

Expanded the dabo.ui.strToBmp() function to accept an optional scale
factor or width/height values. If they are passed, the returned bitmap
image is sized to those values.

Added an optional parameter to the bizobj and cursor's getDataSet()
method. If you send a list of field names, only those fields are returned.

Fixed some lingering bugs in the dabo.ui.uiwx package and the datanav
lib. dWizard works better now. Improved dGauge, dLine, dBox, dRadioBox,
dListBox, dToolBar, and dSizers.

Added simple decimal support to dTextBox.

Work continues on dGrid, specifically dColumn is now better worked
into the "Dabo Way".

Added dabo.trace() function, that will drop you into pdb.

dConnectInfo reworked to have better property names.

Removed dependency on PIL and reportlab from Dabo. These are dependencies
still, but only if you try to run a report.

Added dabo.lib.StopWatch.StopWatch class, which is a light Python
stopwatch with start(), stop(), reset() methods and Value property.

This is a partial list. Both Ed and Paul have been very busy with Dabo
since 0.4 a few weeks ago. Lots of bugfixes and enhancements were made,
and we encourage everyone to upgrade.

---------------
In addition, we'd like to note that the minesweeper game in dabodemo has
been greatly improved, and also the addition of the card game of
montana. The development of these games are helping us iron out user
interface issues that otherwise may have gone unnoticed.

The AppWizard in daboide/wizards has also been updated to produce even
better generated applications, ones that give the developer a starting
structure that is relatively easy to tweak, modify, and augment.


-- 
Paul McNett
http://paulmcnett.com
http://dabodev.com