CurrentVersion

The current version of Boa Constructor is...

0.7.1-beta of 2015

on https://bitbucket.org/cwt/boa-constructor/downloads

with fixed debugger.

0.6.1-beta

Notes: Requires Python 2.3 or higher, wxPython 2.6 or higher.

Tested up to Python 2.5 and wxPython 2.8.4

SourceForge release page

Changes:

• IDE translated and Internationalisation support for applications.
  • Translations available for:
    • Afrikaans, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish
  • IDE Language Chooser Dialog under Tools
  • Design time support for i18n _() strings in the generated source.
    • See Examples/i18n/*
• New release binary format added for windows
  • Installs as a self contained exe
  • A python/wxPython installation is still required to run external
    • scripts and the debugger
• Improved design time sizer/control creation:
  • Sizers and controls are now automatically linked up
    • or added as sizer items when the sizers and control are created from the Palette on the Designer
• Command-line parameters added:

  • -U, -UnicodeEncoding, for setting the ide encoding without using

    • sitecustomize.py
  • -W, -wxVersionSelect, for specifying a wxPython version
• New controls supported:
  • wx.Listbook, wx.Choicebook, wx.Treebook, wx.Toolbook,

    wx.SearchCtrl, wx.ColourPickerCtrl, wx.FontPickerCtrl, wx.DirPickerCtrl, wx.FilePickerCtrl, wx.richtext.RichTextCtrl, wx.combo.BitmapComboBox, wx.animate.GIFAnimationCtrl, wx.media.MediaCtrl, wx.lib.flatnotebook, wx.lib.splitter, wx.lib.scrolledpanel, wx.lib.hyperlink, wx.lib.analogueclock,wx.lib.filebrowsebutton, wx.lib.throbber, wx.lib.ticker, wx.lib.dragscroller

• Basic support for Button Stock Ids

• Support for using wx.ArtProvider for bitmap properties in the Designer

  • When the file dialog opens from the property editor, set the

    • Image Type to ArtProvider and click Open, the ArtProvider dialog will open.

• All help files now distributed as .htb help files.
  • Help updated to wxPython 2.8 and Python 2.5
  • wxPython api help included
  • All help files back in the repository and included in packages
• Code Templates added:
  • A Code Template is a small idiomatic snippet of code that can be
    • selected from a popup list and inserted at the current caret position.
  • Code templates available for:
    • Boa: sys.breakpoint, customclasses, codetemplate,
      • html document skeleton
    • Python: class, method, function, iterator, descriptor

    • wxPython: wx.ColourDialog, wx.FontDialog, wx.PrintDialogData,

      • wx.PageSetupDialog, wx.DirDialog, wx.FileDialog, wx.SingleChoiceDialog, wx.TextEntryDialog, wx.MessageDialog, wx.FindReplaceDialog, wx.MultiChoiceDialog, wx.BusyCursor, wx.Locale, wx.AboutBox

• Code completion improvements
  • More local variables picked up from code

  • Option available: Preferences->General->Editor->importOnCodeComplete

    • so that modules can be auto imported for introspection.
• Improved unicode source handling
  • Using the coding delaration if defined (# -*- coding: name -*- )
  • Handling for utf8 bom
  • Bugfixes

• Sizer improvements for GTK for the Find/Replace, InterpreterChooser,

  • and ModuleFinder dialogs

• Tutorial updates
• SVN support added

Release - 0.5.2

This release is only available from CVS at this point but it is required if you want to use wxPython 2.8.

Release - 0.4.4-alpha (Released on July 11, 2005) SourceForge release page

Notes:

This release requires wxPython 2.5 or higher to run.

Changes:

• The entire sourcecode base is now upgraded to wxPython 2.5 style code.
• Python code has also been modernised.
• Improved Python code completion and call tips

• New controls added : wx.DatePickerCtrl, wx.GridBagSizer

• Registration api added for plug-ins
• Improved wxMAC compatibility
• The Python and wxPython docs are included in the main download
• Many bug fixes

Release - 0.3.0-alpha (Released on August 18, 2004: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1909&package_id=1856&release_id=261502)

Changes (from the changes.txt file):

• Started with the conversion to wxPython 2.5 compatible code, but it's currently impossible to support both 2.4 and 2.5 in the GUI Designer because of the wx namespace change.

  In version.py, wx_version_max can be set to None to run under 2.5, but beware that there are still many issues under 2.5 and the Designer doesn't work.

• BoaDebugger zope product added as an alternative/improved interface for debugging Zope, thanks to Robert Boulanger. See Debugger/BoaDebugger/*

• Added properties/events:
  • wxComboBox enter event

  • wxTextCtrl.MaxLength (thanks Oleg Deribas)

• New wxPython/Python docs bundle
• Tutorial improvements (thanks Kevin Light)
• Added examples for resource images and wizards
• Special attributess can now span multiple lines (continued lines must end on comma)
• wxWindows renamed to wxWidgets
• Many bug fixes
  • Fixed problem with window id handling
  • Fixed Sizer and linked Sizer properties

  • Fixed KeyError bug if renaming after recreating a control in the Designer.

  • Fixed consistency problem with multi-line vs single-line indent and comment Thanks to Tim Diggins for report and initial patch
  • Improved error messages in case of user changed GUI code.

CVS - 0.2.8-alpha (Released on ?, it's installed on my Debian system)

CVS - 0.2.7-alpha (Released on October 13, 2003)

• Requires at least wxPython 2.4.0.6
• Support for wxWizards
  • On the New Palette page see, wxWizard, wxPyWizardPage and wxWizardPageSimple. It is your own responsibility to create the pages and run the wizard.
• Support for the masked edit family of controls:
  • wxMaskedTextCtrl, wxIpAddrCtrl, wxMaskedComboBox, wxMaskedNumCtrl, wxTimeCtrl, wxIntCtrl
    • wxPython 2.4.2.4 is required.
• Feature additions/fixes to the Debugger:

  • Improved remote debugging capabilities by providing client<->server filepath mappings.

  • Added a Jump action/change execution point supported by Python 2.3.
  • Added script that supports hooking the Boa debugger to sys.excepthook. See Debugger/sysexcepthook.
• Improvements to sizers:
  • Navigation to control/sizer by double clicking in the collection editor on an item.
  • Invalid sizer choices removed from the Sizer property list.
  • Less pedantic on which designer view you have to click to create a new sizer or data object. It now automatically switches to the right designer view and creates the control there.
  • Many sizer bugs fixed.
• Improved process management
  • Now using wxProcess instead of Python's popen.
  • This means we have access to pids under windows and also the ability to kill processes.
  • A list of processes started from Boa is now available as a page called Tasks in the Error/Output notebook.
  • You will be prompted at shutdown if there are any sub-processes still running.
• Re-added non-us keyboard support.
  • Please test this if you use Alt-Gr.

    Set under Preferences->General->Editor->handleSpecialEuropeanKeys and euroKeysCountry

• New toolbutton support through DoAddTool. This provides labels and checked/radio tools.

• Many bug fixes and small improvements.

CVS - 0.2.6-alpha (Released on August 13, 2003)

• Notes from Riaan:
  • This micro release sorts out some issues on Linux and other small changes and fixes. Let me repeat what I said in another message:

    • You only have the entire checkout when the version.py reflects the new version.

    Also a note for Linux users, the preferences under:

    • Preferences->Platform spesific->Designer->drawDesignerGrid* also determine if the sizer cues are drawn. Off by default.

    When I added the grid drawing preferences, ages ago, the drawing seemed too slow on Linux to have as a default. It seems fine to me now, (I had a slower machine then so these preferences may change in the next release.

CVS - 0.2.5-alpha (Released on August 12, 2003)

• Collection Editors can now add multiple methods to collections. This means the following properties have these methods:

  • wxToolBar.Tools : AddTool, AddContol, AddSeparator

  • wxImageList.Images : Add, AddWithColourMask

  • wxMenu.Items : Append, AppendMenu, AppendSeparator

• Collection Editor items can be reordered by clicking the Up and Down arrows on the Collection Editor toolbar.
• Support added for using Sizers in the Designer.
  • All standard sizers added:
    • wxBoxSizer, wxGridSizer, wxFlexGridSizer, wxStaticBoxSizer, wxNotebookSizer
    • They are available from the Containers/Layout page
  • Sizers have their own view like the Data View.
  • Visual cues and selectors are drawn around sizered controls in yellow and green.
  • Can navigate to the sizer by right clicking on sizered selection tag (like Anchors)
  • None values are used in empty Sizer items, this is valid in the Designer, but you will be warned when a session is posted that still contain these None values as they are not valid outside the Designer and can cause wxPython to crash. Items with None values are visually indicated with the standard red dashed style.
  • Connect Sizers to controls via the Sizer property of a control.
  • Add sizer items (window, sizer and spacer items) from the Items collection property of a sizer (double-click). Link the item to a window or sizer in the Inspector.
  • Currently sizer layout is applied in addition to absolute coordinate positioning and sizes. Hopefully this can be balanced to a best of both worlds approach.
  • See Examples/layout/SizersInBoa.py
• Python Resource modules now available as an alternative way to use images.

  • Accepts the format generated by wxPython.tools.img2py, only requires that the file starts with this header: #Boa:PyImgResource:

  • Resource modules have an Images view of their contents.
  • Bitmap property editors can open resource modules and generate the appropriate code.

  • The ImageEditor plug-in can convert images to PyImgResource modules. It can also edit images directly inside resource modules.

  • See Examples/images/ResourceModules/
• EOL handling in source files have been completely redone.
  • File EOL is now detected and used per file. New files use the OS default.
  • Copy pasting code into your source from outside Boa should no longer cause mixed EOL issues on Windows.
  • Files are now always opened in binary mode.
  • At startup source templates (used by code genration) are initialised with the OS default EOL. Tabs/Spaces in source templates are also set at startup.

• ModuleFinder plug-in, enter the import name to find the file in sys.path and open the module in the IDE. Available from Tools.

• Converted the FormatParagraph IDLE extension to be a Boa plug-in.

• Added wxTreeListCtrl and wxListView to the Palette.

• Errors & Output notebook now has menu to load/save the history.

• Many plug-ins now have their images embedded in their source.
• Added feature to the debugger to display the value of a watch or a name in the Output window.
  • This is useful for big values like large lists or dicts.
  • Ctrl-double-click is the shortcut for this action.
• Also added Preference to minimize Debugger on running. Useful for GUI apps. Minimizing only works properly on Windows.
• Support for editing/browsing tar.gz files, like zip files work now.
• Editor toolbar should behave better on wxMAC.

CVS - 0.2.4-alpha (Released on July 10, 2003)

• Pervasive changes was made to the code to use string methods. Also a few lambda -> list comprehension translations.

• Added BicycleRepairMan (Python Refactoring) support

  • First install BicycleRepairMan, then enable it under

  • Preferences->Plug-ins->Plug-in files and restart Boa.

  • From the Edit menu the following actions are supported:
    • BRM - Find references
    • BRM - Find definition
    • BRM - Rename
    • BRM - Extract method
    • BRM - Extract local variable
    • BRM - Inline local variable
    • BRM - Undo last
  • From the File menu a module can be explicitly loaded into the context.
  • Modules can also be added from the Explorer in file system folders.
• In the process of adding the BRM support, I extended Boa's model/view/controller baseclasses to allow Plugins to extend existing MVC interfaces.
• Help Book support. Boa can now manage .hhp, .hhc and .hhk files. Different views allow you to define the file list and drag and drop to create the contents tree and indexes.

• Help books available in the Boa help can now be changed under Preferences->Help books in the Explorer.

• Help now has a PyDoc help page, similar in functionality to the Tkinter pydoc search dialog installed with Python, but integrated in the Help window.

• Zip Transport now allows write/clipboard operations. Create a new blank archive by right clicking and selecting New->Empty zip archive from a File system folder.

• Default resource config files are now stored in Config and no longer in the Boa root. If $HOME is defined .boa-constructor is now used as default instead of .boa, to be the same as the Debian boa.

• Plugin Preference storage changes. init.plug-in.py file no longer used. To avoid writing to Plug-ins directory this info is now stored in Explorer.*.cfg

• Plug-ins can now automatically expose Preference settings, available from: Preferences->Plug-ins->Preferences

• Plug-in filetypes (Pascal, Java, Pyrex) now generate their STC config files automatically and store them in the resource config directory instead of in Plug-ins.

• The Shell can now be either be the Boa Shell, PyCrust or entirely turned off. See Preferences->General->Shell->psPythonShell

• The Explorer page can also be turned off, but this is not recommended unless you have a good reason as things like Preferences or Zope are only available through the Explorer.
• Filesystem items can be Inspected to see file attributes like creation and modification date.
• wxSTC/wxHTMLWindow views now have the option to print.
• A new Tools menu has been added to the main menu.
• Simple regex editor/matcher window now available under Tools. It's very simple but still handy.
• New Palette page "wxPython.lib", currently only has wxGenStaticText. This is now the recommended replacement for wxStaticText as it behaves properly in the Designer on Linux.
• Fixed bug in wxSplitterWindow companion where deletion could lead to a crash.

• Added explicit config files for the WXMAC platform and also hopefully improved initial layout.

• Wrote a simple Explorer wrapper so the wxPython demo can be "hosted" in Boa. I still use Robin's excellent demo often and it's handy to have the code directly in Boa. Turned off by default, turn on under Preferences->Plug-ins->Plug-in files, and restart Boa.

• Input page, typically for non-gui Python scripts that read from the keyboard (stdin). It appears as a page on the TraceBack/Output/Error notebook. To turn on choose: File->Toggle use input stream

• Also new for the TraceBack/Error/Output notebook, it's history can be browsed from the new buttons on the statusbar.

Release - 0.2.3-alpha (Released on March 31, 2003)

• Notes:
  • Use the documentation from the 0.2.0-alpha release
  Release Notes:
  • Primarily a bugfix release
  • Some changes to improve handling of non-ASCII source, see Docs/boa/apphelp/NonASCII.html

CVS - 0.2.2 (Released on March 14, 2003)

Notes from Riaan:

• I've updated CVS with changes needed to be compatible with 2.4.0.6. This is now the minimum required version.

  There is now a script included under Scripts/UpgradeNotebookParams.py. Run this script with generated source filenames as command-line parametes to upgrade them to the new wxNotebook.AddPage parameter signature. The code generator now uses True/False instead of true/false, but only for new code or code changed in the

Designer.

• I'd like to release 0.2.2 soon, so those who can, please test it.

CVS - 0.2.1 (Released on February 2, 2003)

• Release Notes:
  • String imports have been fixed.
  • Other small fixes as reported on the mailing list.
  • Note about the Python help:
    • There was a typo in Explorer.*.cfg: 'python/pythonhelp.hhp', should be 'python/python.hhp', This has been updated in CVS, but *.cfg files aren't updated automatically if your resource config directory is not the Boa root (like $HOME/.boa). So update manually if needed.

Release 0.2.0-alpha (Released on January 13, 2003)

• NOTE: There have been reports of Boa having issues with the unicode version of wxPython 2.4.0.1 and recently issues with "string" imports with wxPython 2.4.0.2. This version runs with Python 2.1 or 2.2, wxPython 2.3.2 through 2.4.0. Release Notes:

  • Feature full, stable, out of process debugger. Includes specialised Zope support like stepping though and breaking into Zope Python scripts.
  • Major refactorings to make most of the modules pluggable and optional. e.g. You may turn off all wxPython/Zope development support for pure Python (or Tkinter) centric development. All plug-ins and settings can be managed through the GUI.
  • Many other improvements and fixes to the Explorer, Designer and Editor.

  • New optional plug-ins like LinkApps, Pyrex support, Image editor, RegistryExplorer (read-only), limited XRC support and more.

  • Improved documentation

  • Added Zope ExternalMethod for runtime hooking of the debugger. No longer need to run z2.py from the IDE, see the Debugger page in the docs.

  • Changes to accommodate MacOS X, many, many problems remain, but Boa can now at least start up on MacOS X! Thanks to Kevin Altis.

CVS - 0.1.5 (Released on January 3, 2003)

• This version runs with Python 2.1, 2.2, wxPython 2.3.2, 2.3.3, and 2.3.4. Release Notes:
  • Generated source can now be wrapped over multiple lines. Lines are only broken up after commas, inside brackets, but this works well enough.

    3 new Preferences added to the General->Code generation section. This feature is now on by default.

  • I've abandoned the strategy of renaming plug-ins to disable them. This was too unfriendly for things like CVS. Also plug-ins can now be ordered. Both these changes are implemented with a new file called

    init.plug-in.py in your Plug-ins directory which defines the list of disabled and ordered plugin names. Ordered plug-ins are executed first (in order!) Everything can be managed thru the GUI under

    Preferences->Plug-ins->Plug-in files.

  • Improved Find/Replace dialog. Now supports 'Find in files' and seaching in the Explorer. Thanks to Roman Yakovenko for the patches!
  • Refactored Controller menu/toolbar definitions to use the same format that View menu/toolbar definitions uses. One visible result of this is that menu items can now display images.
  • Improved tab support. The frame designer can now properly generate tab indented code. People who care about this, please test as I don't use this.

  • Added ImageEditor.plug-in.py. This is an image editor I hacked up ages ago. (I needed masked PNG support!) I just wrapped up the editor as a Boa View.

    It's rough but it works (Hint: When editing images with masks, set the mask again before

    • saving, otherwise the previous mask is used)
  • Shortcut keys now work better on Linux (Ctrl-S works!!!).
  • Composite controls like wxGrid now work properly in the Designer on Linux.

    Unfortunately many other controls still misbehave on Linux

  • Added wxSpinCtrl

  • Zope: Added SiteErrorLog support. Just delete your zoa folder in your Zope root and the new zoa will be automatically installed.

  • Removed the bundled PyChecker from the repository. Boa now tries to use the one installed on your system.

Release 0.1.0-alpha

• This version works best with Python 2.1 and wxPython 2.3.2

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