Random stuff

More work on ExtensionClass based pygtk. I now have an
almost finished code generator that will convert files in
Havoc’s new defs format to ExtensionClass based wrappers.
There are a few problems, but it is mostly working.
Handling of plain functions is partly done as well.

I should apply some of the fixes people have sent in to
the HEAD branch of pygtk. I should also look at fixing the
gettext.py bug for catalogs created on big endian
machines.

It got up to 37 degrees C today. Very hot.

Have started using Sawmill as my window manager. It
feels quite nice and is very configurable. I am sure I
could easily waste hours getting it to act exactly how I
want it to 🙂

Have started working on the new ExtensionClass based
pygtk code. It is on the extension-class-branch of
pygtk in CVS. Currently there is not much to see other than
a program to convert header files to Havoc’s new defs file
format and a program to merge changes from one defs file
into another (needed because the header parser is not
perfect and there is some info that is just not included in
C headers). There is also a bit of code in pygtk/gtk/ (I am
rearanging some of the modules to be nicer to the module
namespace, and friendlier to case insensitive platforms such
as win32). Code generator comes next.

A new SVG draft came out. It includes stuff about
`Exchange SVG’. Maybe it would be good to use it for the
shape files in dia instead of the current method using style
attributes.

Haven’t posted anything here for a while. We released a
new version of dia. Some of the features are not complete,
but for most things, it is more stable than the last
version. I also updated the web site this time 🙂

Still looking into using ExtensionClass
in pygtk/gnome-python. I wasn’t able to find any info on
subclassing ExtensionClasses from C and didn’t get any
response from Jim Fulton, so I went ahead and added the
feature myself. I posted the patch to Jim and the zope-dev
list for anyone else who may want it. I hope it gets
included, as I don’t want to end up maintaining a fork of
ExtensionClass. This looks like it will greatly reduce the
amount of hand coded stuff found in pygtk, which will be
good.

There are a number of patches that I have to integrate
into pygtk. I will look at that soon. I should also make a
new release of libglade as well.

The river is still toxic. There were hardly any boats
out on the river today. It is not surprising that there
weren’t many small boats (you wouldn’t want to risk falling
in), but there didn’t seem to be many larger boats
either.

Thought a bit about buying my own set of scuba gear.
This will be easier than sharing the sets with the other
rovers down at Pelican Point.

As for dia, I posted something about some of James Cape’s
suggestions for the UI of the toolbox to the list. Not many
people liked the idea of having seperate windows for each
sheet. I can’t say I like the idea that much.

I finished integrating Lars’s properties patch into dia
(after modifying it so that it uses the offsets code). Now
you can group a number of lines and set their dash pattern
(before, you would have to ungroup the lines and go to each
individual properties dialog.

There are a few missing features though. Undo on changes
to a group does not work correctly. I will have to
implement a “compound ObjectChange” for this to work
correctly. I should also make it so you can modify the
properties of multiple objects without having to group them
(just selecting them).

Once more of the objects are changed over to using
properties maybe we will put out another release. There are
a few changes I want to make to the properties code though
(eg. giving bounds for number properties, giving enumeration
values for enum properties, etc).

I made a new release of gnome-python yesterday. Most of
the fixes in this one were applied by Matt Wilson. I am
looking at changing gnome-python/pygtk over to using
ExtensionClass. This will hopefully remove a lot of the
hand written python code, increase the amount of code that
can be generated, reduce memory usage and give a one to one
PyObject <–> GtkObject mapping and remove the need
for python class wrappers. With Havoc’s new defs file
format, doing the code generation should be even easier.