Description: Pmw - a toolkit for building high-level compound widgets in Python

# Porting between different versions of Pmw

This document contains a brief guide to porting existing code between different versions of Pmw. It includes significant functionality changes but does not include bug fixes or compatible enhancements. For details of all changes, see Changes to Pmw versions.

*Porting from 1.2 to 1.3:

- Bug fix, documention and new features only. No backwards-incompatible changes.

Porting from 0.8.5 to 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2

- Bug fix, documention and new features only. No backwards-incompatible changes.

Porting from 0.8.4 to 0.8.5

- Bug fix release only. No interface changes.

Porting from 0.8.3 to 0.8.4

- Change the `setnaturalpagesize()` method of Pmw.NoteBook to `setnaturalsize()` (to be consistent with Pmw.PanedWidget).

- Change Pmw.excludefrombusycursor() to Pmw.setbusycursorattributes(). Replace busyCursorName option of Pmw.initialise() with cursorName attribute of Pmw.setbusycursorattributes().

- Several rarely used key bindings for Pmw.ScrolledListBox were removed, changing the behaviour of the megawidget.

Porting from 0.8.1 to 0.8.3

- The megawidgets Pmw.NoteBookR and Pmw.NoteBookS have been replaced by a new Pmw.NoteBook. The interfaces are not compatible, so see the Pmw.NoteBook reference manual for details.

- Change the get() method of Pmw.OptionMenu to getcurselection() and the remove() method of Pmw.PanedWidget to delete().

- If you use 'end', 'default' or None in calls to the index() method of several megawidgets, change these to Pmw.END, Pmw.DEFAULT and Pmw.SELECT, respectively.

- The exclude argument has been removed from Pmw.showbusycursor(). Use Pmw.excludefrombusycursor() instead.

- The names of some of the positional arguments in the following methods have changed: MegaArchetype.createcomponent(), ButtonBox.insert(), ButtonBox.add(), MenuBar.addcascademenu(), MenuBar.addmenuitem() and RadioSelect.add().

- The Pmw.maxfontwidth() function has been removed. Use the `font_measure()` Tkinter method, or if that has not yet been implemented:

         someWidget.tk.call('font', 'measure', someFont, 'W')

- The Pmw.fontexists() function has been removed. This is because, since Tk8.0, all fonts exist, so it no longer has any meaning.

Porting from 0.8 to 0.8.1

- The Blt.Graph now supports blt2.4i which is not backwards compatible with blt2.1.

Porting from 0.7 to 0.8

- The format argument of Pmw.datestringtojdn() now defaults to 'ymd'. If you want to display dates with year, month and day in a different order, add a format option to Pmw.datestringtojdn() or to the datatype option of Pmw.Counter or the validate option of Pmw.EntryField.

- The justify() method from Pmw.ScrolledListBox has been removed. Use the xview() or yview() methods instead.

- Replace the getFrame() method of Pmw.ScrolledFrame with the interior() method.

- Replace the ringpadx and ringpady options of Pmw.Group by padding the megawidget itself or by padding the children of the megawidget.

- Replace the canvasbind() and canvasunbind() methods of Pmw.Balloon with tagbind() and tagunbind().

- The return value of Pmw.EntryField command callback is now ignored. Previously, if the callback destroyed the megawidget, it was required to return the string 'break', to work around a problem in the event handling mechanism in Tkinter. With python 1.5.2, Tkinter has been fixed. Therefore, user-supplied callback functions should use Pmw.hulldestroyed to check if the megawidget has been destroyed before performing any operations on it.

- If you require the 'pmw1' fontScheme when running under Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, you will need to set the Tk font options manually.

Porting from 0.6 to 0.7

- Replace the maxwidth option of Pmw.EntryField with the 'max' field of the validate option.

- To specify that there should be no validation performed for a Pmw.EntryField, the validate option must be None, not '' as before.

- The date and time values of the Pmw.EntryField validate option (such as 'date_dmy' and 'time24', etc) are no longer supported. Instead use a dictionary as the value of the validate option with 'date' or 'time' in the 'validator' field. Include other fields in the dictionary to further specify the validation.

- Pmw.Counter no longer supports the old date and time values for the datatype option. Use a dictionary with a 'counter' field of 'date' or 'time' and other fields to further specify the counting.

- Pmw.Counter no longer supports the min and max options. Use the Pmw.EntryField validate option instead.

- The bbox method of Pmw.ScrolledListBox now refers to the bbox method of the listbox component, not the hull component.

- By default, Pmw.MenuBar now automatically adds hotkeys to menus and menu items for keyboard traversal. To turn this off, use the `hotkeys = 0` option.

- The createcomponent() method now disallows the creation of component names containing an underscore. If any component names contain an underscore, rename them.

Porting from 0.5 to 0.6

To port applications using Pmw version 0.5 to version 0.6, make sure you are using python1.5. Then, simply change any lines in your application like this:

       from PmwLazy import Pmw

to this:

       import Pmw

Also, if you have added the `lib` directory of a specific version of Pmw to `sys.path` or `PYTHONPATH`, this can be removed, as long as Pmw can now be found from the default path, such as in the python `site-packages` directory.

Porting from 0.2 to 0.4

- To get Pmw.0.2 default fonts (helvetica with bold italic menus and italic scales) initialise with:

         Pmw.initialise(fontScheme = 'pmw1')

  If no fontScheme is given, the standard Tk default fonts are used.

- Remove all calls to setdefaultresources(), usual(), keep(), renameoptions(), ignore() and defineoptiontypes().

- Move call to defineoptions() to before call to base class constructor, create optiondefs tuple from self.defineoptions arguments, then call defineoptions().

- Remove resource class and name from optiondefs.

- The last element in the optiondefs tuple (callback function) must be given (may be None).

- Add to classes currently without any options:

         optiondefs = ()
         self.defineoptions(kw, optiondefs)

- Use createcomponent() to create components - this replaces the calls to the component widget constructor and to registercomponent().

- Do not inherit from Pmw.LabeledWidget. Instead, replace with Pmw.MegaWidget with labelpos and labelmargin options and a call to self.createlabel(). If calling createlabel(), must replace pack() with grid().

- When calling a megawidget constructor, include subcomponent name when setting subcomponent options (eg labeltext -> label_text)

- The items option of ScrolledListBox is an initialisation option only - use setlist() method after initialisation.

- The autorelief option for Counter, EntryField, ScrolledText, TextDialog has been removed.

- ScrolledListBox.getcurselection() always returns a tuple of strings, possibly of zero length.

- Counter increment is always initialised to 1.

- The 'time' Counter datatype option has been replaced by 'timeN' and 'time24'.

- The 'time' EntryField validate option has been replaced by 'timeN' and 'time24'.

- Replace call to initialise() with initialiseoptions(), removing "kw" arg. This should always be the last line in a megawidget constructor.

- Replace hide() with withdraw().

- Now need iconpos option for MessageDialogs with icon_bitmap option set.

- Example megawidget class definition:

      class MyBigWidget(Pmw.MegaWidget):
          def __init__(self, parent = None, **kw):

              # Define the megawidget options.
              optiondefs = (
                  ('errorbackground',   'pink',      None),
                  ('maxwidth',          0,           self._myfunc),
                  ('myinit',            'good',      Pmw.INITOPT),
              )
              self.defineoptions(kw, optiondefs)

              # Initialise the base class (after defining the options).
              Pmw.MegaWidget.__init__(self, parent)

              # Create the components.
              interior = self.interior()
              self._widget = self.createcomponent('component',
                      (('alias', 'component_alias'),), None,
                      Tkinter.Button, (interior,))
              self._widget.grid(column=0, row=0, sticky='nsew')

              self.createlabel(interior)

              # Initialise instance variables.
              self.deriveddummy = None

              # Check keywords and initialise options.
              self.initialiseoptions(MyBigWidget)

Pmw 1.3.3 - 29 Mar 2014 - Home