| <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Using FrameWork and TextEdit</TITLE></HEAD> |
| <BODY> |
| <H1>Using FrameWork and TextEdit</H1> |
| <HR> |
| |
| In this document we use the <CODE>FrameWork</CODE> and <CODE>TextEdit</CODE> |
| modules to create a simple text editor. The functionality |
| of the editor is very basic: you can open multiple files, type text and use |
| cut/copy/paste. The main intention is to explain the use of FrameWork, really. <p> |
| |
| <H2>FrameWork</H2> |
| |
| The FrameWork module provides you with a skeleton application. It declares a |
| number of classes suitable for subclassing in your application, thereby |
| releaving you of the burden of doing all event handling, etc. yourself. For a |
| real understanding you will have to browse the source. Here is a short overview |
| of the classes and what functionality they provide. |
| |
| <dl> |
| <dt> <CODE>Application</CODE> |
| <dd> |
| This is the toplevel class you will override. It maintains the menu bar and contains |
| the main event handling code. Normal use is to override the <code>__init__</code> routine |
| to do your own initializations and override <code>makeusermenus</code> to create your menus |
| (your menu callback routines may be here too, but this is by no means necessary). |
| The event handling code can be overridden at various levels, from very low-level (the |
| <code>dispatch</code> method) to intermedeate level (<code>do_keyDown</code>, for instance) |
| to high-level (<code>do_key</code>). The application class knows about the <code>Window</code> |
| objects you create, and will forward events to the appropriate window (So, normally you |
| would have a <code>do_key</code> method in your window object, not your application object). |
| |
| <dt> <CODE>MenuBar</CODE>, <CODE>Menu</CODE> and <CODE>MenuItem</CODE> |
| <dd> |
| These classes (and a few friends like <CODE>SubMenu</CODE>) handle your menus. You would not |
| normally override them but use them as-is. The idiom for creating menus is a bit strange, |
| see the test code at the bottom of FrameWork for sample use. The apple menu is handled for you |
| by <CODE>MenuBar</CODE> and <CODE>Application</CODE>. |
| |
| <dt> <CODE>Window</CODE> |
| <dd> |
| The basic window. Again, a class that you normally subclass in your application, possibly |
| multiple times if you have different types of windows. The init call instantiates the data |
| structure but actually opening the window is delayed until you call <code>open</code>. Your |
| open method should call <code>do_postopen</code> to let the base class handle linking in to |
| the application object. Similarly with <code>close</code> and <code>do_postclose</code>. The |
| rest of the code is mainly event-oriented: you override <code>do_postresize</code>, |
| <code>do_contentclick</code>, <code>do_update</code>, <code>do_activate</code> |
| and <code>do_key</code> to "do your thing". When these methods are called the relevant environment |
| has been setup (like <code>BeginDrawing</code> has been called for updates, etc). |
| |
| <dt> <CODE>windowbounds</CODE> |
| <dd> |
| Not a class but a function: you pass it a width and height and it will return you a rectangle |
| you can use to create your window. It will take care of staggering windows and it will try |
| to fit the window on the screen (but the resulting rect will <em>always</em> have the size you |
| specify). |
| |
| <dt> <CODE>ControlsWindow</CODE> |
| <dd> |
| A subclass of Window which automatically handles drawing and clicking for controls. You override |
| the same methods as for Window (if you need to: control-related things are done automatically) and |
| <code>do_controlhit</code>. |
| |
| <dt> <CODE>ScrolledWindow</CODE> |
| <dd> |
| A subclass of ControlsWindow, a window with optional scrollbars. If you override <code>do_activate</code> |
| or <code>do_postresize</code> you must call the ScrolledWindow methods at the end of your override. |
| You call <code>scrollbars</code> to enable/disable scrollbars and <code>updatescrollbars</code> to |
| update them. You provide <code>getscrollbarvalues</code> to return the current x/y values (a helper |
| method <code>scalebarvalues</code> is available) and <code>scrollbarcallback</code> to update your |
| display after the user has used the scrollbars. |
| |
| <dt> <CODE>DialogWindow</CODE> |
| <dd> |
| A modeless dialog window initialized from a DLOG resource. See the |
| <A HREF="example2.html">second Interslip example</A> for its useage. |
| </dl> |
| |
| <H2>A sample text editor</H2> |
| |
| Let us have a look at <A HREF="textedit/ped.py">ped.py</A> (in the Demo:textedit folder), the Pathetic |
| EDitor. It has multiple windows, cut/copy/paste and keyboard input, but that is about all. It looks |
| as if you can resize the window but it does not work. Still, it serves as an example. |
| |
| Ped creates two classes, <code>TEWindow</code> and <code>Ped</code>. Let us start with the latter one, |
| which is a subclass of <code>FrameWork.Application</code> and our main application. The init function |
| has little to do aside from the standard init: it remembers a window sequence number (for untitled windows), |
| and sets things up for menu disable to work. Remember, the <code>makeusermenus</code> is called |
| automatically. <p> |
| |
| <code>Makeusermenus</code> creates the <code>File</code> and <code>Edit</code> menus. It also initializes |
| a couple of lists that are used later to correctly enable and disable menu items (and complete menus) depending |
| on whether a window is open, text is selected, etc. The callback functions for the menu items are |
| all methods of this class. <p> |
| |
| <code>Updatemenubar</code> handles greying out (and re-enabling) of menu items depending on whether there |
| is a current window and its state. <p> |
| |
| The rest of the methods are all callbacks and simple to understand. They check whether there is an active |
| window (and complain loudly if there is none: the corresponding menu entry should have been disabled |
| in that case!) and call the appropriate window method. Only the <code>_open</code> method (the common code |
| for <code>Open</code> and <code>New</code>) deserves some mention. It instantiates a <code>TEWindow</code> |
| object and opens it with the title, filename and contents of the file to edit. Note that FrameWork takes |
| care of remembering the window object. A minor note on opening the file in binary mode: this is because |
| TextEdit expects MacOS style carriage-return terminated lines, not python/unix/C style newline-terminated |
| lines. <p> |
| |
| Oh yes: the <code>quit</code> callback does a little magic too. It closes all windows, and only if this |
| succeeds it actually quits. This gives the user a chance to cancel the operation if some files are unsaved. |
| <p> |
| |
| Lastly, there is the <code>idle</code> method, called by the Application base class when no event |
| is available. It is forwarded to the active window, so it can blink the text caret. <p> |
| |
| The <code>TEWindow</code> object handles a single window. Due to this structuring it is absolutely no |
| problem to have multiple windows open at the same time (although a real application should exercise care when |
| two windows refer to the same document). TEWindow uses the standard init code inherited from |
| <code>ScrolledWindow</code>, and sets itself up at the time of the <code>open</code> call. It obtains screen |
| coordinates, opens the window, creates rectangles for TextEdit to work in (the magical number <code>15</code> |
| here is the size of a normal scroll bar: unfortunately there is no symbolic constant for it), |
| creates the TextEdit object and initializes it with our data. Finally, the scroll bars are created (the |
| initial values will be obtained automatically through <code>getscrollbarvalues</code>) and we activate |
| ourselves (this is unfortunately not done automatically by the MacOS event handling code). <p> |
| |
| <code>Do_idle</code> simply calls the TextEdit routine that blinks the cursor. <code>Getscrollbarvalues</code> |
| returns the current X and Y scrollbar values, scaled to <code>0..32767</code>. For X we return <code>None</code>, |
| which means "no scrollbar, please", for Y we use the scaler provided by <code>ScrolledWindow</code>. <p> |
| |
| <code>Scrollbar_callback</code> is called when the user uses the scrollbar. It is passed a string <code>'x'</code> |
| or <code>'y'</code>, one of <code>'set', '-', '--', '+', '++'</code> and (for <code>set</code>) an absolute |
| value. Note that the sign of the value passed to <code>TEPinScroll</code> is counter-intuitive. <p> |
| |
| <code>do_activate</code> (de)activates the scrollbars and calls the relevant TextEdit routine. Moreover, it |
| tells the application object if we are now the active window, and updates the menubar. The next few methods |
| are update and menu callbacks, and pretty straightforward. Note that <code>do_close</code> can |
| return without closing the window (if the document is changed and the users cancels out of the operation). |
| Also note the "magic" in <code>menu_save_as</code> |
| that set the correct window title. <p> |
| |
| Things get moderately interesting again at the cut/copy/paste handling, since the TextEdit scrap is |
| separate from the desktop scrap. For that reason there are various calls to routines that move the scrap |
| back and forth. <code>Have_selection</code> is called by the menubar update code to determine whether cut and |
| copy should be enabled. <p> |
| |
| Understanding the main program is left as an exercise to the reader. <p> |
| |
| <hr> |
| That's all for this example, you could now continue with the <A HREF="waste.html">next example</A>, where we use WASTE, a more-or-less |
| TextEdit compatible library with more functionality, to rebuild our editor. Or you can |
| return to the <A HREF="index.html">table of contents</A> to pick another topic. <p> |