ANNOUNCE: kiwi 1.9.2

[Johan Dahlin <jdahlin async com br>]

Kiwi is a PyGTK framework for building graphical applications loosely
based on MVC Model-View-Controller (MVC) and Allen Holub's Visual proxy
[1]. Think of Kiwi as a high-level, object-oriented layer built on
PyGTK.

Its design is based on real-world experience using PyGTK to develop
large desktop applications, which use many concepts common to most
graphical applications: multiple windows and dialogs, forms, data
persistence, lists and high-level classes that support domain objects
directly.

What's new since 1.9.2?
=======================

* API Documentation
  See below

* Kiwi Tasklets
  Tasklet is a small coroutines framework written by Gustavo Carniero,
  it was previously known as gtasklets.

* Icon entries
  As part of the validation framework adding icon inside entries has
  been redone. It means they work for Entry, SpinButton & ComboBoxEntry
  Scrolling and various other problem has been fixed.

* Decorators
  argcheck: type/argument checking for method/functions
  delayed:  delayed function calling
  deprecated: deprecated functionality

* Currency
  Added is code to do currency formatting, which will
  include the currency symbol, decimal and thousand separators.

* List labels
  To be used together with the Kiwi list, allowed you to
  have an area below the list where you can for example
  summarize the values of a column. It'll resize and move
  as you move the columns.

* Distutils and distribution helpers
  These are included to aid writing distributable packages,
  takes care of installing, and finding resources in an easy
  and flexible way.

* Minor changes
  Bug fixes all over the place!
  Wizard improvements (Evandro)
  Validation/Proxy refactoring
  Portuguese and Swedish translation

Features
========

* An MVC-derived framework of classes:
  * Views, which represent the graphical display
  * Controllers, which handles user interaction with the widgets
    in a View.
  * Delegates, combines a View and a Controller.
  * Models, which are special mixins for your domain objects
  * Proxies, special types of Delegate designed to implement forms

* Validation: Kiwi supports validation on different levels:
  data type validation and verification on the Model/Proxy level,
  View validation and hooks for displaying state user interface, and
  Widget (Gtk/PyGTK) level support to provide user feedback of
  failed and mandatory validation status.

* A List widget, which provides a higher level abstraction of
  GtkTreeView and all its classes (GtkTreeModel, GtkTreeViewColumn,
  GtkCellRenderer) with hooks to easily integrate into the
  Kiwi Framework.

* Gazpacho integration for most (non-deprecated) interactive
  widgets with attributes for handling validation and proxy
  attributes.

* PyGTK utilities, to make it easier to add signals and properties to
  your objects.

* i18n translation utilities, to help you translate PyGTK applications,
  currently depends on gettext and intltool.

* and many other things!

Kiwi is based on the real-world experience of using PyGTK to develop 
fairly large applications, which uses many concepts common to most 
graphical applications: multiple windows and dialogs, forms, data 
persistence, lists and high-level classes that support domain objects 
directly.

Requirements
============

Python 2.3 or higher (2.4 recommended)  http://www.python.org/
PyGTK 2.6.0 or higher (2.8 recommended) http://www.pygtk.org/
gazpacho 0.6.2 (svn recommenced)        http://gazpacho.sicem.biz/

Documentation
=============
New in this released is API documentation which is generated using
epydoc[3]. It's still being written but at this point I feel that
it's good enough to be a very useful resource to help understand
kiwi. It can be found at

 http://www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi/api/

Included in the tarball are also a number of examples, which serves as a
good starting point. Keep in mind that most of them require gazpacho to 
be installed.

Thanks
======
Christian Robottom Reis: Original author and design
Lorenzo Gil Sanchez: PyGTK 2.x port

Also thanks to the following people which has contributed minor features
or bug reports:
Henrique Romano, Daniel Saran R. da Cunha, Evandro Vale Miquelito,
Gustavo Barbieri, Gustavo Carneiro, Sidnei da Silva

Resources
=========

homepage     http://www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi/
download     http://www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi/download/
repository   http://svn.async.com.br/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/kiwi/
report a bug http://bugs.async.com.br/enter_bug.cgi?product=Kiwi
api docs     http://www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi/api/
open bugs    http://tinyurl.com/cyrms
mail. list   http://www.async.com.br/mailman/listinfo/kiwi/

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller
[2] http://tinyurl.com/2ccch
[3] http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/

--
Johan Dahlin <jdahlin async com br>
Async Open Source