The “Book” Controls of wxPython (Part 2 of 2)

In the first part of this series, I wrote on all the non-agw notebook widgets included with wxPython. For this second article, I will be focusing on the two notebooks that are in the AGW library of wxPython. AGW stands for Advanced Generic Widgets, a set of widgets that are written in Python instead of wrapped C++ code. I personally think that AGW is also a callback to its amazing author, Andrea Gavana. Regardless, the two widgets in this review will be the FlatNotebook and another AUI Notebook. The FlatNotebook has a great demo and I will spend most of this article on demos I’ve created that are based on it. The AUI Notebook is a part of agw.aui. While the demo for agw.aui is cool, it focuses on AUI in general, not the notebook. So I’ll just show you what I can glean from that. Now, let’s get cracking!

Update: The API changed slightly when it comes to AGW-related widgets. Basically some style flags in wxPython 2.8.11.0+ now require the agw-specific style flags. To use them, you’ll need to use the agwStyle keyword. See Andrea’s docs for more info: http://xoomer.virgilio.it/infinity77/AGW_Docs/ If you run into an error, try changing that first or post to the mailing list.

The Amazing FlatNotebook

The Flatbook control is written in Python rather than a wrapped widget from wxWidgets. It was added to wxPython with the release of wxPython 2.8.9.2 on February 16, 2009. Since then Andrea Gavana has been updating the agw library with lots of fixes. My examples will work with the 2.8.9.2+ versions of wxPython, but I recommend getting the SVN version of agw and replacing your default one with it as there have been a lot of bug fixes applied to the AUI module and several others. There is also an effort going on currently to better document this library in the code itself, so you may find that helpful too!

Here are a few of the FlatNotebook’s Features:

5 Different tab styles
It’s a generic control (i.e. pure python) so it’s easy to modify
You can use the mouse’s middle-click to close tabs
A built-in function to add right-click pop-up menus on tabs
A way to hide the “X” that closes the individual tabs
Support for disabled tabs
Plus lots more! See the source and the wxPython Demo for more information!

Now that we’ve done an unpaid commercial, let’s take a look at the actual product:

Listing 1

import panelOne, panelTwo, panelThree
import wx
import wx.lib.agw.flatnotebook as fnb
 
########################################################################
class FlatNotebookDemo(fnb.FlatNotebook):
    """
    Flatnotebook class
    """
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self, parent):
        """Constructor"""
        fnb.FlatNotebook.__init__(self, parent, wx.ID_ANY)
 
        pageOne = panelOne.TabPanel(self)
        pageTwo = panelTwo.TabPanel(self)
        pageThree = panelThree.TabPanel(self)
 
        self.AddPage(pageOne, "PageOne")
        self.AddPage(pageTwo, "PageTwo")
        self.AddPage(pageThree, "PageThree")
 
########################################################################
class DemoFrame(wx.Frame):
    """
    Frame that holds all other widgets
    """
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self):
        """Constructor"""
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, None, wx.ID_ANY,
                          "FlatNotebook Tutorial",
                          size=(600,400)
                          )
        panel = wx.Panel(self)
 
        notebook = FlatNotebookDemo(panel)
        sizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL)
        sizer.Add(notebook, 1, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 5)
        panel.SetSizer(sizer)
        self.Layout()
 
        self.Show()
 
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = wx.PySimpleApp()
    frame = DemoFrame()
    app.MainLoop()

In Listing 1, I subclass FlatNotebook and use the generic panels from my previous article for the pages. You’ll notice that FlatNotebook has its own AddPage method that mimics the wx.Notebook. This should come as no surprise as the FlatNotebook’s API is such that you should be able to use it as a drop-in replacement for wx.Notebook. Of course, right out of the box, FlatNotebook has the advantage. If you run the demo above, you’ll see that FlatNotebook allows the user to rearrange the tabs, close the tabs and it includes some previous/next buttons in case you have more tabs than can fit on-screen at once.

Now let’s take a look at the various styles that we can apply to FlatNotebook:

Listing 2

import panelOne, panelTwo, panelThree
import wx
import wx.lib.agw.flatnotebook as fnb
 
########################################################################
class FlatNotebookDemo(fnb.FlatNotebook):
    """
    Flatnotebook class
    """
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self, parent):
        """Constructor"""
        fnb.FlatNotebook.__init__(self, parent, wx.ID_ANY)
 
        pageOne = panelOne.TabPanel(self)
        pageTwo = panelTwo.TabPanel(self)
        pageThree = panelThree.TabPanel(self)
 
        self.AddPage(pageOne, "PageOne")
        self.AddPage(pageTwo, "PageTwo")
        self.AddPage(pageThree, "PageThree")
 
 
########################################################################
class DemoFrame(wx.Frame):
    """
    Frame that holds all other widgets
    """
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self):
        """Constructor"""
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, None, wx.ID_ANY,
                          "FlatNotebook Tutorial with Style",
                          size=(600,400)
                          )
        self.styleDict = {"Default":self.OnDefaultStyle,
                          "VC71":self.OnVC71Style,
                          "VC8":self.OnVC8Style,
                          "Fancy":self.OnFancyStyle,
                          "Firefox 2":self.OnFF2Style}
        choices = self.styleDict.keys()
 
        panel = wx.Panel(self)
        self.notebook = FlatNotebookDemo(panel)
        self.styleCbo = wx.ComboBox(panel, wx.ID_ANY, "Default",
                                    wx.DefaultPosition, wx.DefaultSize,
                                    choices=choices, style=wx.CB_DROPDOWN)
        styleBtn = wx.Button(panel, wx.ID_ANY, "Change Style")
        styleBtn.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.onStyle)
 
        # create some sizers
        sizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL)
        hSizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL)
 
        # add the widgets to the sizers
        sizer.Add(self.notebook, 1, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 5)
        hSizer.Add(self.styleCbo, 0, wx.ALL|wx.CENTER, 5)
        hSizer.Add(styleBtn, 0, wx.ALL, 5)
        sizer.Add(wx.StaticLine(panel), 0, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 5)
        sizer.Add(hSizer, 0, wx.ALL, 5)
 
        panel.SetSizer(sizer)
        self.Layout()
 
        self.Show()
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def onStyle(self, event):
        """
        Changes the style of the tabs
        """
        print "in onStyle"
        style = self.styleCbo.GetValue()
        print style
        self.styleDict[style]()
 
    # The following methods were taken from the wxPython 
    # demo for the FlatNotebook
    def OnFF2Style(self):
 
        style = self.notebook.GetWindowStyleFlag()
 
        # remove old tabs style
        mirror = ~(fnb.FNB_VC71 | fnb.FNB_VC8 | fnb.FNB_FANCY_TABS | fnb.FNB_FF2)
        style &= mirror
 
        style |= fnb.FNB_FF2
 
        self.notebook.SetWindowStyleFlag(style)
 
 
    def OnVC71Style(self):
 
        style = self.notebook.GetWindowStyleFlag()
 
        # remove old tabs style
        mirror = ~(fnb.FNB_VC71 | fnb.FNB_VC8 | fnb.FNB_FANCY_TABS | fnb.FNB_FF2)
        style &= mirror
 
        style |= fnb.FNB_VC71
 
        self.notebook.SetWindowStyleFlag(style)
 
 
    def OnVC8Style(self):
 
        style = self.notebook.GetWindowStyleFlag()
 
        # remove old tabs style
        mirror = ~(fnb.FNB_VC71 | fnb.FNB_VC8 | fnb.FNB_FANCY_TABS | fnb.FNB_FF2)
        style &= mirror
 
        # set new style
        style |= fnb.FNB_VC8
 
        self.notebook.SetWindowStyleFlag(style)
 
 
    def OnDefaultStyle(self):
 
        style = self.notebook.GetWindowStyleFlag()
 
        # remove old tabs style
        mirror = ~(fnb.FNB_VC71 | fnb.FNB_VC8 | fnb.FNB_FANCY_TABS | fnb.FNB_FF2)
        style &= mirror
 
        self.notebook.SetWindowStyleFlag(style)
 
 
    def OnFancyStyle(self):
 
        style = self.notebook.GetWindowStyleFlag()
 
        # remove old tabs style
        mirror = ~(fnb.FNB_VC71 | fnb.FNB_VC8 | fnb.FNB_FANCY_TABS | fnb.FNB_FF2)
        style &= mirror
 
        style |= fnb.FNB_FANCY_TABS
        self.notebook.SetWindowStyleFlag(style)
 
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = wx.PySimpleApp()
    frame = DemoFrame()
    app.MainLoop()

That’s a lot of code for a “simple” example, but I think it will help us understand how to apply tab styles to our widget. I borrowed most of the methods from the wxPython demo, in case you didn’t notice. The primary talking point in this code is the contents of those methods, which are mostly the same. Here’s the main snippet to take away from this section:

style = self.notebook.GetWindowStyleFlag()
 
# remove old tabs style
mirror = ~(fnb.FNB_VC71 | fnb.FNB_VC8 | fnb.FNB_FANCY_TABS | fnb.FNB_FF2)
style &= mirror
style |= fnb.FNB_FF2
self.notebook.SetWindowStyleFlag(style)

First, we need to get the current style of the FlatNotebook. Then we use some fancy magic in the “mirror” line that creates a set of styles that we want to remove. The line, “style &= mirror” actually does the removing and then we add the style we wanted with “style |= fnb.FNB_FF2″. Finally, we use SetWindowStyleFlag() to actually apply the style to the widget. You may be wondering what’s up with all those goofy symbols (i.e. |, ~, &). Well, those are known as bitwise operators. I don’t use them much myself, so I recommend reading the Python documentation for full details as I don’t fully understand them myself.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

bc

nice pair of articles. Do any of the aui notebook implementations (python or wrapped C++) support layout persistence (i.e. “perspectives”, in eclipse-speak)?
bc

nice pair of articles. Do any of the aui notebook implementations (python or wrapped C++) support layout persistence (i.e. “perspectives”, in eclipse-speak)?
http://www.pythonlibrary.org/ mld

@ bc:

Sorry, I forgot to include that in my articles. The agw.aui.AuiNotebook does support perspectives. I think I heard some rumblings that the C++ ones may get them too at some point, but Andrea Gavana decided to do his own thing rather than wait for the nebulous future. There’s an example in the official wxPython demo and I added a note to that effect in my 2nd article in the “Wrapping Up” section.

Thanks,

- Mike
http://www.pythonlibrary.org mld

@ bc:

Sorry, I forgot to include that in my articles. The agw.aui.AuiNotebook does support perspectives. I think I heard some rumblings that the C++ ones may get them too at some point, but Andrea Gavana decided to do his own thing rather than wait for the nebulous future. There’s an example in the official wxPython demo and I added a note to that effect in my 2nd article in the “Wrapping Up” section.

Thanks,

- Mike
Anonymous

Sorry, I forgot to include that in my articles. The agw.aui.AuiNotebook does support perspectives. I think I heard some rumblings that the C++ ones may get them too at some point, but Andrea Gavana decided to do his own thing rather than wait for the nebulous future. There’s an example in the official wxPython demo and I added a note to that effect in my 2nd article in the “Wrapping Up” section.buy air jordan
ma

your tutorials a clear however im not sure the newest version of wxpython implements the aui.AUI_NB_CLOSE_ON_ALL_TABS and similar flags correctly, has there been a change in the lib.agw.aui API or is it just a bug?
ma

again to be clear i have been testing with wxwidgets 2.8.11.0
Anonymous

Yeah, Andrea did some changes because some of his flags either interfered with some wx default flags or he just had too many to include using the normal flag-naming conventions. I think you have to preface the flag names with “agw” now.
ma

First off thank you for the quick reply!! that was unexpected and very much appreciated.
however i am sorry to be a pain but do you know off hand when that change may have been made or what svn revisions i should be looking at to see where the change may have occured . Unfortunaly alot of the wx.lib.agw.aui documenation found using google is for wxPython 2.8.9.2 and the change logs between major revisions don’t really provide any hint as to what needs to be done to modify those flags to work properly with 2.8.11.0

again thank you for your extremly prompt reply
Anonymous

Well, the docs for wx aren’t getting updated lately because of a problem caused by an upgrade to the documentation tool chain. It sucks and I hope Robin can figure it out. As I recall, the changes occurred after wxPython 2.8.10, sometime this Spring. Fortunately, Andrea has kept his docs updated and it looks like I misspoke. The name of the new style is agwStyle. Anyway, here’s a link:

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/infinity77/AGW_Docs/
ma

Thanks again, half the problem was finding the right documentation! hopefully this little detail will help the next poor soul that finds this problem

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