Chris.
If you stand back and view the entire issue I think you will see that form creation requires a great amount of effort, no matter what. You can you use sizers, yourself, which is a heck of a lot of work, or, you can use a form builder in which a heck of a lot of man-hours went into creating it. Boa’s maintenance was probably dropped due to the author’s exhaustion !
To pick up and maintain something like Boa requires (a) dedicated expert(s) willing to devote a horrendous amount of time to it. You are in the applications development business, not the wxPython form builder tool business.
Sizers may or may not be evil, but they are a PITA to code. Apparently, the authors that created the sizers were obviously experts in geometry management, but were somewhat lacking in the API “ease-of-use” department. I have a serious pet peeve about the inane API for BoxSizers, in general. But, experts in geometry management and API ergonomics are very, very rare. Finding someone who is expert in those two areas who is willing to write a thorough, easy-to-understand tutorial about his own creations is darn near impossible ! But, this is true in every technical field there is, not simply wxPython.
Who, or what group of wxPython developers is willing to invest tens of thousands of man-hours of development for a good (in all senses) wxPython form builder and then just give it away FREE ? After all, everyone needs to eat.
As for Dabo, I can’t comment on its use. But, notice that it is from a .COM site (http://dabodev.com/), meaning that they sell something or other, which I don’t know what. So, Dabo may be free, but its development is being commercially financed. As with many “free” tools from .COMs, one day they may decide that Dabo won’t be free any more and users must pay to get it. Or, the company is bought out and the new owner will require that it must be bought to get support and updates. We’ve all seen this happen too many times. If Dabo is to remain free, then it must be offered on the http://dabadev.ORG web site. There is no such site, yet. Consider that Python and wxPython come from .ORG web sites. Yes, I know there are notable exceptions for some great Python and wxPython add-on packages coming from commercial developers.
Have another look at the BoxSizer, especially the “DivideAndConquer” wiki page. Creating a manageable and rational sizer/container hierarchies is the key to form creation while keeping your sanity. When this is done maintenance becomes relatively easy.
wxPython Wiki Tutorial:
http://wiki.wxpython.org/BoxSizerFromTheGroundUp
Ray
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On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 6:22 PM, Chris Spencer cspencer@cinci.rr.com wrote:
It just blows up with innumerable exceptions…especially on the
wx.NO_3D tag. I think it needs to be updated for wxPython 2.9.
Another option is to fork Boa Constructor and maintain it myself, but
I don’t have the time to do that AND maintain a commercial project AND
develop its successor at the same time.