pywinauto/doc_src/HISTORY.TXT

0.3.1 Performance tune-ups
------------------------------------------------------------------
30-Mar-2006

    * Change calculation of distance in findbestmatch.GetNonTextControlName()
      so that it does not need to square or get the square root to
      find the real distance - as we only need to compare values - not have
      the actual distance. (Thanks to Stefaan Himple)
    
    * Compiled regular expression patterns before doing the match to 
      avoid compiling the regular expression for window that is being
      tested (Thanks to Stefaan Himple)
      
    * Made it easier to add your own control tests by adding a file 
      extra_tests.py which needs to export a ModifyRegisteredTests() method.
      Also cleaned up the code a little.
    
    * Updated notepad_fast.py to make it easier to profile (adde a method)

    * Changed WrapHandle to use a cache for classes it has matched - this is 
      to avoid having to match against all classes constantly.

    * Changed default timeout in SendMessageTimeout to .001 seconds from .4 
      seconds this results in a significant speedup. Will need to make this 
      value modifiable via the timing module/routine.

    * WaitNot was raising an error if the control was not found - it should 
      have returned (i.e. success - control is not in any particular state 
      because it does not exist!).

    * Added ListViewWrapper.Deselect() per Chistophe Keller's suggestion. 
      While I was at it I added a check on the item value passed in and added
      a call to WaitGuiIdle(self) so that the control has a chance to process
      the message.

    * Changed doc templates and moved dependencies into pywinauto
      subversion to ensure that all files were availabe at www.openqa.org and
      that they are not broken when viewed there.
      
    * Moved all timing information into the timings.Timings class. There are
      some simple methods for changing the timings.
      

0.3.0 Added Application data - now useful for localization testing
------------------------------------------------------------------
20-Mar-2006

    * Added automatic Application data collection which can be used when
      running the same test on a different spoken language version. Support
      is still preliminary and is expected to change. Please treat as early
      Alpha.

      If you have a different language version of Windows then you can try
      this out by running the notepad_fast.py example with the langauge
      argument e.g. ::
      
        examples\notepad_fast.py language
      
      This will load the application data from the supplied file 
      notepad_fast.pkl and use it for finding the right menu items and 
      controls to select.
      
    * Test implementation to make it easier to start using an application.
      Previously you needed to write code like ::
      
        app = Application().connect_(title = 'Find')
        app.Find.Close.Click()
        app.NotePad.MenuSelect("File->Exit")
      
      1st change was to implement static methods ``start()`` and 
      ``connect()``. These methods return a new Application instance
      so the above code becomes::
      
        app = Application.connect(title = 'Find')
        app.Find.Close.Click()
        app.NotePad.MenuSelect("File->Exit")
        
      I also wanted to make it easier to start working with a simple 
      application - that may or may not have only one dialog. To make this
      situation easier I made ``window_()`` not throw if the application has not
      been ``start()ed`` or ``connect()ed`` first. This leads to simpler code 
      like::
      
        app = Application()
        app.Find.Close.Click()
        app.NotePad.MenuSelect("File->Exit")
	  
	  What happens here is that when you execute any of Application.window_(),
	  Application.__getattr__() or Application.__getitem__() when the 
	  application hasn't been connected or started. It looks for the window
	  that best matches your specification and connects the application to
	  that process. 
	  
	  This is extra functionality - existing connect_() and 
	  start_() methods still exist
        
    * Fixed HwndWrapper.SetFocus() so that it would work even if the window
      was not in the foreground. (it now makes the window foreground as well
      as giving it focus). This overcomes a restriction in Windows where
      you can only change the foreground window if you own the foreground
      window.
      
    * Changed some 2.4'isms that an anonymous commenter left on my blog :-)
      with these changes pywinauto should run on Python 2.3 (though I haven't
      done extensive testing).
    
    * Commented out controls.common_controls.TabControlWrapper.GetTabState() 
      and TabStates() as these did not seem to be returning valid values anyway.
 
    * Fixed documentation issues were parts of the documentation were not 
      getting generated to the HTML files.
      
    * Fixed issue where MenuSelect would sometimes not work as expected. 
      Some Menu actions require that the window that owns the menu be active.
      Added a call to SetFocus() before selecting a menu item to ensure that
      the window was active.
      
    * Fixed Bug 1452832 where clipboard was not closed in clipboard.GetData()
    
    * Added more unit tests now up to 248 from 207


0.2.5 More refactoring, more tests
------------------------------------------------
07-Mar-2006

    * Added wrapper classes for Menus and MenuItems this enabled cleaner
      interaction with Menu's. It also gives more functionality - you can now 
      programmatically Click() on menus, and query if a menu item is checked 
      or not.
      
    * Added application.WindowSpecification.Wait() and WaitNot() methods. 
      These methods allow you to wait for a control to exist, be visible,
      be enabled, be ready (both enabled and visible!) or to wait for the
      control to not be in any of these states. WaitReady(), 
      WaitNotEnabled(), WaitNotVisible() now use these methods. I was able to also
      add the missing methods WaitNotReady(), WaitEnabled(), WaitVisible(), 
      WaitExists(), WaitnotExists(). Please use Wait() and WaitNot() as I have
      Deprecated these Wait* methods.
      
    * Slightly modified timeout waits for control resolution so that a timed 
      function more accurately follows the timeout value specified.
      
    * Added application.Application.start() and connect() static methods. These
      methods are factory methods in that they will return an initialized Application
      instance. They work exactly the same as start_() and connect() as they are 
      implemented in terms of those.
        
        from pywinauto.application import Application
        notepad = Application.start("notepad")
        same_notepad = Application.connect(path = "notepad")
        
    * Updated the examples to follow changes to the code - and to make them a little
      more robust.

    * Added a new Controls Overview document page which lists all the actions on
      all controls.    
        
    * Added more unit tests now up to 207 from 134 (added 68 tests)
    


0.2.1 Small Release number - big changes
------------------------------------------------
17-Feb-2006

    * Quick release to get many changes out there - but this release has 
      been less tested then I would like for a .3 release.
    
    * Allow access to non text controls using the closest Text control.
      This closest text control will normally be the static/label associated
      with the control. For example in Notepad, Format->Font dialog, the 1st
      combobox can be refered to as "FontComboBox" rather than "ComboBox1"
      
    * Added a new control wrapper - ``PopupMenuWrapper`` for context menu's
      You can now work easily with context menu's
      e.g. ::
      
         app.Notepad.Edit.RightClick()
         # need to use MenuClick rather then MenuSelect
         app.PopupMenu.MenuClick("Select All") 
         app.Notepad.Edit.RightClick()
         app.PopupMenu.MenuClick("Copy") 
      
      I could think of merging the ``RightClick()`` and ``MenuSelect()`` into one method 
      ``ContextMenuSelect()`` if that makes sense to most people.
    
    * Added Support for Up-Down controls
    
    * Not all top level windows now have a FriendlyClassName of "Dialog".
      I changed this because it made it hard to get windows of a particular
      class. For example the main Notepad window has a class name of "Notepad".
      
      This was primarily implemented due to work I did getting the System Tray.
      
    * Renamed ``StatusBarWrapper.PartWidths()`` to ``PartRightEdges()`` as this 
      is more correct for what it returns.
      
    * Changed HwndWrapper.Text() and SetText() to WindowText() and 
      SetWindowText() respectively to try and make it clearer that it is 
      the text returned by GetWindowText and not the text that is visible 
      on the control. This change also suggested that EditWrapper.SetText()
      be changed to SetEditText() (though this is not a hard requirement
      EditWrapper.SetText() still exists - but may be deprecated.
      
    * Added ClickInput, DoubleClickInput, RightClickInput, PressMouseInput
      ReleaseMouseInput to HwndWrapper - these use SendInput rather then
      WM_LBUTTONDOWN, WM_RBUTTONUP, etc used by Click, DoubleClick etc.
      
      I also added a MenuClick method that allows you to click on menu
      items. This means you can now 'physically' drop menus down. 
      
    * Some further working with tooltips that need to be cleaned up.

    * Fixed a bug where coordinates passed to any of the Click operations had
      the X and Y coordinates swapped.

    * Added new MenuItem and Menu classes that are to the most part hidden
      but you can get a menu item by doing ::
      
        app.Notepad.MenuItem("View")
	    app.Notepad.MenuItem("View->Status Bar")
	 
	  MenuItems have various actions so for example you can use 
	  ``MenuItem.IsChecked()`` to check if the menu item is checked.
	  Among other methods there are ``Click()`` and ``Enabled()``.

    * Modified the 'best match' algorithm for finding controls. 
      It now searches a couple of times, and tries to find the best
      fit for the text passed to it. The idea here is to make it more
      "Select what I want - not that other thing that looks a bit like
      what I want!". It is possible this change could mean you need to 
      use new identifiers in scripts - but in general very little modification
      should be necessary.
      
      There was also a change to the algorithm that looked for the closest
      text control. It missed some obvious controls in the previous
      implementation. It also had a bug for controls above the control
      rather than to the left.
      
    * Added a new example scripts SaveFromInternetExplorer.py and 
      SaveFromFirefox.py which show automating downloading of a page
      from either of these browsers.

    * Added yet more unit tests, there are now a total of 134 tests.


0.2.0 Significant refactoring
------------------------------------------------
06-Feb-2006

    * Changed how windows are searched for (from application)
      This chage should not be a significant change for users
    
    * Started adding unit tests (and the have already uncovered bugs 
      that been fixed). They also point to areas of missing functionality
      that will be addded with future updates
    
    * Changed from property access to Control attributes to function access
      If your code was accessing properties of controls then this might be a
      significant change! The main reasons for doing this were due to the
      inheritability of properties (or lack there-of!) and the additional 
      scafolding that was required to define them all.
      
    * Updated the ``DialogWrapper.MenuSelect()`` method to notify the parent 
      that it needs to initialize the menu's before it retrieves the items
      
    * Added functionality to associate 'non-text' controls with the 'text' 
      control closest to them. This allows controls to be referenced by::
      
        app.dlg.<Nearby_text><Window_class>
      
      e.g. to reference the "Footer" edit control in the Page Setup dialog 
      you could use::
       
        app.PageSetup.FooterEdit
      
    * Added a MoveWindow method to HwndWrapper
    
    * Did some more cleanup (fixing pylint warnings) but still not finished

    * Added some better support for .NET controls (not to be considered final)
    
    


0.1.3 Many changes, few visible
------------------------------------------------
15-Jan-2006

    * Wrote doc strings for all modules, classes and functions
    * Ran pychecker and pylint and fixed some errors/warning
    * changed ::
       
          _connect, _start, _window, _control, _write 
          
      respectively to ::
       
          connect_, start_, window_, connect_, write_ 
          
      If you forget to change ``_window``, ``_connect`` and ``_start`` then you will probably get the following error. ::
      
         TypeError: '_DynamicAttributes' object is not callable
         
    * pywinauto is now a package name - you need to import it or its modules
    * Changes to the code to deal with pywinauto package name
    * Fixed searching for windows if a Parent is passed in
    * Added Index to retrieved MenuItem dictionary
    * Added a check to ensure that a windows Handle is a valid window
    * Refactored some of the methods in common_controls
    * Refactored how FriendlyClassName is discovered (and still not really happy!
 
  
  
0.1.2 Add Readme and rollup various changes
------------------------------------------------
15-Jan-2006

    * Updated Readme (original readme was incorrect)
    * Added clipboard module
    * Fixed DrawOutline part of tests.__init__.print_bugs
    * Added a NotifyParent to HwndWrapper
    * Make sure that HwndWrapper.ref is initialized to None
    * Refactored some methods of ComboBox and ListBox
    * Updated Combo/ListBox selection methods
    * Removed hardcoded paths from test_application.py
    * Added section to save the document as UTF-8 in MinimalNotepadTest
    * Fixed EscapeSpecials and UnEscapeSpecials in XMLHelpers
    * Made sure that overly large bitmaps do not break XML writing
 

0.1.1 Minor bug fix release
------------------------------------------------
12-Jan-2006

    * Fixed some minor bugs discovered after release

0.1.0 Initial Release
------------------------------------------------
6-Jan-2006