[PyKDE] PyKDE update

[Jim Bublitz]

I haven't been in a rush to get the next PyKDE release out, and 
it's still probably a little way off. I've had a few small bug 
reports from a few people (thanks!), all install related, and 
have those taken care of.

The next release will also support KDE 3.1.4. That's already done 
too, and doesn't have any major changes affecting PyKDE. Current 
releases will probably build against KDE 3.1.4 as is.

David and I appear to have worked out a solution to the problem 
of kicker loading multiple Python-based panel applets on a 
restart, although it needs some cleaning up and testing. David 
has also sent me code for writing KControl stuff using Python, 
and a patch that puts the panel applet installer in the Control 
Center - I haven't had a chance to test that yet, but expect it 
will work. If I have time and don't run into too many problems, 
I'll probably add the ability to write panel extensions from 
Python. I'm also planning on making it possible to write KParts 
in Python, and probably will steal David's stuff for IOSlaves 
eventually. I expect that to be a little more involved and 
probably won't put it in the next release.

I also have completely new documentation generation working - 
you'll end up with two choices: you can use a provided 
documentation reader. or you can generate a complete HTML class 
reference. The HTML runs about 3MB. The reader generates HTML on 
the fly and the data file is only about 600KB.  The new docs 
provide a Python formatted description for every method and also 
provide links to the KDE classref docs. The reader has two panes 
- one for the PyKDE docs and one for the linked KDE docs. The 
generator for the full HTML docs will set the same links if 
provided with the path to the KDE classref docs. The reader also 
allows you to add your own annotation to the docs, and the 
annotations are kept in a separate file and should survive 
version changes. I have some work to do to make this installable 
and usable, but it seems to work pretty well.

I've also cleaned up the examples/ directory a little and added 
an example for KURL.List using operators/Python list operations.

I've also test-generated PyKDE3.2alpha1 and fixed a few problems 
with my sip file generator. I won't be releasing a PyKDE version 
for PyKDE3.2 until I can get KDE3.2 binaries to install and test 
against - compiling KDE from source just looks too 
time-consuming at the moment. The sip file generator is working 
pretty well, I've cleaned up the code a lot, and the current 
plan is to release that as a separate project sometime next year 
It still needs documentation and will probably need to be 
revised for sip changes that are in the works. It also isn't as 
user friendly as it should be yet.

If anyone's urgently in need of the next PyKDE release, or has 
any other input, please speak up. I can put totgether another rc 
release (more like a snapshot) in a few days if necessary.

Jim