[PyKDE] Auto-connecting Slots

[Giovanni Bajo]

Phil Thompson <phil at riverbankcomputing.co.uk> wrote:

>>> The QtCore.signature() decorator takes a single argument which is,
>>> in effect, the C++ signature of the method which tells the
>>> auto-connect
>>> code which signal to connect. For example...
>>>
>>>     @QtCore.signature("on_spinbox_valueChanged(int)")
>>>     def on_spinbox_valueChanged(self, value):
>>>         # value will only ever be an integer.
>>
>> Notice that naming it "signature" is a namespace violation from
>> those using "from QtCore import *". OTOH, you shouldn't impose this
>> code style of prefixing each and every name with the QtModule name:
>> I personally hate it, and I can't see why Python code should get 3
>> times more verbose than the corresponding C++ code. Having 'Q' at
>> the beginning of the word is enough namespace for me and for every
>> C++ Qt project out there. Specifically, Qt itself does not expose
>> anything but symbols which begins with "Q" (or fullly-uppercase
>> macros and similar things).
>>
>> I'd really prefer to have it named something like "qtsignature".
>
> A decorator is just a function and needs to reside in a namespace.
> While I could put the signature() function in the global namespace,
> that would be dumb.

You can put it within the QtCore namespace, but please consider that many
people *will* use "from QtCore import *", as it's the default way to make the
code similar to the C++ counterpart. If Trolltech added a "signature()"
function, people would complain. Trolltech doesn't use standard C++ namespaces,
but they have their own namespace: they prefix every class name with uppercase
Q, and every function name with lowercase q. This is why I think PyQt is going
the wrong way if it starts suggesting to explicitally use QtCore before
everything and/or makes it harder for people to use the "from QtCore import *"
form.

So, if you're going to add a PyQt-specific name, please make it follow the
Trolltech's convention. QtCore.qSignature would surely be better (there are pre
cedence of global functions named qFooBar in Qt's API).


> The reason for doing it the way I did was to allow the following...
>
>     @QtCore.signature("on_spinbox_valueChanged(int)")
>     def handle_int(self, val):
>         ...
>
>     @QtCore.signature("on_spinbox_valueChanged(QString)")
>     def handle_QString(self, val):
>         ...
>
> I can't think of a real-world use case for this - but that's your
> job, not mine.
>
> What I can do is to make the function name optional in the signature,
> so you can use the short version most of the time but you can still
> have the flexibility of the above.

OK, fine by me as long as the repetition isn't necessary (and the decoration
isn't necessary if not for disambiguation).

Giovanni Bajo