codekingpro/portable-devtools

1<!DOCTYPE html>2<html lang="en">3<head>4  <title>win32com Readme</title>5</head>6<body>7 8<p><img width="551" height="99" id="_x0000_i1025"9 src="html%5Cimage%5Cpycom_blowing.gif"10 alt="Python and COM - Blowing the others away"> </p>11    12<h1>Python COM Extensions Readme </h1>13    14<p>This is the readme for win32com. Please check out the <a15 href="html/docindex.html">win32com documentation index</a></p>16    17<p>The <a href="test/.">win32com/test directory</a> contains some interesting18 scripts (and a new <a href="test/readme.txt">readme.txt</a>). Although these19 are used for testing, they do show a variety of COM techniques.</p>20 21<h3>VARIANT objects</h3>22<p>win32com.client now has explicit VARIANT objects which can be used in23situations where you need more control over the argument types passed when24calling COM methods.  See the <a href="html/variant.html">documentation on25this object</a>26 27<a name="currency"><h3>Important Currency changes</h3></a>28<p>29In all builds prior to 204, a COM currency value was returned as a tuple of30integers.  Working with 2 integers to represent a currency object was a poor31choice, but the alternative was never clear.  Now Python ships with the32<a href="http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/lib/module-decimal.html">decimal</a>33module, the alternative has arrived!34</p>35<p>36Up until build 212, code could set <code>pythoncom.__future_currency__ = True</code>37to force use of the decimal module, with a warning issued otherwise.  In 38builds 213 and later, the decimal module is unconditionally used when39pythoncon returns you a currency value.40</p>41 42<h3>Recent Changes</h3>43 44<h4>Lots of internal changes on the road to py3k</h4>45 46<h4>win32com.axcontrol and win2con.internet</h4>47Many more interfaces for hosting AX controls and the interfaces48used by Internet Explorer.49 50<h4>win32com.shell</h4>51The shell interfaces have undergone a number of enhancements and changes.52A couple of methods have changed signature between the first build with shell support (200) and later builds.  53SHGetFileInfo was broken in its result handling, so had to be changed - this 54is the only function used by the samples that changed, but others not used by the samples also have changed.55These shell interfaces are now generally stable.56<h4>New win32com.taskscheduler module</h4>57Roger Upole has contributed an interface to the Windows task scheduler.  This is actually very neat, and it allows58Python to edit the task list as shown by Windows Control Panel.  Property page suppport may even appear later,59now that the win32 library has the new win32rcparser module.60<h4>ActiveX Scripting </h4>61    62<p>Python only supports "trusted" execution hosts - thus, it will no longer work63as an engine inside IE (Python itself no longer has a restricted execution environment).  64Python continues to work fine as an Active Scripting Engine in all other65applications, including Windows Scripting Host, and ASP.66 67<p>There is also support for Python as an ActiveX Scripting Host.</p>68    69<p>Active Debugging seems to be fully functional.</p>70 71<h4>Older stuff</h4>72<ul>73</li>74  <li>Unexpected exceptions in Python COM objects will generally now dump75the exception and traceback to stdout. &nbsp;This is useful for debugging76and testing - it means that in some cases there will be no need to register77an object with <span style="font-style: italic;">--debug</span> to see these78tracebacks. &nbsp;Note that COM objects used by server processes (such as79ASP) generally have no valid stdout, so will still need to use <span80 style="font-style: italic;">--debug</span> as usual.<br>81  </li>82   <li>universal gateway support has been improved - we can now work as an83Outlook Addin<br>84  </li>85  86</body>87</html>88