3.1 Setting Preferences

The Boa Constructor tool provides a number of features which can be customised by you.

Most of the customization settings can be set by using the Editor Explorer View.  Click on Preferences and it shows you something similar to the image below.



Preferences



To change settings double click on either 'General', 'Platform specific' or 'Key bindings' and the properties of each will be shown in the Inspector as shown below:



General
Platform
Key bindings


Help books

Boa by default includs its help books and the ones for wxPython and Python.

However if you like to add others you can do so by selecting Preferences/Help Books and right mouse click in the right pane of the Explorer.  Select 'Add new Item' and browse to find the '.hpp' file.



Help book


Bookmarks

If you like to add additional bookmarks just right mouse click on the folder you like to add within the Explorer.

Transport

Adding additional transports works similar to the bookmarks, select the transport type on the left hand side of the Explorer view, e.g. 'Zope' and then right mouse click in the right hand side and select 'New' and then complete the information in the Inspector.



Transport


Module Info

You might want to change the following section in the file 'prefs.rc' stored in your user preference directory, on a Windows system this is by default in 'driveletter:\Documents and Settings\username\.boa-constructor'.



# Info that will be filled into the comment block. (Edit->Add module info)
# Also used by setup.py
staticInfoPrefs = { 'Purpose':   '',
                    'Author':    '<your name>',
                    'Copyright': '(c) 2004',
                    'Licence':   '<your licence>',
                    'Email':     '<your email>',
                  }



<>If you like to edit the 'CustomModuleInfo.plug-in' file right mouse clicking the corresponding entry in 'Preferences/Plug-ins/Plug-in files' and select 'Open Plug-in file'.

If you don't want to loose your changes when you upgrade Boa you might want to copy the 'CustomModuleInfo.plug-in' file and call it 'MyCustomModuleInfo.plug-in' in the Plug-ins directory.  After restarting Boa you should disable the standard one by right mouse clicking and selecting the appropriate option.

I changed it as follows:


""" Demonstrates how to change system constants as a plug-in """

import sourceconst
# The order of (Name)s may change and lines may also be removed
sourceconst.defInfoBlock = '''# -*- coding: iso-8859-1 -*-#
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Name:        %(Name)s
# Purpose:     %(Purpose)s
#
# Author:      %(Author)s
#
# Created:     %(Created)s
# RCS-ID:      %(RCS-ID)s
# Copyright:   %(Copyright)s
# Licence:     %(Licence)s
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
'''

import Preferences
# (Name)s not in the original dictionary needs to be added
# New field:   %(NewField)s
#Preferences.staticInfoPrefs['NewField'] = 'Whatever'


After restarting Boa and clicking on the button Module Info Boa will insert the following into the selected file (in this case Frame1.py).


# -*- coding: iso-8859-1 -*-#
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Name:        Frame1.py
# Purpose:    
#
# Author:      Werner F. Bruhin
#
# Created:     2005/12/03
# RCS-ID:      $Id: node31.html,v 1.1.2.1 2005/03/14 09:23:09 wbruhin Exp $
# Copyright:   (c) 2004 - 2005
# Licence:     Shareware, see license.txt for details
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------