Controls — Core Control System

The control system (guictrl.ctrl) is the central orchestration layer for all GUI controls.

Core Orchestration

guictrl.ctrl manages: - Control tree — Hierarchical parent-child relationships - Command routing — Dispatch actions from controls to application handlers - Inter-control communication — Controls signaling each other - Namespace extension — Dynamic namespace modification by plugins

Control Lifecycle

Tag Definition → Tag Parser → Factory Creation → Parent Attachment → Layout → Event Wiring → Display
  1. XML-like tag is parsed
  2. Factory creates the control instance
  3. Control is attached to parent in the tree
  4. Sizer-based layout is calculated
  5. Events are wired to handlers
  6. Control is rendered to the screen

Control Interaction

Controls interact through: - Command routing — action="save_record" routes to the application's save handler - Event propagation — Changes bubble up through the control tree - Signal system — Pub/sub between unrelated controls - Data binding — Controls bound to model fields auto-update

Plugin-Extended Namespace

The control namespace is dynamically extended at runtime by plugins:

# In guictrl.ctrl:
SchBaseCtrl = ...  # Exported for plugin use
HTML2 = None       # Set by webview plugins (cef, wxwebview) at runtime

This allows plugins to replace or extend core control functionality without modifying framework code.

Standard Controls

Pytigon provides a comprehensive set of standard controls: - Input controls — Text, choice, combo, numeric, date/time pickers (guictrl.input) - Button controls — Standard buttons, toolbar-integrated buttons (guictrl.button) - Grid container — wxGrid-compatible layout with cell editors (guictrl.grids) - Panel container — Scrolling, docking panels (guictrl.panels) - Popups — Modal dialogs, HTML popups, select2-style selectors (guictrl.popup)

See individual control documentation for detailed usage of each control type.

?: Controls ?: Controls