wxPython: how to lay one panel over another

Question

This is about wxPython.

I would like to have 2 Panels laying one over the other:
PanelBG should be some sort of a "background", with its own GridBagSizer with subPanels, StaticTexts and so on;
PanelFG should be the "foreground" panel, also with its own GridBagSizer with some StaticTexts, Buttons... but a transparent background, in such a way that PanelBG is visible wherever PanelFG doesn't lay widgets.

I need both Panels to stretch to all the sides of the frame, even when resizing the window, though never changing the reciprocal proportions, that's why I'm not sure if there's a way to use absolute positioning.

In case you are wondering, the reason why I don't want to use a single Panel is that merging the 2 GridBoxSizers would require me to place many many more cells in the sizer, because rows and columns of foreground and background don't always coincide, and I should split them in many cells, with grid dimensions growing up to hundreds**2.
Since the content I want to put in the foreground needs to be updated and refreshed quite often, this would require redrawing all the cells every time, which would take 10 - 20 seconds to complete the operation (tested). Updating only the foreground would require just some hundredths of a second instead.

Thank you!

Answer 1

This would be at least partially a change of direction, but it might be worth examining what other rendering options you have.

In particular, I'm thinking of wxWebKit (http://wxwebkit.kosoftworks.com/), which would let you do layering, etc. using the WebKit browser rendering engine. I'm not sure whether it's at a stage that would provide everything you need since I haven't actually used it, but even if it doesn't work then it may be an approach worth trying - using HTML/CSS for part of your display, while wrapping the whole in a wxPython app.

Answer 2

As I understand it, this is a calendar with rectangles for the days containing the events for the days.

The simple thing would be to use a wxGrid, with seven columns and four or five rows, to represent the months. You would then place the events into the grid cell for the correct date. The wxGrid widget would look after the details of refreshing everything properly.

Using wxGrid you might lose a little control over the exact appearance, though wxGrid is very flexible and feature rich once you learn its many methods, but you would save yourself having to write large amounts of code that would require significant effort to debug.