| 1 | wxWidgets 2.9.x |
| 2 | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| 3 | |
| 4 | Welcome to wxWidgets, a cross-platform C++ framework for |
| 5 | writing advanced GUI applications using native controls |
| 6 | where possible. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | In addition to common and advanced GUI facilities such as |
| 9 | frames, scrolling windows, toolbars, tree controls, icons, |
| 10 | device contexts, printing, splitter windows and so on, there |
| 11 | are wrappers for common file operations, and facilities for |
| 12 | writing TCP/IP applications, thread handling, and more. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | Where certain features are not available on a platform, such |
| 15 | as MDI under Unix and OS X, they are emulated. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | A detailed reference manual including in-depth overviews for |
| 18 | various topics is supplied in various formats and can be |
| 19 | accessed online. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Changes in this release |
| 22 | ----------------------- |
| 23 | |
| 24 | Please see changes.txt and "Changes since 2.8" in the manual |
| 25 | for details. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | Platforms supported |
| 28 | ------------------- |
| 29 | |
| 30 | wxWidgets currently supports the following platforms: |
| 31 | |
| 32 | - Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Pocket PC/Mobile, Smartphone |
| 33 | - Most Unix variants using the GTK+ 2 toolkit (version 2.4 or newer) |
| 34 | - MacOS OS X (10.4 or newer) using Carbon and some Cocao mix-in |
| 35 | |
| 36 | There is some support for the followig platforms: |
| 37 | |
| 38 | - Most Unix variants with X11 |
| 39 | - Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif |
| 40 | - Most Unix variants with GTK+ 1.2 |
| 41 | - MacOS 10.x using the Cocoa API |
| 42 | - OS/2 |
| 43 | - PalmOS |
| 44 | |
| 45 | Most popular C++ compilers are supported; see the install.txt |
| 46 | file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) for details. |
| 47 | See also http://www.wxwidgets.org/platform.htm. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | Files |
| 50 | ----- |
| 51 | |
| 52 | The distribution is available in archive formats appropriate to the |
| 53 | target system. See the download pages for details. |
| 54 | |
| 55 | Installation |
| 56 | ------------ |
| 57 | |
| 58 | wxWidgets needs to be compiled before you can test out the samples |
| 59 | or write your own applications. For installation information, please |
| 60 | see the install.txt file in the individual directories: |
| 61 | |
| 62 | docs/msw |
| 63 | docs/gtk |
| 64 | docs/motif |
| 65 | docs/osx |
| 66 | docs/cocoa |
| 67 | docs/x11 |
| 68 | docs/mgl |
| 69 | docs/os2 |
| 70 | docs/palmos |
| 71 | |
| 72 | Licence information |
| 73 | ------------------- |
| 74 | |
| 75 | For licensing information, please see the files: |
| 76 | |
| 77 | docs/preamble.txt |
| 78 | docs/licence.txt |
| 79 | docs/licendoc.txt |
| 80 | docs/gpl.txt |
| 81 | docs/lgpl.txt |
| 82 | |
| 83 | Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of |
| 84 | proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWidgets in addition |
| 85 | to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary, the licence is |
| 86 | LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted distribution of |
| 87 | application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't have to |
| 88 | distribute any source if you wish to write commercial |
| 89 | applications using wxWidgets. |
| 90 | |
| 91 | However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif) |
| 92 | version of your application, don't forget that it is linked |
| 93 | against GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without* |
| 94 | exception notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked |
| 95 | against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefully LGPL, section |
| 96 | 6. which describes conditions for distribution of closed source |
| 97 | applications linked against LGPL library. Basically you should |
| 98 | link dynamically and include source code of LGPL libraries with |
| 99 | your product (unless it is already present in user's system - |
| 100 | like glibc usually is). |
| 101 | |
| 102 | If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT |
| 103 | for libtiff licence details. |
| 104 | |
| 105 | If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program |
| 106 | should contain following sentence: "This software is based in |
| 107 | part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group". See |
| 108 | src/jpeg/README for details. |
| 109 | |
| 110 | If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular |
| 111 | expressions support (i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT |
| 112 | file for Henry Spencer's regular expression library copyright. |
| 113 | |
| 114 | If you use wxXML classes or XRC, see src/expat/COPYING for licence details. |
| 115 | |
| 116 | Documentation |
| 117 | ------------- |
| 118 | |
| 119 | See docs/html/index.htm for an HTML index of the major documents. |
| 120 | |
| 121 | See docs/changes.txt for a summary of changes to wxWidgets. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | See docs/tech for an archive of technical notes. |
| 124 | |
| 125 | The wxWidgets bug tracker can be browsed at: |
| 126 | |
| 127 | http://trac.wxwidgets.org/report |
| 128 | |
| 129 | Please use the search function of our Trac installation to find |
| 130 | any possibly relevant bugs before reporting new ones. Also please |
| 131 | notice that often trying to correct the bug yourself is the |
| 132 | quickest way to fix it. Even if you fail to do it, you may |
| 133 | discover valuable information allowing us to fix it while doing |
| 134 | it. We also give much higher priority to bug reports with patches |
| 135 | fixing the problems so this ensures that your report will be |
| 136 | addressed sooner. |
| 137 | |
| 138 | The Windows HTML Help files are located in docs/htmlhelp. |
| 139 | The Windows Help files are located in docs/winhelp. |
| 140 | The PDF help files are located in docs/pdf. |
| 141 | The HTB (wxWidgets HTML Help) files are located in docs/htb. |
| 142 | |
| 143 | Further information |
| 144 | ------------------- |
| 145 | |
| 146 | The wxWidgets Web site is located at: |
| 147 | |
| 148 | http://www.wxwidgets.org |
| 149 | |
| 150 | The main wxWidgets ftp site is at: |
| 151 | |
| 152 | ftp://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/pub |
| 153 | |
| 154 | A wxWidgets CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML |
| 155 | front-end and hundreds of MB of compilers, utilities and other |
| 156 | material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page: see the wxWidgets |
| 157 | web site. |
| 158 | |
| 159 | Have fun! |
| 160 | |
| 161 | The wxWidgets Team, January 2007 |
| 162 | |