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[wxWidgets.git] / docs / readme.txt

wxWidgets 2.9.x
---------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to wxWidgets, a cross-platform C++ framework for
writing advanced GUI applications using native controls
where possible.

In addition to common and advanced GUI facilities such as
frames, scrolling windows, toolbars, tree controls, icons,
device contexts, printing, splitter windows and so on, there
are wrappers for common file operations, and facilities for
writing TCP/IP applications, thread handling, and more.

Where certain features are not available on a platform, such
as MDI under Unix and OS X, they are emulated.

A detailed reference manual including in-depth overviews for
various topics is supplied in various formats and can be
accessed online.

Changes in this release
-----------------------

Please see changes.txt and "Changes since 2.8" in the manual
for details.

Platforms supported
-------------------

wxWidgets currently supports the following platforms:

- Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Pocket PC/Mobile, Smartphone
- Most Unix variants using the  GTK+ 2 toolkit (version 2.4 or newer)
- MacOS OS X (10.4 or newer) using Carbon and some Cocao mix-in

There is some support for the followig platforms:

- Most Unix variants with X11
- Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif
- Most Unix variants with GTK+ 1.2
- MacOS 10.x using the Cocoa API
- OS/2
- PalmOS

Most popular C++ compilers are supported; see the install.txt
file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) for details.
See also http://www.wxwidgets.org/platform.htm.

Files
-----

The distribution is available in archive formats appropriate to the
target system. See the download pages for details.

Installation
------------

wxWidgets needs to be compiled before you can test out the samples
or write your own applications. For installation information, please
see the install.txt file in the individual directories:

  docs/msw
  docs/gtk
  docs/motif
  docs/osx
  docs/cocoa
  docs/x11
  docs/mgl
  docs/os2
  docs/palmos

Licence information
-------------------

For licensing information, please see the files:

  docs/preamble.txt
  docs/licence.txt
  docs/licendoc.txt
  docs/gpl.txt
  docs/lgpl.txt

Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of
proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWidgets in addition
to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary, the licence is
LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted distribution of
application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't have to
distribute any source if you wish to write commercial
applications using wxWidgets. 

However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif)
version of your application, don't forget that it is linked
against GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without*
exception notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked
against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefully LGPL, section
6. which describes conditions for distribution of closed source
applications linked against LGPL library. Basically you should
link dynamically and include source code of LGPL libraries with
your product (unless it is already present in user's system -
like glibc usually is). 

If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT
for libtiff licence details.

If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program
should contain following sentence: "This software is based in
part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group". See
src/jpeg/README for details.

If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular
expressions support (i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT
file for Henry Spencer's regular expression library copyright.

If you use wxXML classes or XRC, see src/expat/COPYING for licence details.

Documentation
-------------

See docs/html/index.htm for an HTML index of the major documents.

See docs/changes.txt for a summary of changes to wxWidgets.

See docs/tech for an archive of technical notes.

The wxWidgets bug tracker can be browsed at:

    http://trac.wxwidgets.org/report

Please use the search function of our Trac installation to find
any possibly relevant bugs before reporting new ones. Also please
notice that often trying to correct the bug yourself is the
quickest way to fix it. Even if you fail to do it, you may
discover valuable information allowing us to fix it while doing
it. We also give much higher priority to bug reports with patches
fixing the problems so this ensures that your report will be
addressed sooner.

The Windows HTML Help files are located in docs/htmlhelp.
The Windows Help files are located in docs/winhelp.
The PDF help files are located in docs/pdf.
The HTB (wxWidgets HTML Help) files are located in docs/htb.

Further information
-------------------

The wxWidgets Web site is located at:

  http://www.wxwidgets.org

The main wxWidgets ftp site is at:

  ftp://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/pub

A wxWidgets CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML
front-end and hundreds of MB of compilers, utilities and other
material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page: see the wxWidgets
web site.

Have fun!

The wxWidgets Team, January 2007