docs/readme.txt

   1                wxWidgets 2.9.5 Release Notes
   2                =============================
   3
   4 Welcome to the latest release of wxWidgets, a free cross-platform C++
   5 framework for writing advanced GUI applications using native controls.
   6
   7
   8 In addition to common and advanced GUI facilities such as frames,
   9 scrolling windows, toolbars, tree controls, icons, device contexts,
  10 printing, splitter windows and so on, there are wrappers for common
  11 file operations, facilities for writing network applications,
  12 thread handling, and so on. You can learn more about wxWidgets at
  13
  14         http://www.wxwidgets.org/
  15
  16
  17 wxWidgets sources are available for download from
  18
  19         https://sourceforge.net/projects/wxwindows/files/2.9.5/
  20
  21 or
  22
  23         ftp://ftp.wxwidgets.org/pub/2.9.5/
  24
  25 Please see the "Files" section below for the description of various
  26 files available at these locations.
  27
  28
  29 A detailed reference manual including in-depth overviews for various
  30 topics is supplied in various formats and can be accessed online at
  31
  32         http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.9.5/
  33
  34
  35 Note about naming: while 2.9.5 is called a "development" release,
  36 this only means that API is not guaranteed to remain unchanged in the
  37 subsequent 2.9.x releases (although it is still likely that it will),
  38 unlike in the stable 2.8.x branch. We believe the current version is
  39 stable and suitable for use in production environment.
  40
  41
  42
  43 Changes in this release
  44 -----------------------
  45
  46 This release contains several years worth of improvements compared
  47 to 2.8 version. Notably, Unicode support has been completely
  48 overhauled and made much easier to use. Debugging support, including
  49 when using a release build of the library, was much improved making
  50 it less likely that you use the library incorrectly. Many new GUI
  51 and base classes have been added or improved.
  52
  53 Compared to the previous 2.9.3 release the most important change is
  54 the addition of new, still experimental, GTK+ 3 support in wxGTK.
  55 But the main focus of this release is on incremental improvements
  56 and fixing defects in preparation for 3.0 release. In particular,
  57 wxOSX/Cocoa port has been significantly improved.
  58
  59 Please see the file docs/changes.txt for more details and make sure
  60 to read the section "Incompatible changes since 2.8" if you upgrade
  61 from a previous wxWidgets release.
  62
  63 This release introduces many important changes and we are looking
  64 forward to your feedback about them. In particular please let us
  65 know about any regressions compared to the previous versions (see
  66 the section "Bug reporting" below) so that we could fix them before
  67 3.0 release.
  68
  69
  70 Platforms supported
  71 -------------------
  72
  73 wxWidgets currently supports the following primary platforms:
  74
  75 - Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7
  76 - Most Unix variants using the GTK+ toolkit (version 2.6 or newer)
  77 - Mac OS X (10.4 or newer) using either Carbon or Cocoa
  78
  79 There is some support for the following platforms:
  80
  81 - Most Unix variants with X11
  82 - Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif
  83 - Most Unix variants with GTK+ 1.2
  84 - Most Unix variants with GTK+ 3 (still in development)
  85 - OS/2
  86 - Windows CE (Pocket PC)
  87
  88 Most popular C++ compilers are supported; see the install.txt
  89 file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) and
  90 http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Supported_Platforms for the most up to
  91 date status.
  92
  93
  94 Files
  95 -----
  96
  97 wxWidgets is distributed in source form in several archive formats.
  98 ZIP and 7z archives are for Microsoft Windows users and contain the
  99 files with DOS/Windows line endings while the compressed tar archives
 100 for Unix systems users (including OS X) and contain the files with
 101 Unix line endings. Please notice that some Windows tools still don't
 102 accept files with Unix line endings and that compiling sources with
 103 DOS line endings under Unix will fail, so please choose the correct
 104 file for your system.
 105
 106 In addition to the sources, documentation in HTML, CHM and HTB
 107 (wxWidgets help viewer) formats is provided as well as an installer
 108 for Microsoft Windows. Notice that you will still need to compile
 109 wxWidgets even when using the installer.
 110
 111 Experimentally, we also supply binaries of wxMSW libraries built
 112 with several versions of Microsoft Visual C++ compiler for this
 113 release. They are available in the "binaries" subdirectory, see
 114 the description of the files in the README file there.
 115
 116
 117 Installation
 118 ------------
 119
 120 wxWidgets needs to be compiled before you can test out the samples
 121 or write your own applications. For installation information, please
 122 see the install.txt file in the docs subdirectory appropriate for
 123 the platform you use.
 124
 125
 126 Licence information
 127 -------------------
 128
 129 For licensing information, please see the files:
 130
 131   docs/preamble.txt
 132   docs/licence.txt
 133   docs/licendoc.txt
 134   docs/gpl.txt
 135   docs/lgpl.txt
 136
 137 Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of
 138 proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWidgets in addition
 139 to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary, the licence is
 140 LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted distribution of
 141 application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't have to
 142 distribute any source if you wish to write commercial
 143 applications using wxWidgets.
 144
 145 However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif)
 146 version of your application, don't forget that it is linked
 147 against GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without*
 148 exception notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked
 149 against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefully LGPL, section
 150 6. which describes conditions for distribution of closed source
 151 applications linked against LGPL library. Basically you should
 152 link dynamically and include source code of LGPL libraries with
 153 your product (unless it is already present in user's system -
 154 like glibc usually is).
 155
 156 If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT
 157 for libtiff licence details.
 158
 159 If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program
 160 should contain following sentence: "This software is based in
 161 part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group". See
 162 src/jpeg/README for details.
 163
 164 If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular
 165 expressions support (i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT
 166 file for Henry Spencer's regular expression library copyright.
 167
 168 If you use wxXML classes or XRC, see src/expat/COPYING for licence details.
 169
 170
 171 Documentation
 172 -------------
 173
 174 wxWidgets documentation is available online at
 175 http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.9.5/ and can also be downloaded in HTML
 176 format. To generate documentation in other formats (PDF, CHM, ...)
 177 please use the scripts in docs/doxygen directory.
 178
 179
 180 Bug reporting
 181 -------------
 182
 183 The wxWidgets bug tracker can be browsed at:
 184
 185     http://trac.wxwidgets.org/report
 186
 187 Please use the search function of our Trac installation to find
 188 any possibly relevant bugs before reporting new ones. Also please
 189 notice that often trying to correct the bug yourself is the
 190 quickest way to fix it. Even if you fail to do it, you may
 191 discover valuable information allowing us to fix it while doing
 192 it. We also give much higher priority to bug reports with patches
 193 fixing the problems so this ensures that your report will be
 194 addressed sooner.
 195
 196
 197 Further information
 198 -------------------
 199
 200 The wxWidgets Web site is located at:
 201
 202   http://www.wxwidgets.org/
 203
 204 The main wxWidgets ftp site is at:
 205
 206   ftp://ftp.wxwidgets.org/pub/
 207
 208 A wxWidgets CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML
 209 front-end and hundreds of MB of compilers, utilities and other
 210 material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page: see the wxWidgets
 211 web site.
 212
 213 Have fun!
 214
 215 The wxWidgets Team, July 2012