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 2.9.4 release the most important change at
  54 the API level is the introduction of new, shorter constants for the
  55 event types making code using Bind() for dynamic event handling easier
  56 to both write and read. But the main focus of this release is on
  57 incremental improvements and fixing defects in preparation for 3.0
  58 release. In particular, wxOSX/Cocoa port has been significantly
  59 improved. And there were fixes to the still exprimental wxGTK3 port
  60 which now also support GTK+ Broadway (HTML5-based) backend.
  61
  62 Please see the file docs/changes.txt for more details and make sure
  63 to read the section "Incompatible changes since 2.8" if you upgrade
  64 from a previous wxWidgets release.
  65
  66 This release introduces many important changes and we are looking
  67 forward to your feedback about them. In particular please let us
  68 know about any regressions compared to the previous versions (see
  69 the section "Bug reporting" below) so that we could fix them before
  70 3.0 release.
  71
  72
  73 Platforms supported
  74 -------------------
  75
  76 wxWidgets currently supports the following primary platforms:
  77
  78 - Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7
  79 - Most Unix variants using the GTK+ toolkit (version 2.6 or newer)
  80 - Mac OS X (10.5 or newer) using either Carbon or Cocoa
  81
  82 There is some support for the following platforms:
  83
  84 - Most Unix variants with X11
  85 - Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif
  86 - Most Unix variants with GTK+ 1.2
  87 - Most Unix variants with GTK+ 3 (still in development)
  88 - OS/2
  89 - Windows CE (Pocket PC)
  90
  91 Most popular C++ compilers are supported; see the install.txt
  92 file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) and
  93 http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Supported_Platforms for the most up to
  94 date status.
  95
  96
  97 Files
  98 -----
  99
 100 wxWidgets is distributed in source form in several archive formats.
 101 ZIP and 7z archives are for Microsoft Windows users and contain the
 102 files with DOS/Windows line endings while the compressed tar archives
 103 for Unix systems users (including OS X) and contain the files with
 104 Unix line endings. Please notice that some Windows tools still don't
 105 accept files with Unix line endings and that compiling sources with
 106 DOS line endings under Unix will fail, so please choose the correct
 107 file for your system.
 108
 109 In addition to the sources, documentation in HTML, CHM and HTB
 110 (wxWidgets help viewer) formats is provided as well as an installer
 111 for Microsoft Windows. Notice that you will still need to compile
 112 wxWidgets even when using the installer.
 113
 114 Experimentally, we also supply binaries of wxMSW libraries built
 115 with several versions of Microsoft Visual C++ compiler for this
 116 release. They are available in the "binaries" subdirectory, see
 117 the description of the files in the README file there.
 118
 119
 120 Installation
 121 ------------
 122
 123 wxWidgets needs to be compiled before you can test out the samples
 124 or write your own applications. For installation information, please
 125 see the install.txt file in the docs subdirectory appropriate for
 126 the platform you use.
 127
 128
 129 Licence information
 130 -------------------
 131
 132 For licensing information, please see the files:
 133
 134   docs/preamble.txt
 135   docs/licence.txt
 136   docs/licendoc.txt
 137   docs/gpl.txt
 138   docs/lgpl.txt
 139   docs/xserver.txt
 140
 141 Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of
 142 proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWidgets in addition
 143 to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary, the licence is
 144 LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted distribution of
 145 application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't have to
 146 distribute any source if you wish to write commercial
 147 applications using wxWidgets.
 148
 149 However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif)
 150 version of your application, don't forget that it is linked
 151 against GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without*
 152 exception notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked
 153 against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefully LGPL, section
 154 6. which describes conditions for distribution of closed source
 155 applications linked against LGPL library. Basically you should
 156 link dynamically and include source code of LGPL libraries with
 157 your product (unless it is already present in user's system -
 158 like glibc usually is).
 159
 160 If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT
 161 for libtiff licence details.
 162
 163 If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program
 164 should contain following sentence: "This software is based in
 165 part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group". See
 166 src/jpeg/README for details.
 167
 168 If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular
 169 expressions support (i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT
 170 file for Henry Spencer's regular expression library copyright.
 171
 172 If you use wxXML classes or XRC, see src/expat/COPYING for licence details.
 173
 174
 175 Documentation
 176 -------------
 177
 178 wxWidgets documentation is available online at
 179 http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.9.5/ and can also be downloaded in HTML
 180 format. To generate documentation in other formats (PDF, CHM, ...)
 181 please use the scripts in docs/doxygen directory.
 182
 183
 184 Bug reporting
 185 -------------
 186
 187 The wxWidgets bug tracker can be browsed at:
 188
 189     http://trac.wxwidgets.org/report
 190
 191 Please use the search function of our Trac installation to find
 192 any possibly relevant bugs before reporting new ones. Also please
 193 notice that often trying to correct the bug yourself is the
 194 quickest way to fix it. Even if you fail to do it, you may
 195 discover valuable information allowing us to fix it while doing
 196 it. We also give much higher priority to bug reports with patches
 197 fixing the problems so this ensures that your report will be
 198 addressed sooner.
 199
 200
 201 Further information
 202 -------------------
 203
 204 The wxWidgets Web site is located at:
 205
 206   http://www.wxwidgets.org/
 207
 208 The main wxWidgets ftp site is at:
 209
 210   ftp://ftp.wxwidgets.org/pub/
 211
 212 A wxWidgets CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML
 213 front-end and hundreds of MB of compilers, utilities and other
 214 material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page: see the wxWidgets
 215 web site.
 216
 217 Have fun!
 218
 219 The wxWidgets Team, July 2013