updates for wxPython docs

[wxWidgets.git] / docs / gtk / changes.txt

28th August '99: Ninth wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released

As the old makefile system didn't work, I trashed it and wrote
a new one - mo more GNU. This, of course, caused a lot of people
to start sing their song of complaints - any change is a good 
opportunity to complain, but the effect of the change is that
we now have shared library support on Linux and Solaris (and
probably others as well) and that the Linux shared library no
longer depends on libstdc++, so that we can finally create an
RPM that works on different Linux distributions. Also, the
Unix make system is now much simpler and directly mirrors its
Windows counterparts, making it easier to understand and maintain.
As it is independent of the various GNU tools, the requirements
for using CVS versions are also much less (any make, any compiler,
no other tools).

Split RPMs into two, one for run-time requirements and one
for developement (mostly headers).

Addition of new layout classes that work like Java's, GTK's
or Qt`s - basically, you pack item in a box and let it tell
you how much space it needs. These class are called wxSizer
and I consider them a great addition as they make true cross-
platform dialogs a child's play and are very quick to write
and easy to read. Do consider using them.

Rewritten all dialogs to make use of the new sizers. Also
added a new wxFileDialog like Win95 and replaced the generic
wxFontDialog with GTK's native font selection dialog - this
probably isn't perfect though.

A few more fixes to wxListCtrl and wxTreeCtrl, implemented
more options and modes like the wxMSW version.

New handler for PNM files. Added CanRead() function to image
handlers, updates to GIF handler for preparing the new wxAnimation
class. We'll also get a PCX and hopefully a TIFF handler so
that we support all common general-purpose file formats I know
about. PhotoShop and PhotoPaint images are not general purpose.
I also tried to correct a wxImage bug in connection with big-endian
vs. little-endian problems, but I have no Sparc to actually test
this.

Inclusion of wxMultiMedia. Can play most sound formats on GTK
and MSW and (using xanim on Unix and Win95's MM functions)
display a video in a wxWindow. This will probably be moved to
the core library.

Small updates to socket code. The MSW version is still missing.

Implemented wxBitmapDataObject class.

Added wxFFileStream using FILE* instead if file desrcriptor.
Useful for creating a "cerr" like class as in normal C++.
Also added "endl" for use with wxTextStream and fixed a few
minor problems with buffered streams etc.

Corrected Tabbing code in wxPanel and made it work with wxNotebook.

Small cursor fixes in connection with text control.

Added experimental wxWizard class. Work in progress.

A few more minor fixes.

6th August '99: Eight wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released

The new makefile system is not able to produce shared libraries 
on Unix with the exception of Linux - libtool is really great.
Therefore, the build system defaults to static libraries on
anything but Linux for now.

Work in wxPen, wxBrush and wxDC to match wxMSW more exactly and
to implement missing feature etc.

Reimplemented radio buttons. The first of a group of such buttons
is now marked by having the wxRB_GROUP style.

Complete redesign of all stream classes, including tests for them
in the samples.

Controls now send the same messages (or more importantly none if
changed programmatically) as per wxMSW.

New implementation of wxSocket using an intermediate library called
GSocket. This willl hopefully change in the future.

Reworked in-place editing of wxListCtrl and wxTreeCtrl.

Fixed bug reporting two refreshes when scrolling.

Corrected bug in wxComboBox client data code.

Corrected reported but unverified bug in BMP loading code.

Added a few more methods to wxStaticBitmap.

Integration of wxHTML code in the main library, including wxZIPStream,
wxFilesystem, wxHTMLHelpController and others.

Added a wrapper for ffile() etc functions.

Updates to wxDynamicLibrary.

New documentation.

New version of wxPython, of course.

Fixed in unenclosed number of other bugs...

25th June '99: Seventh wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released

Many fixes to th new makefile system. The last version gave
immediate crashes on all Unices except Linux when linked
dynamically against an application. I reordered the object
files in the library as I guess that this was the cause.

Added icons to message box. This also slightly killed the
layout so this needs to be changed again.

wxGTK now chooses the best visual available on the display instead
of the default one.

Fixed wxProgressDialog again.

Some more corrections I forgot.

New wxPython (includes new layout system and printing).

15th June '99: Sixth wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released
  
 
The biggest change is the completely rewritten configure/makefile
system using automake. The main argument for switching to automake
is that the resulting makefiles should be more portable so that
people can use the native make utilities instead of GNU make. The
new makefile sytem also handles dependencies correctly, allows for
shared-only compilation, can be invoked from any directory for
concurrent builds wihtin one source tree, uses libtool for greater
shared-library platform support, has a functinonal "make uninstall",
works with GTK, Motif and WINE, conforms better to GNU standards
as far as configure option names are concerned and is easier to 
maintain.
 
Applied patches to compile wxGTK on OS/2.
 
Configure checks for byte-order and new defines for byte swapping
with respect to the byte-order. Added test for this to typetest sample.
Also made BMP handler bigendian safe so that it should work on 
Solaris and such. 
 
Small changes to basic drawing stuff: made wxColour actually compare 
RGB values in the == operator, added new constructor to wxMask,
corrected initial background colour for DCs, it is now possible
to use a wxWindowDC etc before there is any window (this doesn't
make any sense, but it is what wxMSW does.)
 
Added support for the PRIMARY SELECTION to the wxClipboard
class.
 
Fixed redraw bug when scrolling window-less widgets out
of the visible area (actually a work-around for a GTK bug).
 
Regrouped some samples, created new one for various versions
of the wxTextCtrl.
 
Added wxWindow::Reparent() and wxFrame::MakeModal().
 
Improved handling of column width in wxListCtrl and made
this more compatible with the wxMSW version. Also removed
a bug from the wxImageList returning an off-by-one id for
added images.
 
Fixed keyboard hotkeys and resizing for wxMDIChildFrame
menu bars.
 
Added flag to wxSplitterWindow to update its children's
sizes "live" instead of moving a XOR'ed bar around - this
is a resource-draining option. Also corrected cursors
in splitter window.
 
New way to show "disabled" or greyed toolbar items.
 
Rewrote parts of the tree ctrl to allow multiple selections
and variable size items (Sylvain). These new function do not
exist in the native Win32 tree control.
 
Implemented global cursors and wxBusyCursor etc. Also removed
another cursor misbehaviour.
 
Updated many parts of the documentation to reflect changes
in wxWindows 2.1, wxPython and more exact description of
cross-platform issues as well as platform differences.
 
Many other fixes, mainly by others...
 
Further compile fixes for different architectures.
 

  
25th May '99: Fifth wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released
  

 
This is mostly a bug-fix release. We are having funny
times to make wxGTK work well with different micro
versions of GTK 1.2 - which is very close to impossible.
All versions give warnings, although their number might
vary a lot. I use GTK 1.2.3 and only get wanrnings in
one sample (notebook) and that one is due to a bug in
GTK - some people using GTK 1.2.2 reported hundreds of warnings
getting spitted out for what seems like no reason.
 
This snapshot contains the beginnings of our merging of
headers, meaning that in the future all ports will
use the same headers and will share a lot more code.
We have taken this moment to reorganize some code and
hope to have eliminated much bad C++ code, as reported
primarily by SGI's compilers (Vadim Zeitlin).
 
Rewritten char and key event propagation routines
to reflect documentation and do the same on wxGTK
as on wxMSW. If you are interested in ascii chars
and cursor key etc, intercept EVT_CHAR, if you 
are interested in which key actually got pressed,
intercept EVT_KEYDOWN (Norbert Irmer).
 
Control that are given -1 as their ID no longer
get arbitrary positive IDs assigned but arbitrary
negative IDs. This had caused some trouble with ID clashes.
 
wxWindow and wxScrolledWindow no longer use the
wxScrollEvent, but the newly invented wxScrollWinEvent
so that no mixing up of events sent from wxSliders
or wxScrollbars placed in a wxWindow can occur.
 
Added wxProgressDialog for use with long background
work such as printing.
 
Added drawing sample and scrolling sample, both of
which show some misbehaviours...
 
When drawing with the wxXOR logical mode, wxGTK now uses
GdkXOR (instead of GdkInvert) and when drawing in wxINVERT logical
mode, wxGTK now uses GdkInvert (as before). When you did some
rubberband dragging and you used wxXOR and a black pen, then
you should change wxINVERT.
 
Applied more patches for SGI and HP-UX compilation.
 
More updates for wxSockets (Guilhem Lavaux). Seems to be nearly
finished.
 
You can now use threads within your GUI again. Well, 
at least if you know what you are doing and you had a look 
at the threads sample.
 
wxGLCanvas updated so that it can share display lists
over several windows and to not exhibit any flicker. 
(Norber Irmer).
 
wxNotebook revamped so that its process of creation matches
wxMSW's more closely, also avoiding problems with wrong page
number. Added InsertPage() and the possibility to prevent
switching pages by intercepting the PAGE_CHANGING event. Also,
wxNotebooks now get shown even if all pages are empty.
 
Added Activate() to wxMDIChildFrame (Russel).
 
Improved wxSplitterWindow behaviour and visual feed-back when
given a minimal size etc (Bruce DeVisser).
 
Minor updates to wxTreeCtrl, wxListBox, printing, wxClipboard,
wxString, wxThreads and many others.
 
Also wxMSW got a big face-lift, not to mention the new wxMac release...
 
                        
  
11th May '99: Fourth wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released
  
 
This is mostly a bug-fix release. This affects wxSocket, wxThread,
and a few GUI classes. Also more work has been done and window
placement and decorations etc. which we hope to have finished now.
 
Applied patches for FreeBSD and SGI compilation (not yet finshed).
 
Updated wxPython to beta 9.
 
Made wxGLCanvas work again - strangely it flickers now...
 
wxStaticText is currently broken with GTK 1.2.2 (which I don't
yet have and thus could not fix). Also, scrolling subwindows
(although much improved including a sample) doesn't work perfectly
due to a bug in GTK 1.2.1 (probably 1.2.2 as well).
 
Added wxStaticLine.
  
Note that the next release might bring about changes to keyboard
handling and scroll event intercepting from wxScrolledWindow. 
 
By and large much of the code has stabilized and won't be much
different in the final wxWindows 2.1 release. Please test as
much as you can.
 
The next release will have a new build system.
 

  
3rd May '99: Third wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released
  
 
Updated INSTALL.txt and SYMBOLS.txt.
 
Support for Unicode is now almost complete. Most samples work in
both Unicode and non-Unicode mode. Thanks to Ove Kaaven and Vadim.
 
Internal changes required for wxOLE and addition of a very experimental
wxOLE code section using GNOME's Bonobo library (from GNOME's CVS).
 
New version of wxPython that works with the wxGTK 2.1.
This now includes a very comprensive test/demo suite. Thanks to
Robin Dunn, Harm v.d. Heijden and others. Beware of the hang-man...
 
More fine tuning of focus handling and GUI widgets.
 
Complete rewrite of wxSocket classes (still experimental).
Thanks to Guilhem Lavaux.
  
wxMenuBar supports underlined shortcuts like Windows does,
indicated by a leading & character. wxMenus now have hotkeys
such as in wxXt and wxMSW.
  
Rewritten MDI subsystem.
  
Correcetions and additions to the printing framework including
a paper type database (Julian).
 
Several controls now support more style flags for modifying
look (and feel) of the controls and windows.
 
New implementation of idle handlers, which now send an idle
event only once after the event queue has been emptied (which
is what happens in the wxMSW port as well), not regularly.
This no longer forces wxGTK applications to sleep (by having
to call usleep()) in idle time - giving more CPU slices to
the application if desired.
 
wxGLCanvas (the OpenGl for wxWindows) now accepts keyboard input.
 
The usual number of compile and bug fixes from all involved.
 

  
21st April '99: Second wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released
  
 
Added much code for Unicode support. Still experimental, but looks very
cool - thanks to Ove Kaaven and Vadim Zeitlin. If you are very brave, then
you can compile wxGTK with "configure --with-unicode".
 
More updates on the dreaded issue of making frames and dialogs impossible
to resize etc.
 
Drag and Drop works now under GTK 1.2 - at least basically when dragging
and dropping text. The API is not entirely fixed yet but seems quite
good now. Support for different actions (copy/move/link/..) still missing.
I also removed support for GTK 1.0 Drag and Drop - this is just broken
and unusable in GTK 1.0 and I don't want to fix it.
 
I now embed the JPEG library and handlers for JPEG and GIF have been
added to the existing PNG and BMP (and XPM for GTK version only). In
the future, the RPMs will not contain these libraries but depend on
the image libraries to be preinstalled whereas the source *.tgz will
ship with everything that is needed for wxGTK so that no downloading
of ten image libs will be required - also avoiding problems with ten
different kinds of libJPEG-6.0.1.7.IV beta 7. We also updated the
PNG code to the newest PNG version.
 
wxImage now makes use of the fast rendering code as provided by
GTK 1.2 whenever possible. This should mean a speed-up for graphics
heavy apps.
 
Many fixes all over. Also should compile with GTK 1.2.0 as opposed
to only with GTK 1.2.1 now.
 
wxPython still doesn't compile, I think.
 

  
12th April '99: First wxGTK 2.1 snapshot released
  
 
This is the first developers' version of wxWindows 2.1 for GTK. It's main
new feature is that it supports GTK 1.2 (as opposed to GTK 1.0) which
will make development within the GNOME evironment a lot easier.
 
Apart from the move to GTK 1.2 and the changes (some major) that were
required as part of that work, enhancement or corrections have been
made to many of the non-GUI classes and functions (such as wxClipboard, 
wxThread, wxSocket, wxConfig)
and a few GUI classes (accelerators in menus, listbox always with
scrollbar, wxFrame honours Motif Window Manager hints, corrected tab
traversal for broken GTK 1.0 widgets).
 
There have been slight changes to the priting dialogs and their
setup data (which might break apps using this code in previous
versions). Also, a bug concerning printing white has been fixed
(actually not tested).
 
Although this is only the first 2.1 snapshot, there is little reason not
to use it as many bugs from version 2.0 have been corrected. There are,
pf course, still a few problem left with GTK 1.2 (some of which relate
to bugs in GTK).
 
I think I preserved backward compatility with GTK 1.0 and if not it
should be easy to fix - but mostly I don't care.
 
Drag'N'Drop is currently completely broken. Also, wxPython currently
doesn't compile with this release. The OpenGL canvas still seems to
work.
 
Major targets for the final release (still a long way): a new configure
system, support JPEG and GIF formats, wxHTML, super-duppah frame layout
stuff, syntax-highlighting editor, possibly Unicode, possibly some GNOME 
gooddies, possibly world domination.
 

  
5th March '99: wxWindows 2.0 released
  
 
This is the final version of wxWindows 2.0 for GTK. The versions for
Windows and Motif (and also this version) are available form Julian Smart's
site. The Mac version is still under development.
 

  
19th February '99: wxWindows 2.0 beta 5
  
 
This is the fifth beta release and it contains mostly bug fixes and
updates for documentation.
 
Applied compile fixes for Solaris (different flavours and compilers).
 

  
12th February '99: wxWindows 2.0 beta 4
  
 
This is the fourth beta release and it contains mostly bug fixes and
updates for documentation.
 
Tracked a few more cases, where the bahaviour between wxMSW and wxGTK
differed. This was the case for closing a dialog or frame as well as
for clearing a device context or setting its background colour and some
other minor details.
 
Most standard dialogs have been face-liftet a little.
 
Implememted default buttons for GTK.
 
Fixed many bugs. You guessed it.
 

  
29th January '99: wxWindows 2.0 beta 3
  
 
This is the third beta release and it contains mostly bug fixes. 
 
There is one field where we haven't been able to fix the API yet, and that
it Drag'n'Drop. This is mostly due to the fact that DnD in
GTK 1.0 is hardly usable and much different from GTK 1.2 which means that
we have to design a common API for Windows, GTK 1.0 and GTK 1.2. Although
we are trying to prevent that, it is possible that wxWindows 2.0 (being
based on GTK 1.0) will not have proper DnD support.
 
The major changes are that tool tips have been added, threads have been completely 
rewritten, the ODBC code has been updated and improved, the socket code works 
better now.
 
Classes for managing MIME-types under Windows and Unix have been added.
 
There is now a wxGLCanvas class for OpenGl/Mesa for the Windows, GTK and
Motif ports. Come see the penguins flying...
 
Documentation has received a big face lift - it now covers nearly all the
classes, at least.
 
The usual amount of bug fixes. Countless.
 
A few member functions of wxString have been renamed.
 
For those who are using the ever-so-popular wxImage class (which
now available on Motif and Windows as well) in 8-bit mode: wxGTK
now creates a color cube upon start-up in 8-bit mode and thus the
generation of bitmaps from images has been speeded up 20 times.
 
It is now possible to develop with wxGTK without having the GTK 1.0 header
files installed so that having the GTK 1.2 header files installed no longer
is any problem. We also provide RPMs for RedHat glibc 2 based systems, compiled
with egcs 1.1.1 on SuSE 6.0. Note that the RPM will   not   work in
SuSE 6.0 as SuSE decided to ship 6.0 with a broken GTK+ package.
 

  
6th January '99: wxWindows 2.0 beta 2
  
 
This is the second beta release and contains it mostly build and
bug fixes. Threads work well now on (up-to-date) glibc 2 systems,
commercial Unices and Windows.
 
                        
  
20th December '98: wxWindows 2.0 beta 1
  
 
This is the first beta release and we have used the time before
this release to tidy up some parts of the API. All releases from
now on will be source code compatible but we reserve binary compatibility
for the final release. Because of this, the actual library name of
the beta version will not be 2.0 but 1.99, so that we prevent 
conflicts with the final library later on. After the final release
we'll only fix bugs so that there will be no reason to link any
program statically with wxGTK.
 
We changed the name of the shared library to include the version of
the GTK used so that no conflicts emerge with simultaneous
versions of wxWindows for GTK 1.0 and for GTK 1.2 and so on.
 
As you can see, we have not moved to GTK 1.1.X as the different
development versions are too different and buggy to be useful. We'll
wait for a stable GTK 1.2 release (hardly 1.2.0) and start porting
then.
 
wxGTK now compiles without problems on anything between gcc 2.7.2 on
Linux-x86 and egcs 1.1 on Linux-Alpha and egcs 1.0 on Sparc. This isn't
as easy as it sounds...
 
Available form this site are the Python bindings of wxWindows.
Thanks to Robin Dunn for this tremendous contribution.
Tkinter is dead, Java is dead, wxPython rules! That's all there is to say.
 
Although only a few new classes have been added, many have been polished
up substantially, the most visible are wxListCtrl, wxTreeCtrl and
all classes related to printing. Also the DialogEd now functions
much better than before. Drag'n'Drop is fucntional but probably won't 
be perfect until we use GTK 1.2 and its much improved DnD features.
 
wxClipboard has arrived and works for text. Other formats have not been
tested carefully yet.
 
wxMiniFrame has been added which might be useful for docking toolbars
etc. Someone has already done that for the MSW port and we hope to
include his very nice work later.
 
wxDirDialog has been added (thanks to Harm von der Heijden).
 
The entite "tab traveral" system for moving from item to item in
a dialog has been rewritten. It now completely overrides the
not-so-well-done GTK native tab system.
 
Quite much has been done to improve the wxImage class, which is now
available in the Windows port as well. Very useful for anything related
to image processing. wxGTK also uses this class internally e.g. to scale
bitmaps when the scale factor (e.g. zooming) of a drawing context
has changed.
  
Some of the small and handy classes (wxDate, wxTime, wxVariant) have
received a face-lift. wxList has been rewritten to make it possible
to write type-safe lists. The collection of utility functions (wxFileFind etc)
has been revamped and cleaned-up (thanks to Vadim Zeitlin, who has also
greatly enhanced many basic classes, ranging wxString to the debug and
log system).
 
We removed some constructors of GDI classes (such as wxPen, wxColour)
which took a pointer as a parameter. This lead to many errors among users
resulting in unexpected behaviour so it was decided to remove these
constructors.
 
As the number of users and the number of test programs and samples
is steadialy rising the core classes of wxWindows for MSW and GTK 1.0
can be considered to be very stable if not outright bug-free. I haven't
seen a crash for weeks now and wxWindows' internal debug features also
have improved every week, making stepping-through with a debugger almost
completely unnecessary as the library reports possible errors itself
(when in debug mode).