docs/readme.txt

   1 wxWidgets 2.7.0
   2 ---------------------------------------------------------
   3
   4 Welcome to wxWidgets, a sophisticated cross-platform C++
   5 framework for writing advanced GUI applications using
   6 native controls 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 are
  11 wrappers for common file operations, and facilities for writing
  12 TCP/IP applications, thread handling, and more. Where certain
  13 features are not available on a platform, such as MDI and tree
  14 controls on Unix, they are emulated.
  15
  16 A detailed 2000-page reference manual is supplied in HTML, PDF
  17 and Windows Help form: see the docs hierarchy.
  18
  19 For a quick start, point your Web browser at docs/html/index.htm
  20 for a list of important documents and samples.
  21
  22 Releases in the 2.7 series are considered development releases,
  23 and as such, each new release may contain significant new
  24 features or code changes which have not yet received thorough
  25 testing and/or may break ABI or API compatibility with previous
  26 releases. Therefore, we recommend that you keep this in mind if
  27 you are to base your software on a 2.7 release, and thoroughly
  28 test the parts of the wx library your application uses.  Rest
  29 assured however that these potentially incompatible changes are
  30 made in order to evolve the toolkit to the next ABI stable
  31 release series (2.8.x) and that normally efforts are made to
  32 preserve compilation compatibility, so often moving to a new
  33 development release just requires a full recompile of the
  34 application using wxWidgets.
  35
  36
  37 Changes in this release
  38 -----------------------
  39
  40 Please see changes.txt and "Changes since 2.6" in the manual
  41 for details.
  42
  43 Platforms supported
  44 -------------------
  45
  46 wxWidgets currently supports the following platforms:
  47
  48 - Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP,
  49   Pocket PC, Smartphone
  50 - Most Unix variants with GTK+ 1 and GTK+ 2
  51 - Most Unix variants with X11 (beta)
  52 - Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif
  53 - MacOS 9.x and 10.x using Carbon (10.3 and above preferred)
  54 - MacOS 10.x using Cocoa (beta)
  55 - OS/2 (beta)
  56 - PalmOS (alpha)
  57
  58 Most popular C++ compilers are supported; see the install.txt
  59 file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) for details.
  60 See also http://www.wxwidgets.org/platform.htm.
  61
  62 Note that 2.6 series were the last to fully support GTK+ 1.2, and Mac OS
  63 9/Mac OS 10.2 and below. wxWidgets 2.7 and above focuses on GTK+ 2 and Mac OS
  64 10.3 and above and compatibility with earlier systems is not guaranteed any
  65 more.
  66
  67 Files
  68 -----
  69
  70 The distribution is available in archive formats appropriate to the
  71 target system. See the download pages for details.
  72
  73 Installation
  74 ------------
  75
  76 wxWidgets needs to be compiled before you can test out the samples
  77 or write your own applications. For installation information, please
  78 see the install.txt file in the individual directories:
  79
  80   docs/msw
  81   docs/gtk
  82   docs/motif
  83   docs/mac
  84   docs/cocoa
  85   docs/x11
  86   docs/mgl
  87   docs/os2
  88   docs/palmos
  89
  90 Licence information
  91 -------------------
  92
  93 For licensing information, please see the files:
  94
  95   docs/preamble.txt
  96   docs/licence.txt
  97   docs/licendoc.txt
  98   docs/gpl.txt
  99   docs/lgpl.txt
 100
 101 Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of
 102 proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWidgets in addition
 103 to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary, the licence is
 104 LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted distribution of
 105 application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't have to
 106 distribute any source if you wish to write commercial
 107 applications using wxWidgets.
 108
 109 However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif)
 110 version of your application, don't forget that it is linked
 111 against GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without*
 112 exception notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked
 113 against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefully LGPL, section
 114 6. which describes conditions for distribution of closed source
 115 applications linked against LGPL library. Basically you should
 116 link dynamically and include source code of LGPL libraries with
 117 your product (unless it is already present in user's system -
 118 like glibc usually is). If compiled with --enable-odbc (Unix
 119 only), wxWidgets library will contain iODBC library which is
 120 covered by LGPL.
 121
 122 If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT
 123 for libtiff licence details.
 124
 125 If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program
 126 should contain following sentence: "This software is based in
 127 part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group". See
 128 src/jpeg/README for details.
 129
 130 If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular
 131 expressions support (i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT
 132 file for Henry Spencer's regular expression library copyright.
 133
 134 If you use wxXML classes or XRC, see src/expat/COPYING for licence details.
 135
 136 Documentation
 137 -------------
 138
 139 See docs/html/index.htm for an HTML index of the major documents.
 140
 141 See docs/changes.txt for a summary of changes to wxWidgets.
 142
 143 See docs/tech for an archive of technical notes.
 144
 145 The wxWidgets bug database can be browsed at:
 146
 147   http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=9863
 148
 149 The Windows HTML Help files are located in docs/htmlhelp.
 150 The Windows Help files are located in docs/winhelp.
 151 The PDF help files are located in docs/pdf.
 152 The HTB (wxWidgets HTML Help) files are located in docs/htb.
 153
 154 Further information
 155 -------------------
 156
 157 The wxWidgets Web site is located at:
 158
 159   http://www.wxwidgets.org
 160
 161 The main wxWidgets ftp site is at:
 162
 163   ftp://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/pub
 164
 165 A wxWidgets CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML
 166 front-end and hundreds of MB of compilers, utilities and other
 167 material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page: see the wxWidgets
 168 web site.
 169
 170 Have fun!
 171
 172 The wxWidgets Team, September 2005
 173