docs/readme.txt

   1                wxWidgets 3.0.0 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/3.0.0/
  20
  21 or
  22
  23         ftp://ftp.wxwidgets.org/pub/3.0.0/
  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/3.0.0/
  33
  34
  35
  36 Changes in this release
  37 -----------------------
  38
  39 This release contains several years worth of improvements compared
  40 to 2.8 version. Notably, Unicode support has been completely
  41 overhauled and made much easier to use. Debugging support, including
  42 when using a release build of the library, was much improved making
  43 it less likely that you use the library incorrectly. Dynamic event
  44 handling was made much more comfortable. Many new GUI and base classes
  45 have been added or improved and all ports, and especially wxOSX/Cocoa
  46 and wxGTK3, were enhanced.
  47
  48 Compared to the previous 2.9 development releases the most important
  49 change is that this release is part of the new 3.0 stable series,
  50 guarantying backwards API and ABI compatibility with the next 3.0.x
  51 releases.
  52
  53 Please see the file docs/changes.txt for more details and make sure
  54 to read the section "Incompatible changes since 2.8" if you upgrade
  55 from a previous wxWidgets release.
  56
  57 This release introduces many important changes and we are looking
  58 forward to your feedback about them!
  59
  60
  61 Platforms supported
  62 -------------------
  63
  64 wxWidgets currently supports the following primary platforms:
  65
  66 - Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7
  67 - Most Unix variants using the GTK+ toolkit (version 2.6 or newer)
  68 - Mac OS X (10.5 or newer) using either Carbon or Cocoa
  69
  70 There is some support for the following platforms:
  71
  72 - Most Unix variants with X11
  73 - Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif
  74 - Most Unix variants with GTK+ 1.2
  75 - Most Unix variants with GTK+ 3 (still in development)
  76 - OS/2
  77 - Windows CE (Pocket PC)
  78
  79 Most popular C++ compilers are supported; see the install.txt
  80 file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) and
  81 http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Supported_Platforms for the most up to
  82 date status.
  83
  84
  85 Files
  86 -----
  87
  88 wxWidgets is distributed in source form in several archive formats.
  89 ZIP and 7z archives are for Microsoft Windows users and contain the
  90 files with DOS/Windows line endings while the compressed tar archives
  91 for Unix systems users (including OS X) and contain the files with
  92 Unix line endings. Please notice that some Windows tools still don't
  93 accept files with Unix line endings and that compiling sources with
  94 DOS line endings under Unix will fail, so please choose the correct
  95 file for your system.
  96
  97 In addition to the sources, documentation in HTML, CHM and HTB
  98 (wxWidgets help viewer) formats is provided as well as an installer
  99 for Microsoft Windows. Notice that you will still need to compile
 100 wxWidgets even when using the installer.
 101
 102 Experimentally, we also supply binaries of wxMSW libraries built
 103 with several versions of Microsoft Visual C++ compiler for this
 104 release. They are available in the "binaries" subdirectory, see
 105 the description of the files in the README file there.
 106
 107
 108 Installation
 109 ------------
 110
 111 wxWidgets needs to be compiled before you can test out the samples
 112 or write your own applications. For installation information, please
 113 see the install.txt file in the docs subdirectory appropriate for
 114 the platform you use.
 115
 116
 117 Licence information
 118 -------------------
 119
 120 For licensing information, please see the files:
 121
 122   docs/preamble.txt
 123   docs/licence.txt
 124   docs/licendoc.txt
 125   docs/gpl.txt
 126   docs/lgpl.txt
 127   docs/xserver.txt
 128
 129 Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of
 130 proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWidgets in addition
 131 to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary, the licence is
 132 LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted distribution of
 133 application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't have to
 134 distribute any source if you wish to write commercial
 135 applications using wxWidgets.
 136
 137 However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif)
 138 version of your application, don't forget that it is linked
 139 against GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without*
 140 exception notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked
 141 against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefully LGPL, section
 142 6. which describes conditions for distribution of closed source
 143 applications linked against LGPL library. Basically you should
 144 link dynamically and include source code of LGPL libraries with
 145 your product (unless it is already present in user's system -
 146 like glibc usually is).
 147
 148 If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT
 149 for libtiff licence details.
 150
 151 If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program
 152 should contain following sentence: "This software is based in
 153 part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group". See
 154 src/jpeg/README for details.
 155
 156 If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular
 157 expressions support (i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT
 158 file for Henry Spencer's regular expression library copyright.
 159
 160 If you use wxXML classes or XRC, see src/expat/COPYING for licence details.
 161
 162
 163 Documentation
 164 -------------
 165
 166 wxWidgets documentation is available online at
 167 http://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0.0/ and can also be downloaded in HTML
 168 format. To generate documentation in other formats (PDF, CHM, ...)
 169 please use the scripts in docs/doxygen directory.
 170
 171
 172 Bug reporting
 173 -------------
 174
 175 The wxWidgets bug tracker can be browsed at:
 176
 177     http://trac.wxwidgets.org/report
 178
 179 Please use the search function of our Trac installation to find
 180 any possibly relevant bugs before reporting new ones. Also please
 181 notice that often trying to correct the bug yourself is the
 182 quickest way to fix it. Even if you fail to do it, you may
 183 discover valuable information allowing us to fix it while doing
 184 it. We also give much higher priority to bug reports with patches
 185 fixing the problems so this ensures that your report will be
 186 addressed sooner.
 187
 188
 189 Further information
 190 -------------------
 191
 192 The wxWidgets Web site is located at:
 193
 194   http://www.wxwidgets.org/
 195
 196 The main wxWidgets ftp site is at:
 197
 198   ftp://ftp.wxwidgets.org/pub/
 199
 200 A wxWidgets CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML
 201 front-end and hundreds of MB of compilers, utilities and other
 202 material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page: see the wxWidgets
 203 web site.
 204
 205 Have fun!
 206
 207 The wxWidgets Team, July 2013