-wxWindows 2.2.0
----------------
+ wxWidgets 2.9.4 Release Notes
+ =============================
-Welcome to wxWindows 2, a sophisticated cross-platform C++
-framework for writing advanced GUI applications using (where
-possible) the native controls.
+Welcome to the latest release of wxWidgets, a free cross-platform C++
+framework for writing advanced GUI applications using native controls.
-In addition to common and advanced GUI facilities such as frames, scrolling
-windows, toolbars, tree controls, icons, device contexts, printing,
-splitter windows and so on, there are wrappers for common file operations,
-and facilities for writing TCP/IP applications, thread handling, and more.
-Where certain features are not available on a platform, such as MDI and
-tree controls on Unix, they are emulated.
-A detailed 1400-page reference manual is supplied in HTML, PDF and
-Windows Help form: see the docs hierarchy.
+In addition to common and advanced GUI facilities such as frames,
+scrolling windows, toolbars, tree controls, icons, device contexts,
+printing, splitter windows and so on, there are wrappers for common
+file operations, facilities for writing network applications,
+thread handling, and so on. You can learn more about wxWidgets at
+
+ http://www.wxwidgets.org/
+
+
+wxWidgets sources are available for download from
+
+ https://sourceforge.net/projects/wxwindows/files/2.9.4/
+
+or
+
+ ftp://ftp.wxwidgets.org/pub/2.9.4/
+
+Please see the "Files" section below for the description of various
+files available at these locations.
+
+
+A detailed reference manual including in-depth overviews for various
+topics is supplied in various formats and can be accessed online at
+
+ http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.9.4/
+
+
+Note about naming: while 2.9.4 is called a "development" release,
+this only means that API is not guaranteed to remain unchanged in the
+subsequent 2.9.x releases (although it is still likely that it will),
+unlike in the stable 2.8.x branch. We believe the current version is
+stable and suitable for use in production environment.
+
-For a quick start, point your Web browser at docs/html/index.htm for a
-list of important documents and samples.
Changes in this release
-----------------------
-Please see changes.txt for details.
+This release contains several years worth of improvements compared
+to 2.8 version. Notably, Unicode support has been completely
+overhauled and made much easier to use. Debugging support, including
+when using a release build of the library, was much improved making
+it less likely that you use the library incorrectly. Many new GUI
+and base classes have been added or improved.
+
+Please see the file docs/changes.txt for more details and make sure
+to read the section "Incompatible changes since 2.8" if you upgrade
+from a previous wxWidgets release.
+
+This release introduces many important changes and we are looking
+forward to your feedback about them. In particular please let us
+know about any regressions compared to the previous versions (see
+the section "Bug reporting" below) so that we could fix them before
+3.0 release.
+
Platforms supported
-------------------
-wxWindows 2 currently supports the following platforms:
+wxWidgets currently supports the following primary platforms:
+
+- Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7
+- Most Unix variants using the GTK+ toolkit (version 2.4 or newer)
+- Mac OS X (10.4 or newer) using either Carbon or Cocoa
-- Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98, Windows NT
+There is some support for the following platforms:
+
+- Most Unix variants with X11
- Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif
-- Most Unix variants with GTK+
-- Mac (not covered here: please see the wxWindows web site
- for details)
+- Most Unix variants with GTK+ 1.2
+- OS/2
+- Windows CE (Pocket PC)
Most popular C++ compilers are supported; see the install.txt
-file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) for details.
-See also http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~zeitlin/wxWindows/platform.html.
+file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) and
+http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Supported_Platforms for the most up to
+date status.
+
Files
-----
-The distribution is available in archive formats appropriate to the
-target system. Documentation is available mainly in zip format.
-Some add-on libraries (such as the Object Graphics Library) are
-available in zip form only. In the following, x.y.z represents
-the current version number.
-
-wxWindows for GTK distribution
-------------------------------
-
-wxGTK-x.y.z.tgz wxGTK source distribution. You will
- need the HTML, HTB and/or PDF documentation
- (see below)
-wxGTK-demos-x.y.z.tgz wxGTK demos source
-wxGTK-samples-x.y.z.tgz wxGTK samples source
-wxGTK-x.y.z-0.src.rpm wxGTK Linux source as an RPM, without manuals
-wxGTK-x.y.z-0.i386.rpm wxGTK Linux binaries as an RPM, without manuals
-wxGTK-devel-x.y.z-0.i386.rpm wxGTK Linux minimum development system as an RPM
-
-wxWindows for Motif distribution
---------------------------------
-
-wxMotif-x.y.z.tgz wxMotif source distribution. Contains
- TIFF, JPEG, Tex2RTF source plus HTML
- documentation.
-
-wxWindows for MS Windows distribution
--------------------------------------
-
-setup.exe, setup.w* Setup files (Windows 95/98, NT)
- in floppy-disk-sized chunks
-wxMSW-x.y.z-setup.zip Zip archive containing the
- setup files
-wxMSW-x.y.z.zip Zip archive containing all the
- files that are in the setup
- distribution
-
-As well as the core source, the wxMSW distribution contains:
-
-- Windows HTML Help versions of the documentation (docs/htmlhelp);
-- Object Graphics Library, in contrib/src/ogl;
-- a Dialog Editor binary;
-- a Tex2RTF binary;
-- Life! sample binary;
-- the JPEG library source;
-- the TIFF library source.
-
-Documentation files
--------------------
+wxWidgets is distributed in source form in several archive formats.
+ZIP and 7z archives are for Microsoft Windows users and contain the
+files with DOS/Windows line endings while the compressed tar archives
+for Unix systems users (including OS X) and contain the files with
+Unix line endings. Please notice that some Windows tools still don't
+accept files with Unix line endings and that compiling sources with
+DOS line endings under Unix will fail, so please choose the correct
+file for your system.
+
+In addition to the sources, documentation in HTML, CHM and HTB
+(wxWidgets help viewer) formats is provided as well as an installer
+for Microsoft Windows. Notice that you will still need to compile
+wxWidgets even when using the installer.
-wxWindows-x.y.z-WinHelp.zip WinHelp documentation
-wxWindows-x.y.z-PDF.zip Acrobat PDF documentation
-wxWindows-x.y.z-HTML.zip HTML documentation
-wxWindows-x.y.z-HTMLHelp.zip Windows HTML Help documentation
-wxWindows-x.y.z-HTB.zip wxHTML documentation (for
- use with the helpview utility)
-wxWindows-x.y.z-Word.zip MS Word documentation (currently,
- database class documentation only)
-wxWindows-x.y.z-DocSource.zip Documentation source code (not required)
-
-Add-ons
--------
-
-wxWindows-x.y.z-cw.zip Metrowerks CodeWarrior 4.1 project files
-wxWindows-x.y.z-wat.zip Watcom C++ project files
-wxWindows-x.y.z-vc.zip Visual C++ project files (in wxMSW distr.)
-wxWindows-x.y.z-bc.zip Borland C++ project files (in wxMSW distr.)
-jpeg.zip JPEG library (already included
- in most distributions)
-tiff.zip TIFF library (already included
- in most distributions)
-ogl3.zip Optional Object Graphics Library
-mmedia.zip Optional MMedia library (Motif, GTK, MSW)
-stc.zip Optional wxStyledTextCtrl library
- (Motif, GTK, MSW)
-tex2rtf2.zip Tex2RTF documentation tool
-wxGTK-gl-x.y.z-0.i386.rpm add-on OpenGL binary as an RPM
Installation
------------
-wxWindows 2 needs to be compiled before you can test out
-the samples or write your own applications.
-For installation information, please see the install.txt file
-in the individual directories:
+wxWidgets needs to be compiled before you can test out the samples
+or write your own applications. For installation information, please
+see the install.txt file in the docs subdirectory appropriate for
+the platform you use.
- docs/msw
- docs/gtk
- docs/motif
Licence information
-------------------
docs/lgpl.txt
Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of
-proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWindows in
-addition to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary,
-the licence is LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted
-distribution of application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you
-don't have to distribute any source if you wish to write
-commercial applications using wxWindows.
-
-However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif) version
-of your application, don't forget that it is linked against
-GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without* exception
-notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked
-against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefuly LGPL, section 6.
-which describes conditions for distribution of closed source applications
-linked against LGPL library. Basically you should link dynamicaly and
-include source code of LGPL libraries with your product (unless it is
-already present in user's system - like glibc usually is).
-If compiled with --enable-odbc (Unix only), wxWindows library will
-contain iODBC library which is covered by LGPL.
+proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWidgets in addition
+to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary, the licence is
+LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted distribution of
+application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't have to
+distribute any source if you wish to write commercial
+applications using wxWidgets.
+
+However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif)
+version of your application, don't forget that it is linked
+against GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without*
+exception notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked
+against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefully LGPL, section
+6. which describes conditions for distribution of closed source
+applications linked against LGPL library. Basically you should
+link dynamically and include source code of LGPL libraries with
+your product (unless it is already present in user's system -
+like glibc usually is).
If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT
-for libtiff license details.
+for libtiff licence details.
+
+If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program
+should contain following sentence: "This software is based in
+part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group". See
+src/jpeg/README for details.
+
+If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular
+expressions support (i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT
+file for Henry Spencer's regular expression library copyright.
+
+If you use wxXML classes or XRC, see src/expat/COPYING for licence details.
-If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program should
-contain following sentence: "This software is based in part on the work of
-the Independent JPEG Group". See src/jpeg/README for details.
Documentation
-------------
-See docs/bugs.txt for a bug list: this file is new and will initially
- be edited by hand, later generated from a web-based bug database.
+wxWidgets documentation is available online at
+http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.9.4/ and can also be downloaded in HTML
+format. To generate documentation in other formats (PDF, CHM, ...)
+please use the scripts in docs/doxygen directory.
-See docs/html/index.htm for an HTML index of the major documents.
-See docs/changes.txt for a summary of changes to wxWindows 2.
+Bug reporting
+-------------
-See docs/tech for an archive of technical notes.
+The wxWidgets bug tracker can be browsed at:
-The Windows help files are located in docs/winhelp.
-The PDF help files are located in docs/pdf.
+ http://trac.wxwidgets.org/report
-Further information
--------------------
+Please use the search function of our Trac installation to find
+any possibly relevant bugs before reporting new ones. Also please
+notice that often trying to correct the bug yourself is the
+quickest way to fix it. Even if you fail to do it, you may
+discover valuable information allowing us to fix it while doing
+it. We also give much higher priority to bug reports with patches
+fixing the problems so this ensures that your report will be
+addressed sooner.
-The wxWindows Web site is located at:
- http://www.wxwindows.org
+Further information
+-------------------
-The wxGTK Web site (with further wxGTK-specific files and
-information) is located at:
+The wxWidgets Web site is located at:
- http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~wxxt
+ http://www.wxwidgets.org/
-The main wxWindows ftp site is at:
+The main wxWidgets ftp site is at:
- ftp://www.remstar.com/pub/wxwin
+ ftp://ftp.wxwidgets.org/pub/
-A wxWindows CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML
+A wxWidgets CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML
front-end and hundreds of MB of compilers, utilities and other
-material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page (see the wxWindows
-web site) or contact Julian Smart <julian.smart@ukonline.co.uk>.
-
-Good luck!
+material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page: see the wxWidgets
+web site.
-The wxWindows Team, 9th July, 2000
+Have fun!
+The wxWidgets Team, December 2011