Tix 4.1b2

Released on December 28, 1996


Subject: [Announce] Tix version 4.1b2 is available

I am pleased to announce the availability of Tix version 4.1b2, the first beta release. This version of Tix supports the Unix and Microsoft Windows platforms.

The Tix library has by far the greatest collection of widgets for programming with Tcl/Tk. Highlights include: Hierarchical Listbox, Directory List/Tree View, SpreadSheet, Tabular Listbox, ComboBox, Motif style FileSelectBox, MS Windows style FileSelectBox, PanedWindow, NoteBook, Spin Control widget .... and many more. With these new widgets, your Tcl/Tk applications will look great and interact with your users in intuitive ways.

For more info about Tix, visit the Tix home page at http://www.xpi.com/tix/ .

This version of Tix is released under licensing terms similar to those of Tcl/Tk. Please read the file license.terms carefully before proceeding.

Requirement

Unix Platforms

Tix 4.1b2 works with the following combinations of Tcl/Tk/ITcl:

Tcl 7.4 + Tk 4.0
Tcl 7.4 + Tk 4.0 + ITcl 2.0
Tcl 7.5 + Tk 4.1
Tcl 7.5 + Tk 4.1 + ITcl 2.1
Tcl 7.6 + Tk 4.2

Windows Platforms

Tix 4.1b2 requires the final release of Tcl 7.5 or Tcl 7.6.

Getting The Tix Package

Tix 4.1b2 sources are available at

ftp://ftp.xpi.com/pub/Tix4.1b2.tar.gz: Unix source tar file.
ftp://ftp.xpi.com/pub/windows/tix41b2.zip: Same as Tix4.1b2.tar.gz, but in Windows/DOS ZIP format.

What's New Since Tix 4.1a3 (the last release)

10/13/96

New feature: Now XPM image works on Windows.

10/18/96

New feature: New options -editnotifycmd and -editdonecmd for the Grid widget to support editing of the entries.

New feature: New widget TixFloatEntry to support editing of DItems.

10/27/96

Feature Change: The following changes are made to the configuration and installation of Tix:

Naming convention of binaries: The binaries for the Tk 4.0 target are called tixwish and libtix.a. For Tk 4.1 and later, the executable is be called tixwish[Tix version].[Tk version] and the library is called libtix[Tix version].[Tk version].[lib extension]. For example, tixwish4.1.4.1 and libtix4.1.4.2.so. On platforms that do not allow the dot character in the names of shared libraries, the dot character will be omitted. E.g., libtix4142.so.
Shared vs static linking: The static binary will be created only if the -enable-[tkversion]-shared flag is disabled. If you want to create both shared and static binaries, configure and compile Tix twice.
ET support is replaced by SAM (stand-alone module) support.
The following options are removed from configure:
- -enable-tk40_et
- -enable-tk41_et
- -enable-tk41_shared
The new options are added to configure:
- -enable-tk40-sam
- -enable-tk41-sam
- -enable-tk42-sam
- -enable-tk41-shared
- -enable-tk42-shared

11/1/96

New feature: XPM code has been rewritten. The code is now cleanly separated into three modules: generic, windows specific and Unix specific.

11/17/96

New feature: Tix classes can be defined before their superclasses are defined. However, a class cannot be instantiated before all of its superclasses are defined. This feature makes it possible to load the Tix scripts into the SAM in any order, without having to worry about loading the superclasses before the subclasses.

New feature: Tix is initialized by calling the command __tixInit, not by sourcing Init.tcl.

11/29/96

Bug Fixed: tixTmpLine now correctly works on multiple X displays.

11/30/96

Feature Change: DisplayStyle now uses a hash table to store the items associated with it (previously a link list was used). This speeds up the delete operations when a lot (1000 or more) of items are associated with the same style. Possible Incompatibility: widgets that use DItems must be recompiled.

Bug Fixed: Tix no longer tempers with the way Tk handles errors, unless the environment variable TIX_DEBUG_INTERACTIVE is set. If this variable is set, all error messages will be printed to the standard output. This may be convenient for debugging purposes. Use this feature with discretion, and during program development only.

12/2/96

Bug Fixed:Dotted anchor lines (HList, TList, Grid) and rubber-band lines (PanedWindow, ResizeHandle) are implemented on Windows.

New feature: Tcl 7.6 support is complete for the Windows platform. makefile.vc and makefile.bc have been modified such that the Tcl version can be chosen at compile time by, e.g., "make TCL_VER=7.5 -f makefile.bc".

12/2/96

Bug Fixed: Display items are correctly clipped. E.g., if a text item is wider than the width of a column in an HList, the item will be clipped.

12/20/96

New feature: New sample file demos/samples/EditGrid.tcl that demonstrates the use of an editable grid widget.

12/21/96

Bug Fixed: Tix works with multiple interpreters under tk4.1 and 4.2 (see test/general/minterp.tcl). However, minterp.tcl still core dumps under Itcl 2.1. It is not clear to me whether this is a problem of Tix or Itcl.

Bug Fixed: Now when an interpreter is deleted, all Tix class informations associated with this interpreter are freed. (No memory leak is recorded by purify when running Tix against the complete test suite.)

Last modified Fri Jan 17 22:52:59 EST 1997 --- Serial 853731294