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  February 26, 2002 - New drop: FOX 1.0.0

Yes, I went to 1.0!!! Why not? The code has been *very* stable for a while, and its time we called it what it is:- the 1.0 release!

New API's to FXString. FXString::vscan() and FXString::scan() are API's to parse a string via sscanf-style format conventions. This is very useful in many cases, and obviates the need for some complex coding in the past.

New API's to FXRegistry (actually, FXSettings). FXSettings::readFormatEntry() and FXSettings::writeFormatEntry() perform sscanf- and sprintf-style access to registry database strings. As with FXString, this obviates the need for complex coding and is very compact and convenient.

Removed deprecated functions from fxdefs.h. The following functions have been removed: fxprefix(), fxsuffix(), fxexpand(), fxpathname(), fxdirpart(), fxfiletitle(), fxfilepart(), fxfileext(), fxexists(), fxisdir(), fxisfile(), fxbakname(), fxidentical(), fxsplit(), fxshortestpath(), fxupdir(), fxabspath(), fxistopdir(), fxgetcurrentdir(), fxmkdir(), fxgethomedir(), fxsearchpath(). These functions have been moved to the file:

fxdeprecated.h
and
fxdeprecated.cpp

Should your application need them, simply include these two files into your project.
Note, the functions above have better maintained, and easier-to-use equivalents in the FXFile namespace.

A new file, vsscanf.cpp, was added for those systems where vsscanf() and its ilk are not available. Under Linux, and other C99 standard compliant C Libraries, this file is not used.

Added some missing API's to FXListBox, FXComboBox, and FXTreeListBox; simplified internals of these widgets a bit.

Fixed some FXDirBox problems; removed reliance on deprecated API's.

Added a SELECTFILE_MULTIPLE_ALL to FXFileSelector (and FXFileDialog). This mode allows selection of a mix of files and directories. The mode SELECTFILE_MULTIPLE works as before, and selects only multiple, existing filename names (and no directories).

Fixed FXPopup focus navigation:- hidden menu items should not be focused upon.

Fixed little biddy problem in FXText and style settings.

Fixed text in FXReplaceDialog and FXSearchDialog; was not proper.

Fixed little problem in FXRex::substitute().

Fixed some minor configure issues. You can pass overrides for JPEGLIB, PNGLIB, TIFFLIB, ZLIB, and MATHLIB. This is useful if you want to force a different library than the one found in the usual places (for example if you loaded a newer version than your system came with, or want to force static linking, etc.).
Also added a test to search for vsscanf() function in your C library.

Added quick-and-dirty, ad-hoc, "hack" to Adie for syntax coloring. It still piggy-backs on the timer. However, the dialogs to set up highlight styles, language recognition, and syntax patterns is essentially complete.
You can now add and remove, and edit syntax patterns fairly reliably. I added a sample C++ and C syntax file you can drop into your .foxrc/Adie registry (or in any of the usual global registry places /usr/lib/foxrc/Adie, /usr/local/lib/foxrc/Adie, etc.) to kick-start some patterns to get you started.
The stylizer can now also use patterns with back-references, or capturing parentheses; I will still figure some way to color captured parentheses some day as well.

WANTED: syntax patterns for various languages: PERL, RUBY, PYTHON, HTML, XML, Pascal, Eiffel, and whatever else you can think of. I will collect these patterns and distribute them in future versions of Adie.

February 5, 2002 - New drop: FOX 0.99.193


Added new mode SWITCHER_HCOLLAPSE and SWITCHER_VCOLLAPSE to FXSwitcher; these will cause the FXSwitcher to collapse its default height or width to the currently active child's height or width, respectively.

Fixed bug in FXDriveBox. The option to report errors went away as FXDriveBox does not set the current drive anymore:- it just sends a message.

Fixed declaration in FXStringDict API: API's yield const strings.

Added support for SGI IRIS RGB Image input and output, as well as corresponding image and icon classes.

Completed editing of style-entries in Adie (language mode and pattern panels not complete yet). Minor style-coloring engine improvements.

Incorporated documentation man-page for Adie, PathFinder, and Calculator.

Fixed bug in FXText::changeStyle.

Added missing API's to FXListBox, FXTreeListBox, FXComboBox.

Fixed grooved border drawing.

Relaxed syntax of section and group name in FXSettings database [was too strict earlier for no good reason].

FXWindow issues SEL_MOTION events.

FXRex properly observes REX_NEWLINE for \D, \s, \W, and so on.

January 8, 2002 - New drop: FOX 0.99.189


Optional style buffer was added. FXText takes roughly same amount of memory/text, unless style buffer is turned on in which case memory usage doubles to store the style information.

Style table support was added. You can specify up to 127 different styles, where a style is a combination of fg/bg colors for normal, selected, or highlighted display, i.e. 6 different colors.

Line number display. The colors of the line numbers may be set. The number of columns reserved for the numbers be be set as well. Setting the number of columns to zero turns line numbers off.

Active line background coloring. The line containing the cursor can be given a different background.

New API's added to manipulate contents of the style buffer. First, normal API's like appendText() and so on now have an equivalent appendStyledText(). The style is a single value 0-127 indexing into style table, to which 128 may be added to achieve underlining. This makes it very easy to add colorful text....

Its still possible I will add flags to the style table for underlining instead of use a bit in the style buffer; I don't know yet...

changeStyle() changes the style w/o affecting the text.

Despite the style additions, drawing has actually been speeded up quite a bit, as some old crap has been removed:

  • drawing is split into painting the background and painting the text over it. This may alleviate some problems on SGI with XDrawImageString.
  • drawing no longer loops over virtual characters, it just rect-fills the tail-end of a line; this is of course much faster.
  • even better, drawing also accumulates runs of spaces and tabs into a single rect-fill; needless to say that is also much faster.

FXText now maintains a cursor column in terms of the indent offset from the row start, rather than byte offset. This means that while moving up/down in the buffer the preferred column is much better observed when tabs are around (it can't be perfect as we can not move the cursor in the middle of a tab!).

incremental movement of the selection/highlight is now much better optimized:- special cases for when the highlight overlaps (e.g. extended by being dragged), v.s. disjunct is now taken care off.

also minor buglet caused tail-end of line to be exposed when the last character was highlighted, this was fixed also.

FXText no longer sends SEL_REPLACED. instead, it sends SEL_DELETED followed by SEL_INSERTED. obviously, this is better as it allows for inspection of the new buffer contents in SEL_INSERTED. [You need to be able to inspect the buffer after a change so you can update the style info......].

Slight optimization in setCursorPos(). Don't recompute start/end unless changing to another line.

When using style tables, if a style color is set to "clear" i.e. FXRGBA(0,0,0,0) or simply 0, then the color used will automatically fallback to the regular build-in color. Thus, you can specify colors with a minimum amount of work.

December 31, 2001 - New drop: FOX 0.99.188


Made some minor API changes to FXRex::match. It can now scan not ony forward and backward in a smaller subrange of the entire string; it can also perform just a single match attempt when the subrange is empty. Scanning a subrange of the string is useful, as its not the same as just passing in a smaller string!

A new flag REX_VERBATIM was added to FXRex. This compiles a pattern with no interpretation of magic characters or escape codes. Useful to apply the FXRex machinery to literal strings. Note that case-insensitive flag may still be used!

Added REX_SYNTAX mode to FXRex also. This causes FXRex to perform only a syntax check; compiling the pattern takes roughly twice the time as just syntax checking it.

Added REX_NOT_EMPTY. This causes match to fail when matching empty string. Changed MATCH_FORWARD to REX_FORWARD for consistency. Added more documentation for FXRex as well.

Added regular expression search and replace capability to FXText; FXText::findText() API may still need some minor revision, however!

Found & fixed nasty little bug in FXFileDict. Was never noticed on UNIX systems by pure chance.

Dropped fxregex.h. It is obsoleted by FXRex. FXRex is a more powerful matcher, and is easier to use to as well. If you still need the old files, they're available as fxregex.h and fxregex.cpp should you need them; I recommend however to switch to FXRex so as to be able take advantage of PERL-compatible syntax.

FXList now allows arbitrary icon sizes to be mixed. This also means when using subclasses items, they don't have to be all the same size!

Added facility in FXScrollArea for subclasses to easily map the mouse wheel to horizontal scrolling instead of the default vertical scrolling (when wheeling inside the widget).

Fixed drawIconShaded for WIN32; the pattern offset must be adjusted when scrolling.

Added API drawFocusRectangle to FXDC. This is now used everywhere to draw a dotted rectangle. Hopefully this fixes bad-looking focus rectangle under Windows. The drawFocusRectangle() API was removed from FXFrame as it is now part of FXDC.

Fixed a few warnings, and one uninitialized memory read in FXTable.

Completed FXSlider tickmark drawing. If tickmark delta set to 0 (zero), the ticks will be placed at each position in the logical range; otherwise, they're placed every delta units in the logical range.

Fixed FXFile::isExecutable() API (and similar ones like isOwnerExecutable()). The POSIX function access() was not working as advertised under Windows.

FXMessageBox buttons rearranged in the order according to FOX style guidelines.

FXLabel::onHotKeyPress() was not moving the focus to the following widget if the widget was a composite, only if the sibling was a simple control. This caused label-mnemonics not to move the focus correctly when the next focusable control was in a composite.

FXReplaceDialog. Small accelerator conflict fixed.

Warnings in fxpcxio.cpp fixed.

December 19, 2001 - New drop: FOX 0.99.187


The new class FXRex for regular expressions is now finished.
FXRex is a more modern matching engine, adding back-references, lazy or greedy matches, counted repeats, PERL-compatible character classes, escape codes for control-codes, hexadecimal or octal character entry, zero-width assertions, positive or negative look ahead, non-capturing and capturing parentheses, "cloistered" modes, and more.
FXRex is also thread-safe: not only are no global variables used, but also can one FXRex-variable be used by multiple threads.
FXRex allows unlimited pattern sizes, can search forward and backward through a subject string, returns proper syntax error codes, allows for multi-line and case-insensitive matching.
FXRex is 8-bit safe (including end-of-strinf character), so you can use it on binary data.
You can enter control-characters, octal or hexadecimal characters in the pattern.

Added documentation to FXRex class.

More small additions to FXFileDialog.

FXText much improved brace matching technique. Also added highlight capability, i.e. a new text style. This also has its own colors. It is currently used for the new brace matching method.

Added support in Adie for the above. Note brace match time must now be set in milliseconds, not microseconds.

Added method to FXInputDialog to set text field width.

Bullet-proofed FXString::left(), FXString::right(), FXString::mid(), and FXString::trunc() against bad arguments.

Fixed bug in FXTable drawing loops; references were made outside the cell array.

Fixed potential bug in ICO loader.

Added argument to FXApp::init() to suppress opening display. You can open display later using FXApp::openDisplay(). This allows FOX GUI's to start in non-GUI mode.


December 10, 2001 - FOX 0.99.182


FXFileDialog supports context popup menu, adds copy, move, delete capability.

FXFile::concatenate bug fixed.

FXImage::getChannels() API added.

FXImage::setPixel(), FXImage::getPixel() API's added.

Small fixes to FXTGAImage, etc.

FXFileDict.  Compile-time option to enable all available image formats; see INSTALL file.

FXGLCanvas swapbuffers bug fix for Windows 2000/NT (in) compatibility.

Other stuff that has been reported in the past couple of weeks.


November 27, 2001 - FOX 0.99.181


Widgets like FXText, FXTextField, and so on which absorb the Return key now make the default button loose the fat border.

The Return key is now reported to the default widget as ordinary SEL_KEYPRESS or SEL_KEYRELEASE messages.

The ID_INSERT_CHAR message in FXText and FXTextField has been deleted; a new message ID_OVERST_STRING has been added to implement overstrike mode capability. The overstrike mode in FXText is now more sophisticated about spaces and tabs.

Added API's to FXImage: setPixel() and getPixel() to access image buffer on pixel by pixel basis.

Corrected API's to FXGLSphere.

Made ctx member of FXGLCanvas and FXGLContext protected.

Added some screen shots.

Made data() public in FXSettings; this is needed to write iterations over all sections.


November 22, 2001 - FOX 0.99.180


Janusz Ganczarski has donated support for the TARGA image file format; this brings FOX's image support up to the following list:

BMP, GIF, XPM, PCX, JPG, PNG, ICO, TIFF, and TARGA.

Note to MS-Windows users: FOX supports not only BMP images and icons, but also ICO format. This means you can design icons directly with VC++ built-in icon editor.

FXJPEGImage, FXJPEGIcon renamed to FXJPGImage, FXJPGIcon [but a typedef should keep your app compiling].

FOX now properly handles default buttons. The default button is the one responding to the Return key in a dialog. You can designate any number of buttons to become the default button when the focus moves into it. One special button is called the initial default button; the initial default button is the button that will initially be the default button. It is also the button to which the default returns when the keyboard focus moves to another control.
For this purpose, the meaning of the old BUTTON_DEFAULT flag has been changed to mean that the button MAY become the default button. A new flag BUTTON_INITIAL means the button is the INITIAL default button.

New API's are available to set initial default widgets:

setInitial(enable)

This makes the window the initial default window, i.e. the target for the Return key.

isInitial()

This determines if the widget is the initial default window.

setDefault(enable)

This sets the widget to the default widget if enable is TRUE; if enable is FALSE, it makes the widget normal again; if enable is MAYBE, the default returns to the initial default window.

isDefault()

This returns true if the window is the default, i.e. the window which will get the Return key even if the focus is on another control. Of course it will not get the Return key if the other control handles the Return key.

Only one window can be the initial default, and only one window can be the default.

FXGLObject now starts counting at message ID=10000, this means you can make your FXGLViewer subclass start counting from FXGLViewer::ID_LAST, just as you would with any other subclassed widget.

FXStatusline and FXProgressBar now automatically call repaint() and flush() so you won't have to. This is useful to update these widgets while performing a long callback routine [e.g. reading a file].

FXSectionDict has disappeared. Basically, its only use was in FXSettings; what has happened is that FXSettings now derives from FXDict directly, and takes over all of FXSectionDict's functionality.

Fixed focus navigation in FXTopWindow.

Focus navigation in FXMatrix was moving to incorrect widget.

FXText could read out-of-bounds when searching.

Note, I did not implement Daniel Gehriger's menu patch yet; still looking at that issue some more.


November 13, 2001 - FOX 0.99.179


Integrated Daniel Gehriger's keyboard patches. The fxkeyval API has now been removed:- instead, a new member "text" was added to FXEvent which contains the translated keyboard symbol(s).

The header file organization has been changed to allow programs to include only those widgets which are needed.

A resource leak in OpenGL context has been removed (under Windows).

The style BUTTON_DEFAULT causes a button to have the focus first time around; buttons which have the focus are drawn with a FAT border and respond to the Enter key.

The flag MENU_DEFAULT, and the setDefault() and setOther() API's have been removed.

The new API FXWindow::isDefault() returns TRUE if the widget is in the focus chain.

Updated project files for VC++.

Added stub-icon/images to be shown when JPEG, PNG, or TIFF libraries are not available; the stub images allow programs which use FXJPEGImage, FXPNGImage, and FXTIFImage to work with reduced functionality when the necessary libraries are not available.


October 19, 2001 - FOX 0.99.177


Some minor bugfixes. Visual Studio Project files were broken and now fixed.


October 16, 2001 - New drop: FOX 0.99.176


Due to the amount of time elapsed since last drop, there have been a lot of new things; for starters, we have some new widgets:

  • FXColorBar. This widget controls the brightness of a certain color in the hue, saturation, value system of color specification.
  • FXColorWheel. This widget controls the hue and saturation of a color in the hue, saturation, value system of color specification.
  • FXPicker. FXPicker is used to select stuff anywhere on the screen. Basically, you click once to activate it, and move to a location you want to identify, then click again.

    FXPicker reports the identified location using SEL_COMMAND, and updates while moving with SEL_CHANGED.

Janusz Ganczarski donated support for Windows ICO format support; we have both an FXICOIcon and FXICOImage classes.
This is an important contribution because now you can create your icons simply from within VC++ or so without any other conversion step (other than the usual reswrap).

A huge amount of improvement to FXTable has been performed; we have more to do, but here's what's been done that you can now start to play with:

  • Table items support multiple-line text.
  • Items can contain icons.
  • Items can have all the usual internal layout, i.e. left,right,top,bottom, icon and text relative to each other BEFORE, AFTER, ABOVE, BELOW.
  • Items can have button appearance.
  • Items can have borders (each side is individually selectable).
  • Icons may be owned by the item or shared.
  • Items may have many different hatch-pattern backgrounds.

For the table itself:

  • Rows and columns may be resized interactively.
  • Even/odd cells background coloring.
  • Leading/trailing fixed rows and/or columns.
  • Empty (NULL) cells are now possible; a new item will be automatically created when you fill it with text/icon.
  • Budding support for so-called spanning cells; that is to say, a single item may span multiple rows and/or columns.

Popup menus improved under Windows, thanks to Daniel Gehriger.

FXFile::listFiles now has many matching modes.

FXFile::simplify() was much improved now; it was not entirely working correctly in all cases.

FXColorSelector has been augmented with a hue/saturation dial, a value bar, and a color picker.

Off-by-one error fixed in FXDCWindow::drawArc under MS-Windows.

FXDCWindow::drawIcon() FXDCWindow::drawIconShader(), FXDCWindow::drawIconSunken() have been fixed to take into account the clipping rectangle of the FXDCWindow. This may in some cases result in slightly faster/more flicker-free drawing, and of course it now clips correctly!!

Added another ctor to FXMessageBox in case there's no owner widget.

FXWindow::hide did not ungrab under Windows.

Fixed compile bug for Borland C++.

Fixed GUI updating problem in FXListBox, FXComboBox, FXTreeListBox.

Fixed problems which occurred when FXIcon, FXImage, FXFont, FXCursor resources were being deleted AFTER closing the display; now the destroy() function for all resources becomes a NO-OP after the display is closed; everything is assumed to be already gone!

FXDCPrint::drawImage now implemented for PostScript.

Sublt layout bug fixed in FXTabBook:- calculated size was a bit too wide given the content size.

FXSpinner was sending wrong parameter in message.

Extremely subtle buglet in FXSlider fixed.

API added to FXGLCanvas to return GL context.

FXPacker focus movement had potential infinite loop in it due to typo.

FXProgressBar dial mode drawing improved.

Drag and drop enabling was in wrong place.

Keyboard handling slightly changed; FXComposite now dispatches to accel table first before trying focus child.

Calculator does keypad now...

Adie updates.


August 30, 2001 - FOX 0.99.175


Many new features were added. FXSearchDialog and FXReplaceDialog now maintain a history of previous searches. TextEdit has been renamed to Adie (Advanced Interactive Editor). FXText serialization was added. Additions were made to the XWindow API to grab the keyboard to a window. A new repaint function was added, which forces painting of part of a window before returning. FXFile and FXURL were turned into name spaces. Popups were improved. FXCalculator now has its own Web page. Lots of bugfixes were made in FXArrowButton, FXScrollbar,FXMDIChild, FXTextField, FXStream, FXFrame, FXPacker, FXTopWindow/FXShell,and FXApp.


July 19, 2001 - FOX 0.99.174


FOX has a dedicated web site. CUPS Printing support has been added. PCX, TIFF, JPEG, XPM Image I/O support has been added. FXProgressBar has a dial mode. New Standard dialogs: FXProgressDialog, Search and Replace dialogs, Input dialog, Directory Selection Dialog have been added. Dockable toolbar support ihas been added. Socket and signal callback message support have been added. Listing files, drive letters, and network neighborhood (Windows) have been added, and there have been many bug fixes.
   
     
 
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