NEWS: latest TkGS updates
Frédéric Bonnet
After several months of silence (I've found a new job, moved, and so
on...), I'm pleased to announce the latest TkGS developments. The
SourceForge project page is at the following address:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkgs/
>From there you can access the CVS archive.
What's new:
===========
- Fully working font support on Windows and X. The algorithms were adapted
from Tk's mechanism, so TkGS is almost 100% compatible with Tk, especially
for the font fallback mechanism. In addition, TkGS migrated common features
into the core, so that device drivers only need a minimal amount of code to
make use of the Unicode engine, even on non-Unicode devices (such as
PostScript). In short, you only have to list the available fonts and tell
which Unicode character they provide. We could then get Unicode-enabled
PostScript output for cheap.
The font mechanism was the big hairy part, this explains why there wasn't
any update for so much time.
What's being worked on:
=======================
- Bitmap support for stippling. Windows implementation is complete, Xlib
implementation is nearly done. Fully device-independent bitmap support,
even for text output under Windows. Uses the X bitmap format, so is 100%
compatible.
What needs to be done (in order of importance):
===============================================
- Pixmaps (including alpha transparency support) and Tk Image rework (badly
needed).
- Line dashing (for completeness with what Tk currently provides)
- Full port of Tk
- Stub library
- Device capabilities
- Colormaps (unless we restrict to true color)
- Alpha support for lines & shapes
- Coordinates transforms
Help needed:
============
- Implementors of additional device drivers, especially Macintosh Classic,
but also MacOS X, PostScript, PDF, OpenGL, DirectX, SDL, GGI, VNC...
- Documentation manager. A database-driven documentation engine would be
great.
- Webmaster. The SF-hosted web page is still desperately blank...
- Ideas, comments, criticism...
See you, Fred
--
Frédéric Bonnet fbo...@users.sourceforge.net
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