ANNOUNCE: TIX 4.0a1 - A Set Of Compound Widgets

[Ioi Kim Lam]

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* ANNOUNCING TIX 4.0 ALPHA-1 RELEASE *
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I am pleased to announce the availability of Tix 4.0a1, the first
alpha release of Tix. If you have used Tix 3.6, you will love the new
and enhanced features of Tix 4.0:

(1) Lots of new, Motif-style widgets including:

PanedWindow
NoteBook
Combobox
Control (called "SpinBox" in motif)
File Selection box
Popup and Option menu
Balloon help window
MDI (Multiple Document Interface) window

(2) New intergated geometry management supports:

--->> Motif style Form geometry manager <<---
- Automatic scrollbars for listbox
- ScrolledWindow widget that allows you to scroll any type of
widget
- Geometry management facilities that allow you to develop a
geometry manager directly in TCL.

(3) Object Oriented Programming Framework

Tix is not based on [incr tcl]. It is based on its own OOP
framework. While [incr tcl] tries to be general, the Tix OOP
framework is tuned tuned for compound widget programming.
Therefore, it allows you to rapidly develop new widgets
without having to go through all the dirty works you have to
do under [incr tcl], such as renaming widget commands.

Also, Tix features a well-defined subwidget access mechainsm
that allows you to easily access subwidgets inside a compound
widgets without compromising the integrity of the OOP
interface.

(4) SGI GL Widgets

If you are developing for the SGI you are going to like these:
- Color Editor
- Material Editor
They are similar to the widgets you can find in the Inventor
SceneViewer.

You can obtain Tix4.0a1 from my ftp site:

ftp://linc.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ioi/Tix4.0a1.tar.gz

Some on-line documentation of Tix can be found at. These HTML files
are pretty old. They will be updated shortly. But just in case you
find some discrepancies between the code and the HTML files, always
rely on the source code. That's the what the "a" in Tix4.0a1.tar.gz
means :)

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ioi/tix/tix.html

Please be aware that currently Tix 4.0 is still in ALPHA testing. As
such, the software will contain LOTS of bugs and unstable features.
Also, the programming interface is still transient and will change
according to user feedbacks. Therefore, please advoid using Tix4.0a1
in any production code.

Please try it out and send bug reports, comments, feedbacks to me so
that I know how to improve. Your opinions are important! You can
contact me at

i...@graphics.cis.upenn.edu

Enjoy!

Ioi.

[Ioi Kim Lam]

Just a follow-up note:

Much of the API of the widgets has been changed in Tix4.0a1.
For example,

$combobox pick -at $index
and $combobox appendhistory $string

If you have dowoloaded Tix4.0a1 and it won't work with your 3.6 code,
don't despair. I will fix the backware compatibility problem in
Tix4.0a2 and will document all necessary incompatibility. Do be
patient. Don't rush ahead and change your production code to suit
4.0a1. Again, it is still in alpha.

If you have problems with Tix4.0a1, please send me a note. Also, check
comp.lang.tcl because I may have posted a fix to you problem already.

Ioi.

[Ioi Kim Lam]

I have uploaded a newer version of Tix4.0a1.tar.gz that is compatible
with the Sun cc compiler

Ioi.