FLTK 1.4.0rc3 released on Nov. 08, 2024

[Albrecht Schlosser]

We are pleased to announce the release of FLTK 1.4.0rc3.

This is the third release candidate of the new release 1.4.0 with major enhancements, some new widgets, macOS and CMake improvements, and bug fixes.

FLTK 1.4 is based on the final release of FLTK 1.3.4. Later updates have been backported to 1.3.5 - 1.3.9. FLTK 1.3.10 with the latest backports is planned to be released shortly after 1.4.0 or 1.4.1.

FLTK 1.4 is intended to be mostly API compatible with FLTK 1.3.x so you don't need to change source code when you switch to FLTK 1.4. However, all programs must be recompiled with FLTK 1.4 because the ABI (Application Binary Interface) has changed.

Potential source code conflicts are documented in chapter "Migrating Code from FLTK 1.3 to 1.4" of the user documentation [1].

FLTK 1.4 adds some new widgets (e.g. Fl_Flex, Fl_Grid) for flexible GUI layout, Fl_Scheme_Choice for scheme selection by users, and more. Other widgets (Fl_Tabs, Fl_Tile, Fl_Spinner etc.) have been improved for better user experience.

FLTK 1.4 adds support for HighDPI displays under Linux/Unix and Windows and improves HighDPI support on macOS. The initial screen scaling factor is read from the system and application windows can be zoomed (in/out/reset) by the user with ctrl/+/-/0 shortcuts, respectively.

CMake support has been improved significantly and requires CMake 3.15 or higher, autotools/configure/make is still supported. The latter will be dropped in the next minor release (1.5.0).

macOS is supported up to 15.0 "Sequoia".

The platform dependent code in FLTK 1.4 was rewritten to enable better porting to new platforms. Basically all platform dependent code has been isolated and implemented in virtual methods of "driver" classes.

FLTK is now compatible with the Wayland platform on current Linux distributions and FreeBSD. The default build of the library on these platforms supports both X11 and Wayland in a "hybrid" library. Programs compiled and linked to this library start using Wayland if it is available at runtime and fall back to X11 if not. Programs using X11 specific code that are not yet ported to Wayland can be used on pure X11 systems or by disabling the Wayland support on startup so they fall back to using X11 only. This requires 'XWayland' support on Wayland enabled (Linux) systems.

The current development branch on GitHub [2] is `master`. This will be changed to `branch-1.4` when development of FLTK 1.5.0 begins and 1.4 will move to maintenance mode.

[1] https://www.fltk.org/doc-1.4/ (HTML) and
    https://www.fltk.org/doc-1.4/fltk.pdf (PDF)
[2] https://github.com/fltk/fltk.git

[Daniel Harding]

Hi, Albrecht. Would it be appropriate to request if I can be added to the bottom section of the CREDITS file as "Daniel Harding"?

[Albrecht Schlosser]

On 11/12/24 14:16 Daniel Harding wrote:
> Would it be appropriate to request if I can be added to the bottom
> section of the CREDITS file as "Daniel Harding"?

Sure, thanks for all your bug reports, proposed fixes, and PR's. Your
work for FLTK is very much appreciated.

Done in commit 176b0a06a32c15869893a5bc44b7f961d081c838.

[Daniel Harding]

Thanks! Cheers to 1.4.0!!