java-gnome 4.0.5

["Andrew Cowie" <install-module gnome org>]

       Module: java-gnome
      Version: 4.0.5
  Uploaded by: Andrew Cowie

http://download.gnome.org/sources/java-gnome/4.0/java-gnome-4.0.5.tar.gz
  md5sum: bfb24345725bccab9fcd950fac6f1034
    size: 532K

http://download.gnome.org/sources/java-gnome/4.0/java-gnome-4.0.5.tar.bz2
  md5sum: 143a5b4e65b439d2b1bb15e1c8e6a514
    size: 388K

News
----

<a name="4.0.5" id="1196060444" title="TreeView is here"></a>

java-gnome 4.0.5 (26 Nov 2007)
=================================

_TreeView is here!_

It's always a great feeling when you bag a milestone, and with this release we
have reached a major goal on our way to having outstanding Java bindings for
the GNOME platform: coverage of GTK's powerful yet complex TreeView &
TreeModel API.

TreeView
--------

TreeViews are a central part of almost every application. GUIs use lists for
all sorts of things, and so a significant goal was to make coding TreeViews
and their backing TreeModels as straight forward as possible.

The most challenging and complex part was to design the Java side API, which
was no small matter. As a native library, the GtkTreeView API is complex and
very much written with programming in the C language in mind, and as such our
algorithmic mapping of the underlying libraries into Java doesn't entirely
fit. Long experience with the TreeViews in the previous bindings had made it
clear just how nasty to use the API could be, and so the hardest part of the
work was to come up with a mapping and a usage pattern that would be both
faithful to GTK _and_ be sensible to use.

The other significant challenge was to document the work effectively. Our Java
side API documentation is a major feature of java-gnome, and merely exposing
classes and methods is not sufficient; they need to be clearly explained in
our JavaDoc as well. Introduced in this release, then, are:

* **`org.gnome.gtk.TreeView`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.TreeViewColumn`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.CellRenderer`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.CellRendererText`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.CellRendererPixbuf`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.TreeSelection`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.SelectionMode`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.TreeModel`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.ListStore`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.TreeIter`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.TreePath`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.Alignment`**

along with numerous test cases in our unit test suite, and several
comprehensively worked [examples][example-treeview].

This was a monster patch, and the culmination of not just three months direct
effort, but also where we've been heading since we first started the
re-engineering of Java bindings for GNOME. Although largely written by Andrew
Cowie, a _significant_ contribution was made by Srichand Pendyala who not only
exhaustively evaluated the design but also threw in some serious chunks of
code. The work benefited from comprehensive input from Peter Miller on the
modelling and design, and the comments of Bryan Clark, Owen Taylor, and Hanna
Wallach were all really positive and helped us know that we'd gone in the
right direction. Finally, thanks to Behdad Esfahbod and the GNOME Foundation
who made it possible for us to meet in Boston at the GNOME Summit and so
accomplish much of the final pulling together of this branch.

Continuing Improvement
----------------------

Meanwhile, steady work continues on to the fundamental base classes, with a
whack of additional signals and methods on Widget and especially Window, along
with expansion of coverage in numerous other classes:

* **`org.gnome.gtk.Widget`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.Window`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.StateType`**
* **`org.gnome.gdk.Color`**
* **`org.gnome.gdk.VisibilityState`**
* **`org.gnome.gdk.EventVisibility`**

What else? We've begun to get the basics of image handling in place,

* **`org.gnome.gdk.Pixbuf`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.Image`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.ImageMenuItem`**

One nice piece of contributed work came from Vreixo Formoso and Thomas Schmitz
with coverage of the Dialog Window functionality in GTK. It took a bit of
doing to map the `int` response codes used by GTK into something suitably
strongly-typed, but all good:

* **`org.gnome.gtk.Dialog`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.ResponseType`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.MessageDialog`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.MessageType`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.ButtonsType`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.FileChooserDialog`**

And finally, minor improvements to all sorts of stuff:

* **`org.gnome.gtk.Container`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.Button`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.Box`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.Bin`**
* **`org.gnome.gtk.Menu`**

notably from new contributor Mario Torre. Awesome!

For further details you can always grab a copy of the sources and run

    $ bzr diff -r tag:v4.0.4..tag:v4.0.5

to see the complete code delta.

Screenshots
-----------

<img src="doc/api/org/gnome/gtk/Window.png" alt="" style="float: right;
text-align: right; padding-left: 15px;" /> For fun we built in a capability to
create demonstrations to be captured as screenshots to illustrate various
things. It doesn't get more basic than the example on the
[`Window`][api-Window] documentation page, but it's a nice touch. `:)` We've
screenshots for a number of Dialog classes and one for the TreeView page. I
imagine we'll build up a nice library of images in the next few months (yes,
dear contributors, you can add snapshots to the list of things we'll be
expecting along with well written documentation and unit tests when submitting
additions to the public API).

Building and requirements
-------------------------

The library now depends on GTK >= 2.12. Those packaging java-gnome for their
distributions please take note.

Looking ahead
-------------

Continuing to expand the coverage levels in the classes already exposed will
continue to dominate our attention; there's still a long way to go but we're
pleased with the progress we've made so far; you can definitely build real
applications with java-gnome now.

The next release also ought to include preliminary coverage of GConf and
Cairo. Doing each justice will again take a serious amount of work, but will
continue to grow the fun things you can do with java-gnome.

AfC

[example-treeview]: http://research.operationaldynamics.com/bzr/java-gnome/mainline/doc/examples/treeview/ExampleTrailHeads.java
[api-window]: doc/api/org/gnome/gtk/Window.html

<a name="arch" id="1195662600" title="Packaged in Arch Linux"></a>

Arch packages
=============

java-gnome now builds on [Arch Linux](http://www.archlinux.org/) and is
packaged there. Thanks to Timm Preetz for having done the legwork for this!

AfC

<a name="treeview" id="1194509646" title="Trees and Branches"></a>

Trees and Branches
==================

Lots of ongoing work.

The major focus over the last three months has been on the '`treeview`' branch.
Andrew Cowie, backed by Srichand Pendyala, has made awesome progress in working
out the engineering necessary to support GTK's powerful but complex
TreeView/TreeModel system and designing an appropriate public API by which
java-gnome can present it. This has taken most of September and October but is
working really well at this point. This branch should be ready for merging to
'`mainline`' in the next week or two; just need to bring the documentation up
to release quality and we're set.

Vreixo Formoso and Thomas Schmitz have done some great work to expose the
Dialog family of classes. This work has exposed a few bugs in our internals,
but thanks to some expert help from Owen Taylor we should have that sorted out
soon. Work to fix that is taking place on the '`delete`' branch.

Andrew Cowie, helped by Behdad Esfahbod, has begun work on a binding of the
Cairo library. This work is still experimental at this stage, but we'll merge
this '`cairo`' branch in so we can to at least set the tone for what will be an
exciting addition to java-gnome over the coming months.

Once we land these branches we should be able to polish things up for the
release of 4.0.5, hopefully by the end of November.

AfC

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