ANNOUNCE: SLgtk v0.5.3 and SLIRP v0.9.8

[Michael Noble <mnoble space mit edu>]

Announcement
============

Versions 0.5.3 of SLgtk and 0.9.8 of SLIRP are now available at

          http://space.mit.edu/~mnoble/slgtk

Highlights of this release include:

   - A significantly more powerful vwhere guilet, for visually
     exploring and filtering scientific datasets: 

   - Several useful extensions to the SLIRP code generator

   - And numerous other enhancements as described below.


Description
===========

The SLgtk package binds the Gtk2 and GtkExtra widget sets to the S-Lang
scripting language (www.s-lang.org).  SLgtk wraps approximately 2200
functions from Gtk2 and its constituent libraries, includes over 4000
lines of sample code in 40+ working guilets, and provides a code generator
(SLIRP) which is useful for building additional S-Lang modules.

SLgtk also includes a visual version of the powerful S-Lang "where"
command, extensions to and performance enhancements for several GtkExtra
widgets, and a pixbuf loader for the FITS image file format widely used
within astronomy.

Happy Holidays,

-Michael S. Noble

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Changes in v0.5.3 (12/24/03):

1.  VWhere 1.1.0 enhancements:
	- data may fabricated on the fly with arbitrary S-Lang expressions,
	  including calls to S-Lang, C, and FORTRAN functions
	- in array mode user may now input an unlimited number of arrays,
	  instead of just one per X/Y axis
	- plots may now be deleted (just point and click!)

2.  SLIRP 0.9.8 enhancements:
	- support import() of >1 SLIRP-generated module into single app
	- support nested resource files, and sharing of type definitions,
	  with new slirp_include_rc(filename) function

3.  Install src/slirprc-gtk.sl to <install>/share/slsh/local-packages, for
    use in other SLIRP-generated packages which wish to build against SLgtk.

4.  Added gtk_widget_show(item) calls to menus examples, to show benefit of
    menus knowing the size of their largest item (dburke cfa harvard edu).

5.  Progress bar example enhancements:
	- use timeout to increment progress indicator, instead of button press
	- use no file-global variables (slightly better coding style)
	- call gtk_widget_show() on menu items, for reasons similar to above

6.  Added wrappers for GTK_WIDGET_SENSITIVE and GTK_WIDGET_CAN_FOCUS macros.

7.  Percolate time field in GDK button events up to S-Lang layer.
8.  Built and tested on Mac OS/X 10.3.1, against Gtk 2.0.6 and 2.2.1.
9.  Added Makefile protection to avoid problems from false rebuilds on LANs
    with NFS drives hosted from machines with mismatched system clocks.

Changes in v0.5.2 (12/10/03):

1.  Removed constraint from embedded gdk_colormap_alloc_color() calls that
    allocated colors be 'writable', to more gracefully support smaller color
    systems (as writable colors cannot be shared).