ANNOUNCE: SLgtk 0.3.15

[Michael Noble <mnoble space mit edu>]

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

Version 0.3.15 of SLgtk is now available at

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

Highlights of this release include:

  - vwhere() version 1.04 enhancements:

	. enlargeable plot windows
	. "better" tick marks and axes labels
	. option to omit the grayed-out drawing of filtered points
	. option to shrink plot axes ranges to match applied filters,
	  or keep them to reflect ranges of original dataset

  - Several contributions from John Davis, the author of S-Lang
  - An RGB image color selector, based upon the GtkPlot widget
  - A pause function, for debugging the module after importation
  - Improvements to the example guilets and documentation

More details on these and other enhancements in this release are given below.

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

The SLgtk package binds the Gtk2 and GtkExtra widget sets to the S-Lang
scripting language (www.s-lang.org).  SLgtk wraps over 2000 functions 
from Gtk2 and its constituent libraries, includes over 4000 lines of 
sample code in 40+ working guilets, provides a code generator (SLIRP)
which can be useful for building additional S-Lang modules.  Both SLgtk
and SLIRP are reasonably documented for their size and age.

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.

Regards,

-Michael S. Noble

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

Changes in v0.3.15:

1.  Carved out and generalized portions of vwhere(), to produce two new 
    plotting functions: _gtk_plot() and _gtk_oplot() (see docs for details).

2.  Added vwhere() option which, when applying filters incrementally, toggles
    whether filtered/excluded points will be drawn on subsequent plots.
    Omitting excluded points can vastly speed up drawing of filtered plots.
	
3.  Use new functions in development of an RGB color selector, which is used
    to demo the histogram module and also exists as at examples/rgbselect.sl.
4.  Vwhere plot windows may now be enlarged (but not yet shrunk).

5.  Map GtkAllocation to a structure type, instead of GtkOpaque, which allows
    better support for "size_allocate" signals:  now an actual GtkAllocation
    struct (an alias for GdkRectangle) will be passed during signal closure.

6.  Do not strip module at install time for development builds.
7.  Fix to GtkPlot widget, to ensure at least 1 tick is drawn for log axes.
8.  Configure events now reflect the x, y, width, and height fields.
9.  Accept NULL for second arg of gtk_plot_refresh(plot,rectangle)
10. Expose events in S-Lang scope now reflect the area GdkRectangle field.
11. More graceful handling of non-recoverable S-Lang errors occuring prior to
    entering the main loop.
12. Create soft links to install location for local MIT development builds.

13. Three contributions from John E. Davis (davis space mit edu):
	. New gdk_pixbuf_save() function 
	. New gdk_pixbuf_from_data() function
	. An SLgtk image viewer widget (packages/rgbwidget.sl)

14. Configuration enhancements (see configure --help for details):
	- migrated --with-slangdir option to --with-slang as used by
	  SLang GSL module, to improve consistency
	- ensure dynamic lib for importable module can include debug info
	- simplified by removing most of the M4 code from Gtk configure, in
	  favor of using pkg-config directly, optionally controlled by new
	  --with-pkgconfig option.

15. Renamed src/testslgtk to slgtk-demo, to better reflect its purpose.
16. Introduced new ./test directory, to house automated regression tests.
17. Introduce slgtk_debug_pause() for setting debug breakpoints after the
    the module has been loaded.  See documentation for details.
18. Added Greek text to examples/labels.sl sample code.
19. Added several global GdkColor instantiations to gtk.sl: gdk_red, gdk_green,
    gdk_blue, gdk_black, gdk_grey (see docs for more details).
20. Added #ifdefs to installable SLgtk packages, to account for possibility
    that provide()/require() may not be available in parent application.
21. Deprecated _get_range() function.
22. Added gtk_widget_toplevel() as wrapper for GTK_WIDGET_TOPLEVEL() macro.
23. Added wrapper for gtk_quit_add().
24. Added _gtk_window_destroy_with(window,parent), as a one-step way to set
    a windows transient parent AND have it be destroyed with that parent.
25. Corrected several problems in the GtkExtra GtkPlotCanvas widget, with
    gtk_plot_canvas_set_size() and log axis ticks.  See src/gtkextra/README
    for details (not yet backported to GtkExtra CVS at SourceForge).