ANNOUNCE: GNOME Platform Bindings 2.6.0

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

*** GNOME Platform Bindings

The GNOME Platform Bindings provide a stable GNOME development platform 
for programming languages other than C, in the style of those languages. 
This release offers stable APIs for the GNOME 2.6 Platform in C++, Java, 
and Perl:
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.5/bindings/modules.html

These bindings follow these rules:
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/bindings/rules.html

Note that those rules do not guarantee 100% API coverage, but they do 
guarantee API/ABI stability.

Note that other bindings also exist:
http://www.gtk.org/bindings.html
but they were not on this release schedule and they do not necessarily 
follow the same rules.

If you have questions about the GNOME Platform Bindings release set please 
send email to language-bindings gnome org  If you have questions about the 
individual bindings, please send email to their own mailing lists. You can 
find links to the individual projects here:
 http://www.gnome.org/start/2.5/bindings/modules.html

*** Download

You can download source tarballs from
ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/bindings/2.6/2.6.0/

*** Changes, for each binding, since their GNOME-2.4-based releases:


** C++ (gtkmm):

gtkmm:

Highlights:

* There are several new widgets/classes, with examples:
  - New File Chooser:
    FileChooser, FileChooserWidget, FileChooserDialog,
    FileFilter classes.
  - Action-based Toolbar/Menu API:
    UIManager, Action, ToggleAction, RadioAction classes
  - New Combo Box:
    ComboBox, ComboBoxEntry, ComboBoxText, CellLayout classes
  - Auto-complete for Entry:
    EntryCompletion class
  - Other new classes:
    IconInfo, IconTheme TargetList
  - New ATK, Pango, and GDK API wrapped

* Existing API improved:
  - Use of improved libsigc++ 2 API.
  - Removed useless key-binding signals
  - Alignment: Added set/get_padding()
  - Entry: Added set/get_alignment()
  - Settings: New properties
  - ListStore/TreeStores: Added insert_after(), which should be 
    faster than insert().
  - TreeView: Added move_column_to_start()
  - TreeModel: Deriving is now easier, because the virtual functions 
    now use C++ types.
  - TreeModel::iterator: Added operator--(), which is slow
  - See the NEWS file for detailed API changes

gnome-vfsmm:

This API is now complete and API-stable.

libgnomecanvasmm:
 
* Canvas: set_dither(), get_dither(): Use C++ enum instead of C enum.
* Item: draw(): Use C++ Gdk::Drawable instead of C type.
* Text: Changed all C Pango properties to their C++
  counterparts.

libgnomeuimm:
 
* Added icon-lookup() and icon_lookup_sync() functions.
* Added ThumnailFactory.
* PixmapEntry: Correct the base class.

libgnomemm and gconfmm have also been update to use the new glibmm 2.4 API. 

libxml++:

* Introduced Glib::ustring instead of std::string.
* Added Document::create_root_node_by_import.
* Added TextReader interface.


** Java (java-gnome):

* Added/updated full support for the latest stable gtk+, gnome, gconf
  libglade libraries and friends.
* Full API review, with many enhancements
* Main memory leak issues resolved
* Event initialization issues resolved
* Libglade event problems resolved
* Many other bug fixes


** Perl (gtk2-perl):

Overview of Changes in Glib 1.042
=================================

   Since 1.02x (the previous stable series)
   ----------------------------------------
   * Updated build requirement
     - ExtUtils::Depends >= 0.2
   * Support for a few new API features in glib-2.4.x.
   * Functions that use GErrors in C throw magical Glib::Error exception
     objects; these objects overload the stringification operator, so
     old code won't be broken, but new code can match errors without
     worrying about translated error messages.  User code and other
     extensions can register their own error domains.  See the
Glib::Error
     manpage for more info.
   * Glib::Type enhancements
     - Perl code can register enum and flags types for use as
Glib::Object
       property types.
     - During Glib::Object class initialization, invoke INIT_BASE in the
       object's package, if it exists.  (Analogue for GTypeClass's
       base_init.)
     - It is now possible to add GInterface implementations to
Glib::Object
       types derived in Perl code.
     - New param spec, Glib::ParamSpec::scalar
   * Glib::MakeHelper is generally more helpful.
   * The POD generation tools allow specification of cumulative data
type
     descriptions, and much finer control over the format and content of
     the generated documentation.
   * Glib can now export useful constants on request.
   * New versioning API, see Glib::version.

Overview of Changes in Gtk2 1.040
=================================

   Since 1.02x (the previous stable series)
   ----------------------------------------
   * Updated requirements:
     - Glib >= 1.040
     - ExtUtils::Depends >= 0.2  (required only at build time)
     - ExtUtils::PkgConfig >= 1.03  (require only at build time)
   * Add support for new objects and API in gtk+-2.4.0.
   * Derivation of Gtk2::CellRenderer has been reworked; it's much more
     sane now, but we retain backward compatibility with the 1.02x code.
   * It is now possible to implement GInterfaces in Perl code, so you
     can now implement your own Gtk2::TreeModels and
Gtk2::CellEditables.
     Examples are included.
   * The SPLICE operation is now supported on Gtk2::SimpleList's tied
     data.
   * New, standardized versioning API and documentation.
   * Documentation enhancements all around.
   * Huge test suite expansion and amazing increase in API coverage.
   * New utility module Gtk2::TestHelper wraps up some of the
boilerplate
     involved in testing Gtk2-based modules.


Overview of Changes in Gtk2::GladeXML 1.00
==========================================

This is the first stable release.


Overview of Changes in Gnome2::Canvas 1.00
==========================================

This is the first stable release.


Overview of Changes in Gnome2::VFS 1.001
========================================

* Made all version checks refer to stable releases.
* Made the test suite more robust.


Overview of Changes in Gnome2::GConf 1.000
==========================================

This is the first stable release.


Overview of Changes in Gnome2 1.00
==================================

This is the first stable release.

-- 
Murray Cumming
www.murrayc.com
murrayc murrayc com