[ANNOUNCE] Clutter 0.6.0 (core)

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi o-hand com>]

hi everyone;

Clutter 0.6.0 is now available for download at:

  http://www.clutter-project.org/sources/0.6/

     1. MD5 Checksums:
  91caa82277a87b8be43bb0b9fdcbabb3  clutter-0.6.0.tar.gz
  15cc530f1aa1003a6c8d398ce799f8d0  clutter-0.6.0.tar.bz2

Clutter is an open source software library for creating fast, visually
rich and animated graphical user interfaces. Clutter is licensed under
the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1.

Clutter currently requires:

  * GLib >= 2.14.0
  * GdkPixbuf
  * Pango 1.x
  * OpenGL >= 1.2 or OpenGL ES 1.1
  * GLX, SDL (Unix and Win32), Cocoa or an EGL Implementation

The official website is: http://www.clutter-project.org
The Clutter blog is at:  http://www.clutter-project.org/blog
To subscribe to the Clutter mailing list, send mail to: clutter+subscribe o-hand com 
The official mailing list archive is: http://lists.o-hand.com/clutter/
API reference: http://www.clutter-project.org/docs/clutter/0.6/

* Notes

   o This version is API and ABI incompatible with previous stable
     release of Clutter, 0.4.2.

   o This version is parallel installable with Clutter 0.4. Installing
     this version will overwrite the files from a SVN checkout of the
     current stable branch (clutter-0-6).

   o Bugs should be reported to: http://bugzilla.o-hand.com

What's new in Clutter 0.6.0
---------------------------

New event handling system
    Every actor with the CLUTTER_ACTOR_REACTIVE flag set will be able
    to receive events. The event propagation chain will be walked in
    two directions (from the top-level to the actor and back), with the
    ability to stop the propagation in any handler. With the new event
    handling it is also possible to acquire explicit grabs and to set
    the key focus on every actor.

Abstraction over GL shaders
    It is possible to override the OpenGL programmable drawing pipeline
    by using the ClutterShader object and attaching it to a
    ClutterActor. Support for this feature depends on the graphics
    hardware.

Interface definition
    ClutterScript can generate user interfaces from a JSON dialect.
    Every object known to the GObject type system can be constructed
    by using its type name and by setting its properties. It is also
    possible to override the parsing mechanism and handle custom
    properties for complex types.

Timelines API
    The ClutterScore class has been added to help managing multiple
    timelines. A ClutterScore can start multiple timelines at the
    same time or in series. Timelines duration can now be set using
    a time interval (in milliseconds); it is also possible to define
    the direction (forward and backward).

New backends
    The OSX backend has been added and it's marked as experimental.
    The SDL backend is now buildable under MingW and under Visual
    Studio 2005

High-precision units API
    Every API dealing with positioning and sizing has a variant,
    marked with the '-u' suffix, which accepts ClutterUnits, to
    allow sub-pixel positioning. A set of conversion macros can be
    used to transform pixels, font sizes, millimeters and percentages
    of a parent actor into ClutterUnits.

Anchor point
    Each actor has the ability to change its anchor point from the
    top left corner to any point expressed in coordinates relative
    to the actor itself. The anchor point is used as the origin
    when positioning, scaling and rotating an actor.

Generic List model
    ClutterModel is a generic model API which can be used to implement
    an actor with the Model-Viewer-Controller design pattern. Clutter
    provides a list implementation, called ClutterListModel.

Initial FBOs support
    Clutter supports Frame Buffer Objects in ClutterTexture, where
    the drivers and the hardware support them. Using FBOs it is possible
    to create a ClutterTexture from any actor.

For more details about features and bug fixes, see the announcements for
the 0.5.x development cycle:

  http://lists.o-hand.com/clutter/0622.html
  http://lists.o-hand.com/clutter/0640.html
  http://lists.o-hand.com/clutter/0761.html

* List of changes between 0.5.6 and 0.6.0

  o New documentation sections inside the API reference, describing
    the animation framework.

  o New API in ClutterActor for computing the actor's vertices in
    the plane of a given ancestor and accessors to query whether an
    actor is scaled or rotated

* List of bug fixed between 0.5.6 and 0.6.0

  o #613 - Extend point transformation API
  o #779 - Rounding error in ClutterBehaviourScale [Havoc Pennington]
  o #787 - tiled textures are broken
  o #796 - segmentation fault when setting label text

Thanks to everybody who has contributed to Clutter 0.5/0.6:

  Tommi Komulainen, Josh Stewart, Gwenole Beauchesne,
  Havoc Pennington, Jaap A. Haitsma, Johan Bilien,
  Neil Roberts, Murray Cumming

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi, OpenedHand Ltd.
Unit R, Homesdale Business Centre
216-218 Homesdale Rd., Bromley - BR12QZ
http://www.o-hand.com