[UNSTABLE] GTK+ and GLib 1.3.1 released

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

GTK+ and GLib 1.3.1 have been released. These are developer's preview
releases of the unstable branches of GTK+ and GLib. They are intended
for people interesting in getting a first look at the new APIs and
features in GTK+-2.0.


Warnings
========

These packages are known to be buggy, and incomplete. Very little
testing has been done for portability. They compile my machine.
Beyond that, we make no guarantees.

Unmodified GTK+-1.2 programs will not compile against these
libraries. We are aware of no software that has been ported
to these libraries. If you are not a developer, you almost
certainly do not want these packages.

These packages CANNOT be used to replace your existing GTK+ and
GLib. The tarballs and RPMS have been designed to be installed in
parallel to an existing GTK+ configuration, so do NOT remove your
existing GTK+ installation.


What's new
==========

Overview of Changes in GTK+ 1.3.1:

* GTK+ now uses the Pango library for text manipulation. All strings
  in GTK+ now are in UTF-8 encoded Unicode. Languages written from
  right-to-left, and complex-text languages are now supported.
* The gdk-pixbuf library for image loading and manipulation is 
  has been integrated with GTK+.
* The GTK+ object system has mostly been moved to GLib, separating
  it from the GUI code. Many significant enhancements have been
  made as part of this.
* A new text widget is now included. This started as a port
  of the Tk text widget, and includes such features of the Tk
  text widget as tags, marks, and unicode text support. It
  has been enhanced to support model-view operation and the
  full power of Pango.
* The GDK library has been extensively revised to support multiple
  windowing systems. The only fully functional backend in 1.3.1
  is the X11 backend, however, ports to Win32, Linux-framebuffer,
  Nano-X, BeOS, and MacOS exist in various states of completion,
  and at least some of these will be finished and integrated in 
  before the final GTK+-2.0 release.
* 32-bit coordinates are now supported throughout GDK and GTK+
  (they are emulated where not supported by the windowing system.)
* Many minor bug fixes and enhancements. Incompatible changes
  are documented in docs/Changes-2.0.txt

What's new in GLib 1.3.1:

* New GObject library added including object system based on
  the GTK+ object system. 
* Functions for getting the properties of Unicode characters, 
  computing the canonical decomposition and ordering combining
  characters aand manipulating UTF-8 string manipulation based
  on libunicode.
* GString now properly handles embedded nuls.
* Multiple fixes from the 1.2.x branch.
* Upgrade to libtool 1.3.3
* Full thread support (thread creation and destruction).
* BeOS port, BeOS dynamic modules.
* Many improvements to the Windows ports.
* Improvements to the OS/2 port, OS/2 module support.
* Double ended queue implementation.
* New thread-safe random number generator Mersenne Twister.


Availability
============

GLib-1.3.1 and GTK+-1.3.1 are available from:

 ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v1.3/dependencies

RPM packages of the unstable versions of GLib, FriBidi, Pango, and
GTK+ are available from:

 ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v1.3/binary/RedHat-6.2/

Included are i386 RPMS and SRPMS for Red Hat 6.2. (The SRPMS will most
likely work on similar systems, the RPMS may work on similar systems.)


Dependencies
============

Several new libraries are now required to build GTK+.
Suitable versions of these packages can be found at:

 ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v1.3/dependencies

or from their original locations. 

 - The Pango text layout and rendering library:

   http://www.pango.org/download.shtml

   Pango, in turn, requires the FriBidi library, available from:

      http://imagic.weizmann.ac.il/~dov/freesw/FriBidi/

   Note that in order to use fribidi-0.12 with GLib-1.3.1, you'll
   need to apply the patch:

    ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v1.3/dependencies/fribidi-0.1.12-glib2.patch

 - The libtiff, libgiff, and libjpeg image libraries. You most
   likely have these installed on your system already. If not
   these libraries are available from:

    http://www.libtiff.org/
    ftp://swrinde.nde.swri.edu/pub/png/src/
    ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/

   If these libraries are not available, the corresponding 
   image loaders will simply not be built. However, this
   may cause applications using GTK+ not to function properly.


Trying it Out
=============

If you install the unstable GTK+ from RPMS, the testgtk program (a
widget tour) and testtext program (a simple text editor using the new
text widget) will be installed in /usr/bin. If you compile from
source, these programs can be found in the gtk/ subdirectory.
(Other demos are found in the demos/ subdirectory.)


Reporting Problems
==================

Bug reports should be submitted by mail to the GNOME bug tracker at
http://bugs.gnome.org. Instructions for reporting bugs by mail can be
found in the README file for GTK+.

Patches and other assorted comments should go to 
gtk-devel-list@gnome.org. See:

 http://mail.gnome.org/mailman.listinfo/gtk-devel-list


Owen Taylor <otaylor@redhat.com>
14 July 2000