VisualOberon

File Release Notes and Changelog

Release Name: 030316

Notes:
* New control VO:ViewOneOfN simplifies the use of
   VO:Tab, VO:Table and VO:Combo  to view one
   of a number of views.
* Improved preferences dialog.
* A first version of Forms, helping you to write simple input   
  dialogs working on a list of attributes. See FormDemo1 for an 
  example.
* Information about the current selection of a table is now   
  separated from the table itself using the class      
  VO:Model:Selection.
* A number of bugfixes. Especially the menues should work 
  better now.
* A number of visualisation improvements.
* Better font handling. VisualOberon now internally always
  uses unicode fonts for displaying text. It uses the XML codes
  of the standard library to transform non unicode text into the 
  correct unicode encoding.

  This simplifies the code and allows you now can deal with
  foreign charsets without changing your code.

  To further support this, most controls now can work on the new 
  datatype  STRING, too.

  Future version of VisualOberon will remove direct support for 
  simple strings as soon as the standard library has improved its 
  support for STRING.
* A number of APIs have changed. Please reads the changelog 
  carefully to find out more about the details. If you have 
  problems, ask!
* Improved file selection dialog.
* New image loading library! VisualOberon now has
  support for directly loading images by usig some low level 
  image loading libraries without using imlib

  The code is not yet very well tested. It does work onx86 Linux 
  using 16 or 24 (and maybe 32) bit color depth. Other color 
  depth currently will not work.

  To activate the code, set USE_VO_IMAGE in your pkginfo.xml 
  to TRUE and recompile. 


Changes:
2003/03/16
  * Some changes in the default configuration to make initial look
    better.
  * Changed mode settings of VO:ViewOneOfN.

2003/03/10
  * You can now define submenues using *.vgd.
  * VO:Menu:SubMenu did not use DrawSelection. Changed.

2003/03/09
  * First version of our own image loading library under VO:Image.
    Set VO_USE_IMAGE in pkginfo.xml to TRUE to activate it. Using
    this new infrastructure I'm trying to get rid of imlib and to
    get more OS independent.
  * Prefs: Loading and storing now produces indetical files.
    Fonts do not get magically enlarged anymore.
  * Fixed a bug in VO:OS:Display. Thanks to Marco Oetken!
  * Enhanced VO:Model:Table and VO:TableView to support STRINGs, too.
  * VO:Model:Value now internally uses STRING and UCS4CHAR for storing
    textual values. Note that it does not convert values of type
    String32 to integer values (can be easily changed).
  * VO:String now directly works on STRING at some places. Rest will
    follow.
  * VGD: Parser name is now of type STRING.
  * Added support for STRING to VO:Combo.
  * ViewOneOfN now works on STRINGs as label.

2003/03/02
  * Made VO:Toolbar.Toolbar.equalSize a preference setting.
  * VO:Dlg:File now uses a toolbar for the navigation buttons.
  * Reactivated D&D for VO:String and VO:Text.
  * Changed D&D string datatype to STRING, however D&D dows only handle
    String8 now correctly (improvement possible).
  * Change setter and getter for application name and window title
    to STRING.
  * Added hack for setting window title where title#String8.
  * Note that all string from VGD are of type String32! Such strings
    cannot be dropped currently.

2003/03/01
  * Introduced VO:Menu:MenuBox as top level layouting object for pulldown
    menues. That now makes the preferences code work correctly so we
    can assign f.e. background to pulldown menues.
  * various changes to background handling.
    * Now backgroundObject=NIL means inherit.
    * As a result InheritBackgroundObject is gone.
    * New background object for selection as part of VO:Object.Object.
    * As a result several local apearances of selection background objects
      have been removed.
    * VO:Object.Object.CopyBackground has been removed.
  * VO:Combo now assigns a VO:WindowGroup.WindowGroup to the popup.

2003/02/27
  * Added STRING methods to VO:Label, VO:Tab, VO:Dlg:Msg, VO:FrameGroup.
  * VGD now using VO:Prefs:Parser.ValueItem.string for comparisons
    and for assigning string values where the object allows it.
    It is now possible to address the full unicode range using VGD.
    Have seen my first chinese letters on a button :-)

2003/02/26
  * VO:Button
     * now internally works on STRING.
     * Removed functionality to escape control sequences using "\".
     * SetText now works on STRING.

2003/02/17
  * Improved file selection dialog.
    * Now we have simple navigation buttons.
    * We have shortcuts for
      * Goto parent directory: Backspace
      * Goto home directory: A+home
      * Goto root directory: A+/
    * File are now selected by double click or by pressing Return.

2003/02/16
  * Two phase text conversion using VO:Util:EscapeString and similar is
    gone. Now VO:Text.Text will do it all itself. Note, that now
    escape sequences always take place!
  * Rewrote VO:Dlg:About.
    * Now uses struct for information to make it easily extensible.
    * Uses STRING.
  * Implemented VO:Object.Object.SetMaxWidth and SetMaxHeight.

2003/02/15
  * Added methods KeyToKeyDescription and KeyDescriptionToKey to
    VO:Base:Display.Display.
  * Removed shortcut parameter from VO:Menu.Menu.AddTextItemSC. Now
    internaly VO:Base:Display.Display.KeyToKeyDescription is used.
    To adapt your code just drop the textual shortcode description from
    your calls to this method.
  * Removed window parameter from VO:Menu.Menu.AddTextItemSC. Registering
    of shortcuts to the parent window is now done more implicit.
    To adapt your code just drop the window parameter from your
    calls to this method.
  * Added VO:VGD:Menu and VO:VGD:MenuStrip. Now you can define textual
    menues using VGD. Support for submenues will follow.
  * Remove persistance code form VO:Base:Object.
  * Make VO:Base:OBject.Object inherit deom OBject.Object, the oo2c
    standard library baseclass.
  * New method VO:Utal.Base.EscapeStr.

2003/02/14
  * Fixed bug in window closing code. When closing windows events
    for the parent window (especially expose events) could be
    lost.
  * Fixed menu handling bugs with sub menues. Simplified menu code.
  * Added new demo MenuTest.

2003/02/13
  * Renamed VO:Base:Adjustment to VO:Model:Adjustment.

2003/02/12
  * A number of optimisations to the VO:Menu code.
    * Important!
      Menues connected to a MenuStrip now send the SelectionMsg
      via the MenuStrip and not the topmost window. So please change
      your code to do AddHandler or Forward for message catching fromt he
      menu to the menustrip.

      For menues not connected to a strip (popup menues) everything still
      is the same :-)
  * Removed the SetInputFocus call in VO:OS:Display.Window.GrabOn.
    It is unecessary and avoids focus changed for popup windows.

2003/02/11
  * Adapted to oo2c 2.0.5.
  * Changed API of VO:Base:Display.Display.AddChannel and Co.
  * Fixed bug in VO:Text. Fontchanges were reseted on style changes.

2003/02/02
  * Add method free to VO:Base:Display.Font.
  * VO:String now vertically centers the text.
  * Added a first version of a font selection dialog
   (see demos/bin/FontTest)
  * Fixed a bug in VO:OS:Display:Font wrongly initializing its attribute
   "features" while loading a font.

2003/02/01
  * Changed font handling system. Now VO allways loads the default fonts
    with Unicode font encoding ("iso10646-1"). Non-unicode strings
    will be converted to unicoded string using oo2c unicode codecs and
    then printed.

  * VO:Text now internally uses STRING for storing text. Expect other
    objects and models to follow.

2003/01/26
  * Changed behaviour and return value of VO:Base:Display.Display.GetFontList
    to better support listing of available fonts.
  * Added support for Xft in VO:Base:Display.Display.GetFontList.
  * Switched from C.charPtr1d to C.string.

2003/01/25
  * Moved *Prefs.Mod to Prefs sub directory.

2003/01/23
  * Added hack to VO:Label and VO:Panel to automatically
    align labels that are in the same panel.

2003/01/22
  * Added global color map as parameter to every opened window.
  * Added Min/Max values to VO:Scale.
  * Reactivated "good looking mode" in VO:Scale :-)
  * Added first version of a standard about dialog (VO:Dlg:About).

2003/01/21
  * Made some more classes abstract.
  * Made some more attributes in VO:Object private.
  * Implemented new Model VO:Model:Selection and derived classes and
    integrated them into VO enviroment (exspecially VO:TableView).

2003/01/19
  * Fixed bug in VO:Model:Table:LTableModel.GetEntry crashing when
    calling with illegal index.
  * Added default implementation for VO:Model:Table.ListEntryBase.IsGreater
  * Add methods On, Off and IsOn to VO:Base:Object:Model to unconditionaly
    switch communication on and off between a model and its viewers.

2003/01/12
  * Reimplemented VO:Object.Object.GetPosObject in VO:Window using
    VO:Object.Visitor.

2003/01/07
  * Fix some bugs in VO:Model:Value and VO:String.
  * Added VO:Dlg:Form and VO:Model:View.
  * Added demos/FormDemo1.

2003/01/05
  * Rewrote VisualPrefs dialog.
    * Dropped FrameGroups in most places
    * Made use of VO:ViewOneOfN.
  * Added the various size preferences - but this needs a major
    review for more consistence and better naming.

2003/01/02
  * Renamed OneOfN to ViewOneOfN (because we will have
    a ChooseOnOfN in the future, too).

2002/12/29
  * Added OneOfN - a gadget to encapsulate visualisation of
    one out of N views depending of the number of views
    and general space requirements. It currently uses one out of
    the following visualisations:
    * VO:Tab
    * VO:Combo together with VO:Multi
    * VO:Table together with VO:Multi