[Tile-dev] ANNOUNCE: Tile Widget Set, version 0.7.6

[Joe E. <jen...@fl...>]

In honor of a month of SourceForge CVS outages,
the recent ActiveTcl release, and just to let everyone
know that the project hasn't totally stagnated,
it's time to release 0.7.6.  Announcement below.


For the 0.8 series, I'd like to focus on sorting out theme
definitions.  The current set of elements and default layouts
evolved in a somewhat ad-hoc fashion.  I plan to to go through
all the themes and rationalize some of the design decisions
(e.g., "checkbox" and "radiobutton" elements instead of
"Checkbutton.indicator" and "Radiobutton.indicator", use
a consistent color scheme scheme so people can get a reliable
answer to questions like "what's the default background color",
that sort of thing.)

In conjunction with this, I'd like to define a set of predefined 
custom styles that users can count on being present in 
every theme.  Right now there's just one -- Toolbutton --
but there are many others that would be useful.  Suggestions
welcome.


--Joe English 

[ announcement follows ]


[6 May 2006]

ANNOUNCE: Tile Widget Set, version 0.7.6.

~ What is it?

The Tile widget set is an experimental reimplementation
of some of the standard Tk widgets.  The main features are:

    + Native look and feel under Windows (XP, NT, 2K, 98 and 95)
    + Nearly-native look and feel under Mac OSX
    + "Revitalized" look and feel under X11
    + Appearance controlled by a theme engine, providing
      greater flexibility for custom widgets
    + New widgets, including notebook, progressbar, combobox,
      and separator.

~ What's New in 0.7.6

Tile 0.7.6 corresponds roughly to the CVS snapshot labelled '0.7.5'
which was included in the recently-released ActiveTcl 8.4.13.

+ ttk::entry widgets now support an 'identify' method,
  to support entry-based megawidgets.

+ ttk::notebook widgets have an 'insert' method, which allows
  new panes to be added at any position (not just the end).

+ The ttk::notebook 'select' method with no arguments now
  returns the currently-selected tab.

+ ttk::treeview 'identify' method interface has been revised
  to be easier to use.

+ ttk::treeview 'bbox' method added.

+ ttk::notebook and ttk::labelframe widgets have more flexible
  layout policies; better support for pixmap themes.

+ Keyboard navigation for ttk::notebooks now works when there
  are multiple notebooks in a single toplevel, including
  nested notebooks.

+ [style lookup] command added, for querying theme option values.

+ Several bugs have been fixed; see ChangeLog for details.

~ Stability

The script-level API for widgets may be considered stable at
this point, with the exception of procedures in the 'tile::*'
namespace.  Theme definitions are still subject to change:
user-defined themes will need to be revised in the 0.8 series.

~ A note on version numbers

To help distinguish formal releases from CVS snapshots,
the subminor version number will be incremented immediately before
and immediately after making a release.  Thus odd-numbered subminor
versions indicate a CVS snapshot, and even-numbered ones indicate
a known release.

~ Availability

The tile widget set is hosted under the tktable project
at SourceForge:

    <URL: http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/ >
    <URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tktable/ >

Sources are available under the 'tile' module in CVS.
A prebundled tarball is available in the file release area:

    <URL: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11464 >

Documentation is available here:

    <URL: http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/doc/ >

Precompiled libraries for Windows may also be present;
check for availability.