Subject: [Announce] Tix version 4.0b5 is available I am pleased to announce the availability of Tix version 4.0b5. REQUIREMENT TK 4.0 + TCL 7.4. Tix 4.0b5 does not work with previous versions of TK and TCL. Versions of Tix that work with previous versions of TK and TCL can be found in the FTP directories listed below. WHAT'S NEW For those who are familiar to Tix and eager to find out the new additions, here it goes: (1) New widget: DirTree. To see a demo of this, start the demo in Tix4.0b5/demos/widget and click on the "Run Sample Programs" tab; then click on "DirTree" in the listbox. (2) New documentation for HList and Display Items. Check out HList.n and DItem.n if you are wondering how to use the HList in multi-column multi-color mode. (3) Tix now works with ET (Embedded TK). Go to the et/ directory and do ./configure. (4) New graphical set-up program for Tix. This gives a graphical front-end for src/configure. (5) Tons of bugs fixed. Should be more stable than 4.0b4 (esp HList) (6) new command "tix resetoptions" for easy switching back to the default TK color schemes. Read the manual page tix.n for more details. WHAT IS TIX In case you don't know yet, the Tix library is an extension to the Tk toolkit that contains over 20 new widgets for Tk. Features include: (1) A LOT of new widgets: ComboBox, Motif style FileSelectBox, MS Windows style FileSelectBox, PanedWindow, NoteBook, Hierarchical Listbox, Directory List/Tree View, Spin Control widget .... and many more. With these new widgets, your Tcl/Tk applications can acquire a great professional look and you can interact with your users in interesting new ways. (2) XPM image support: This allows you to display color icons in XPM format. Supports transparent background, a feature not found in the standard GIF photo image type. (3) Compound images: A new image type called "compound" allows you to glue together a bunch of bitmaps, images and text strings together to form a bigger image. Then you can use this image with widgets that support the -image option. For example, you can display a text string string together with a bitmap, at the same time, inside a TK button widget. (4) Form geometry manager Works similar to the Motif Form widget. You can specify geometry constraints using attachment rules. (5) Mwm window manager support: With the tixMwm command, you can communicate with the Motif window manager "mwm"; you can add new items to the Motif system menu and change the window manager decorations. (6) Display Items and Display Styles Display items and display styles make it possible to display visual information in many formats. Currently only the HList widget supports display items, but this will become the standard way of displaying informations in all the Tix widgets in the next version (Tix 4.1). GETTING THE TIX PACKAGE You can obtain Tix from my ftp site: ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ioi/Tix4.0b5.tar.gz I have also uploaded the file to the official Tcl site, so in a few days it will also be available at; ftp://ftp.aud.alcatel.com/tcl/extensions/Tix4.0b5.tar.gz ftp://ftp.aud.alcatel.com/tcl/extensions/Tix4.0b5.README More information about Tix can be found at the Tix Home Page at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ioi/tix/tix.html There is a mailing list for the discussion of the development of the Tix library and Tix applications. To subscribe, please send a message to ioi@graphics.cis.upenn.edu I will not be able to answer mails until late August. If you have a pressing problem about Tix you may be able to find help from the Tix mailing list. Send you questions to: tix-info@graphics.cis.upenn.edu DOCUMENTATION All Tix documentation are now in HTML format. After you download Tix, please read the file Tix4.0b5/README.html. It contains links to all other important documentation in the Tix package, including the copyright statement. IS TIX FREE? Tix 4.0 is released under very liberal license terms, similar to the Tcl/TK license terms. Please read the file docs/LEGAL.html in the distribution for more details. Enjoy! Ioi
Subject: [Announce] Tix version 4.0b4 is available I am pleased to announce the availability of Tix version 4.0b4. IS THIS A BETA VERSION? No, this is NOT a beta version. Although there is a letter "b" in the version number, this should be considered as the "final release" of Tix 4.0. Tix 4.0 has been pretty stable now and the only reason that I leave the letter "b" there is I am going for a vacation and I won't be able to support Tix for the next month. As soon as I come back in September, I will release the "Final Version" by simply removing the letter "b" from the version number. REQUIREMENT TK 4.0 + TCL 7.4. Tix 4.0b4 does not work with previous versions of TK and TCL. Versions of Tix that work with previous versions of TK and TCL can be found in the FTP directories listed below. WHAT IS TIX In case you don't know yet, the Tix library is an extension to the Tk toolkit that contains over 20 new widgets for Tk. Features include: (1) A LOT of new widgets: ComboBox, Motif style FileSelectBox, MS Windows style FileSelectBox, PanedWindow, NoteBook, Hierarchical Listbox, Directory List/Tree View, Spin Control widget .... and many more. With these new widgets, your Tcl/Tk applications can acquire a great professional look and you can interact with your users in interesting new ways. (2) XPM image support: This allows you to display color icons in XPM format. Supports transparent background, a feature not found in the standard GIF photo image type. (3) Compound images: A new image type called "compound" allows you to glue together a bunch of bitmaps, images and text strings together to form a bigger image. Then you can use this image with widgets that support the -image option. For example, you can display a text string string together with a bitmap, at the same time, inside a TK button widget. (4) Form geometry manager Works similar to the Motif Form widget. You can specify geometry constraints using attachment rules. (5) Mwm window manager support: With the tixMwm command, you can communicate with the Motif window manager "mwm"; you can add new items to the Motif system menu and change the window manager decorations. (6) Display Items and Display Styles Display items and display styles make it possible to display visual information in many formats. Currently only the HList widget supports display items, but this will become the standard way of displaying informations in all the Tix widgets in the next version (Tix 4.1). GETTING THE TIX PACKAGE You can obtain Tix from my ftp site: ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ioi/Tix4.0b4.tar.gz Linux, SGI and SunOS binaries libraries can be found ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ioi/bin/linux-1.2.3-tix4.0b4/ ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ioi/bin/sgi-irix5.3-tix4.0b4/ ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ioi/bin/sunos-4.1.3-tix4.0b4/ I have also uploaded the file to the official Tcl site, so in a few days it will also be available at; ftp://ftp.aud.alcatel.com/tcl/extensions/Tix4.0b4.tar.gz ftp://ftp.aud.alcatel.com/tcl/extensions/Tix4.0b4.README More information about Tix can be found at the Tix Home Page at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ioi/tix/tix.html There is a mailing list for the discussion of the development of the Tix library and Tix applications. To subscribe, please send a message to ioi@graphics.cis.upenn.edu I will not be able to answer mails until late August. If you have a pressing problem about Tix you may be able to find help from the Tix mailing list. Send you questions to: tix-info@graphics.cis.upenn.edu DOCUMENTATION All Tix documentation are now in HTML format. After you download Tix, please read the file Tix4.0b4/README.html. It contains links to all other important documentation in the Tix package, including the copyright statement. WHAT'S NEW (1) There are man pages for all "supported" widgets. (2) For each "supported" widget, there is a sample program that demonstrates how to program with that widget. To see these programs, start the demo in Tix4.0b4/demos/widget and click on the "Run Sample Programs" tab. (3) New image type "compound": you can use it with every Tk/Tix widget that support the -image option. (4) Better support for keyboard traversal. Now FileSelectBox, ExFileSelectBox and NoteBook all support traversal with Tab and arrow keys. (5) Fewer patches to the standard Tk distribution. Now only two files are patched. Even these patches can be turned off by *not* supplying the --enable-patches flag when you run the ./configure script. Please read the file docs/Install.html in the distribution for more information. IS TIX FREE? Tix 4.0 is released under very liberal license terms, similar to the Tcl/TK license terms. Please read the file docs/LEGAL.html in the distribution for more details. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I have to thank everyone who sent me bug reports and kept bugging me until I got rid all of the major bugs. Without the supports of the beta testers I would have never put together such a (IMHO) useful package. Special thanks are due to Sven Delmas, John Granieri, Bryan Oakley, Jeff Payne, Michael Carter, Richard Ball, Patrick D'Cruze, Mark Roseman and especially to John Ousterhout, who wrote the most cool programs I ever saw in my life. Enjoy! Ioi
This release works with Tk 4.0 + TCL 7.4
This release works with Tk 4.0 + TCL 7.4
This is a snapshot of the Tix package as of May 21 1995. New Stuffs:
% ./configure --enable-xpmIf you don't have the xpm library on your site, you can get the file ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/xpm-3.4e.tar.gz
This is the 6th alpha release of Tix 4.0. Hopefully this will be the last alpha release.
The reason I release A6 is because I can't finish 4.0b1 as planned in this week. This release should be considered as a sneak preview of 4.0b1.
New Stuffs:
Ioi.
This is the 5th alpha release of Tix 4.0. - There is a mailing list for Tix. If you are interested in joining, please send a mail to ioi@graphics.cis.upenn.edu. Changes: (1) "tixMwm mwmrunning" changed to "tixMwm ismwmrunning". There was a typo in the 4.0a4 man page Mwm.n. (2) SGI GL widget support is finally getting close. Now you can make "tgsh" inside the src/ directory. Read the file README.SGI for more info. 04/08/95 - Added the global variables tix_version and tix_patchlevel. - all "setsilent" methods are replaced by the command tixSetChooser 04/09/95 Finally works for Tk 4.0b3 ********************************************************************** Tix 4.0 a4 ********************************************************************** - ==> Now Tix supports the GNU "configure" tool <== - The C interface is cleaned up. You can call Tix_Init() in your Tcl_AppInit() function. - New widgets (not fully functional yet) tixHList: hierarchical list tixDirList directory list tixDirTree collapse-able directory tree view tixExFileSelectBox MS Windows style file dialog The demos are in test/dirlist.tcl test/dirtree.tcl A partially finished man page for tixHList can be found in man/ - Fixed tixFileSelectBox. Now it will filter files the first time it is exposed. - All "box" commands are changed to "Box". You shouldn't have problems with this because I have provided backward compatibility functions. - More man pages. These widgets are now fully documented (I think) Balloon.n ComboBox.n Select.n Control.n PanedWin.n Makefile NoteBook.n FileBox.n ********************************************************************** Tix 4.0 a3 ********************************************************************** This is the third alpha release of Tix 4.0. - Most of the known bugs are fixed. - Documentation is coming out. Check out the newer files in the man/ directory - New tixMwm command to interact with the Mwm manager (the protocol command not fully implemented yet.) For more info, check out man/Mwm.n - the -beta option is now opsolete. All Tix widgets are put in the library/ directory (but the fact that a widget is there doesn't mean it it fully implemented.) - Two new sub-commands added to the TK "wm" command. "wm release" -- makes ANY Tk widget into a toplevel "wm capture" -- captures a Toplevel widget into its parent toplevel widget. Check out the man page man/Wm.n for more details. - The tixForm geometry manager is quite functional now. There is still no docs about tixForm, though. ********************************************************************** Tix 4.0 a2 ********************************************************************** No release notes ********************************************************************** Tix 4.0 a1 ********************************************************************** Tix 4.0a1 ALPHA Release: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the first release of Tix 4.0. Not everything is working. There is very little documentation except the best kind of documentation -- the source code itself :) This alpha release is intended for TK developers only. Please don't use it in critical applications whose failures will cost your jobs. >>>>>> Please read the file README.LEGAL first. Also, read the "frequently asked question" section at the end of this document. It also covers some legal issues of this version of Tix. Requirement ----------- (1) TCL 7.4 and TK 4.0 Inaddition, if you want the SGI GL widgets you also need (1) the glxwin-1.3.1 from MIT. I have included it inside ** You don't need [incr tcl] because Tix is based on its own OOP framework. Installation ------------ (1) With Tix 4.0, you need to compile a C library. Go into src and edit the Makefile to suit your configuration. If you want to use the Silicon Graphics GL, edit the file Makefile.sgi After that, you can type "make", which will give you libtix.a and tixwish. Notice that if you use Makefile.sgi, it will generate files of the same name. Therefore, if you want to have an SGI version together with a non-SGI version, then you have to rename the GL capabale tixwish to something else. (2) After you finish with the binary, you can install the TCL script library of Tix. You can copy the whole subdirectory Tix4.0a1/library to /usr/local/lib/tcl. If you put the library somewhere else, you have to set the environment variable TIX_LIBRARY to point to that directory. (3) Now you can start to play with the demos. Make sure these environment variables are set up correctly: TCL_LIBRARY --> TCL 7.4 library TK_LIBRARY --> TK 4.0 library TIX_LIBRARY --> TIX 4.0 libraryary Change directory to Tix4.0a1/demos and type $ tixwish -f widget If it doesn't work, take a step backward. Change directory to Tix4.0a1/test and try each of them. At least some should work. GL Widgets ---------- Demos are in Tix4.0a1/test colorblk.tcl colored.tcl << colorspc.tcl matedit.tcl << matspher.tcl They are not working properly yet, especially the material editor. tixwish options --------------- Unlike TK 4.0, tixwish still requires the -f option. Therefore: $ tixwish -f somefoo.tcl Other options: Allowed values ---------------------------------------------- -fontset 14Point, 12Point, TK -scheme SGIGray, Gray, Blue, TK -tixlibrary dir of the TIX script library API Changes ----------- (1) The call tixInit is not need anymore. Now the toolkit options can be specified in the command line or specified in the X resource database, e.g. *myapp*fontSet: 14Point *myapp*scheme: TK (2) If the scheme OR fontset is set to "TK", then Tix won't touch the default options of the TK widgets. This is because I received many complaints about Tix messing up their existing options. (3) Almost all widgets have at least some changes in their options and methods. I know this is painful. However, this is necessary because the previous versions of Tix were by and large experimental and they had a lot of stupid designs. The old interface was awful, irregular and not expressive enough. The most major change is the subwidget access mechanism. Now you can use the "subwidget" method to access public widgets. For example: tixScrolledListbox .d -scrollbar auto set listbox [.d subwidget listbox] $listbox insert end "This is a string" Most of the old subwidget options are gone. For example, these options are gone from tixCombobox: -entrybg -listheight Instead, you have to use the option database to specify these options. options add *TixCombobox*entry.background gray or, in the script, you can write tixCombobox .d -options { entry.background gray listbox.height 10 } There use to be a bunch of subwidget access methods like tixCombobox::entry tixCombobox::listbox Now all of them can be replaced by the "subwidget" method old: .cbox subwidget listbox insert end "This is a string" new: .cbox subwidget listbox insert end "This is a string" Nevertheles, these old subwidget access methods are kept for backward compatibility. (4) The Intrinsics OOP interface is totally changed from 3.6c. Hopefully, not many people wrote their Tix widgets. Even if you had, the change should be easy: you just have to change the widget class declaration code (~40 lines per widget) and change the short names form tixFbc to TixFooBarClub. For example, it took me about 2 minutes to port the ColorEditor from 3.6 to 4.0. (5) Misc changes - TixFileSelectbox The "-filter" options is gone. Now you should use the "-pattern" and "-dir" options to specify the matching pattern and the directory. - There is a -label option for most "chooser" widgets such as Combobox, Select, Control, so you don't need to create separate labels for them. For good alignment effect, try: option add *main*TixCombobox*label.width 8 option add *main*TixCombobox*label.anchor e tixCombobox .main.b1 -label "City:" tixCombobox .main.b2 -label "State:" tixCombobox .main.b3 -label "Country:" This will create three comboboxes with alignment City: ________ V State: ________ V Country: ________ V ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Another announcement message of Tix 4.0a1 Announcing TIX 4.0a1 - A Set Of Compound Widgets I am pleased to announce the availability of Tix 4.0a1, the first alpha release of Tix. If you have used Tix 3.6, you will love the new and enhanced features of Tix 4.0: (1) Lots of new, Motif-style widgets including: PanedWindow NoteBook Combobox Control (called "SpinBox" in motif) File Selection box Popup and Option menu Balloon help window MDI (Multiple Document Interface) window (2) New intergated geometry management supports: --->> Motif style Form geometry manager <<--- - Automatic scrollbars for listbox - ScrolledWindow widget that allows you to scroll any type of widget - Geometry management facilities that allow you to develop a geometry manager directly in TCL. (3) Object Oriented Programming Framework Tix is not based on [incr tcl]. It is based on its own OOP framework. While [incr tcl] tries to be general, the Tix OOP framework is tuned tuned for compound widget programming. Therefore, it allows you to rapidly develop new widgets without having to go through all the dirty works you have to do under [incr tcl], such as renaming widget commands. Also, Tix features a well-defined subwidget access mechainsm that allows you to easily access subwidgets inside a compound widgets without compromising the integrity of the OOP interface. (4) SGI GL Widgets If you are developing for the SGI you are going to like these: - Color Editor - Material Editor They are similar to the widgets you can find in the Inventor SceneViewer. You can obtain Tix4.0a1 from my ftp site: ftp://linc.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ioi/Tix4.0a1.tar.gz Some on-line documentation of Tix can be found at. These HTML files are pretty old. They will be updated shortly. But just in case you find some discrepancies between the code and the HTML files, always rely on the source code. That's the what the "a" in Tix4.0a1.tar.gz means :) http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ioi/tix/tix.html Please be aware that currently Tix 4.0 is still in ALPHA testing. As such, the software will contain LOTS of bugs and unstable features. Also, the programming interface is still transient and will change according to user feedbacks. Therefore, please advoid using Tix4.0a1 in any production code. Please try it out and send bug reports, comments, feedbacks to me so that I know how to improve. Your opinions are important! You can contact me at ioi@graphics.cis.upenn.edu Enjoy! Ioi.
Last modified Sep 28 14:08