[XForms] Development release 1.3.11

[Jens Thoms Toerring]

Hello,

   I've just uploaded a new development release

http://download-mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/xforms/development/1.3/xforms-1.3.11.tar.gz

with a few fixes for bugs found in the last few days (and
a bit of clean-up of the code). This is the version which I
intend to make the 1.2.4 "stable" version unless you find
some more urgent issues with it.

I've started working on the TrueType font support, but this
will take some time. I also have to tell you that this can't
be done while maintainong completely backward-compatible,
already since there are certain functions in the "public
interface" returning pointers to 'XFontStruct' structures.
But those won't be available anymore with an Xft-enabled
version - we'll need some additional abstraction layer on
top of the font handling stuff...

And since 100% backward-compatibility isn't possible anyway,
I'm going to break a few other things that are a nuisance. E.g.
the FL_BUTTON_SPEC (or FL_BUTTON_STRUCT) structure will vanish
- it should never have become part of the public interface
anyway and there are better ways to get at the few bits of
relevant information stored in there.

I'm sorry that this may result in some extra work for you, but
there are limits: a number of reasonable requests for new fea-
tures simply can't be satisfied when complete backward-compati-
bility is the only goal. My feeling is that we can either have
XForms become a museum piece or we'll have to start looking
forwards, accepting that some adjustments will be needed. I know
very well that the major attraction of XForms is its backward-
compatibility and I'm not going to break things just for the fun
of it;-)

If you want to see what I'm doing download the git repository
with (if you have git installed) the command

  > git clone git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/xforms.git

Then cd into the new 'xforms' directory and switch to the 'ttf'
branch with

  > git checkout ttf

Now do

  > ./autogen.sh

(this requires the autoconf/automake and libtools packages to be
installed) before the usual "configure; make; make install" .

This will give you what I'm currently playing with. It should com-
pile cleanly and you than can check if your programs still work with
it (though you will have to keep in mind that they alsp need to be
recompiled since the this new version is NOT backward- compatible!).

Also note that there's no TrueType font support yet in there - I
am just trying to clean up things in preparation for that. You
also ,ight want to build the documentation - I try to keep it in
sync with the new library version (it's marked as for version 1.4
in the title).

If you feel that I'm going in a wrong direction don't hesitate
to let me know! If for the majority of you XForms' backward-
compatibility is the major (or even only) reason to use it I
definitely will listen to you (and there's no irreparable harm
done yet, the new stuff is all in a separate git branch, the
'master' branch only gets bug fixes for issues that come up
while working on the experimental 'ttf' branch).

                         Best regards, Jens
-- 
  \   Jens Thoms Toerring  ________      address@hidden
   \_______________________________      http://toerring.de