wxWidgets/docs

wxWidgets 3.1.6 Release Notes
=============================

Welcome to the latest development release of wxWidgets, a free and open source
cross-platform C++ framework for writing advanced GUI applications using native
controls.

wxWidgets allows you to write native-looking GUI applications for all the major
desktop platforms and also helps with abstracting the differences in the non-GUI
aspects between them. It is free for the use in both open source and commercial
applications, comes with the full, easy to read and modify, source and extensive
documentation and a collection of more than a hundred examples. You can learn
more about wxWidgets at:

* https://www.wxwidgets.org/

Documentation is available online at:

* https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.1.6/

wxWidgets sources and binaries for the selected platforms are available for
download from:

* https://www.wxwidgets.org/downloads/

or, for a more more permanent but less convenient to use link, from

* https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/releases/tag/v3.1.6/

Please see https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.1.6/overview_install.html for full
installation instructions.



Changes since 3.1.4
-------------------

In the nine months since the previous release, there have been more than 1600
commits from 70 unique contributors (40 with multiple contributions), so it is
impossible to summarize all the changes in this document without making it too
long, please see the fuller changelog at

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/v3.1.6/docs/changes.txt

for more details, but here are some of the most important changes:

- New wxWebRequest and related classes provide a simple way to use HTTPS and
  HTTP/2 from wxWidgets applications using native libraries or libcurl.
- Support EGL in wxGLCanvas and Wayland in wxMediaCtrl under Linux.
- Many appearance and other fixes for macOS 11.
- More improvements to wxGrid UI, API and performance.
- wxImage improvements: add alpha support in Paste() and clipboard support.
- API additions: wxPersistentComboBox, wxFileName::ResolveLink(),
  wxFileHistory::SetMenuPathStyle(), wxString::utf8_string(), wxEVT_FULLSCREEN.
- Improvements: wxConfig now supports 64-bit integers, wxLog uses millisecond
  resolution in timestamps, XRC files can be loaded from URLs.
- Yet more bug fixes, fixes for API inconsistencies and optimizations, notably
  in wxDataViewCtrl, wxListCtrl, wxPropertyGrid.

Notice that in spite of all the changes, this release remains almost completely
compatible with 3.1.4 at the API level, so upgrading to it if you're already
using wxWidgets 3 should be straightforward.


Changes since 3.0
-----------------

Compared to the stable 3.0.x series, this version brings too many
improvements and even more bug fixes to list them all, but here is the
maximally condensed summary:

- Build system improvements: support for new compilers (up to MSVS 2019, g++ 10)
  with an even simpler way of using wxWidgets from MSVS, with wxwidgets.props
  file, and OS versions as well as an entirely new CMake build system.
- Support for native dark mode under macOS 10.14 Mojave and later.
- New features: HTTPS and HTTP/2 support with wxWebRequest and friends;
  support for freezing rows/columns in wxGrid; mouse gesture events (GSoC 2017
  project); non-integer font sizes and arbitrary font weights in wxFont;
  fractional pen widths in wxGraphicsContext; arbitrary label windows in
  wxStaticBox; markup in wxDataViewCtrl items text; better support for high
  DPI monitors and per-monitor DPI and dynamic DPI changes support under MSW;
  support for ZIP 64 files; LZMA compression; much improved accessibility
  support under MSW; new Edge-based wxWebView implementation.
- New classes: wxActivityIndicator, wxAddRemoveCtrl, wxAppProgressIndicator,
  wxNativeWindow, wxPersistentComboBox, wxPowerResourceBlocker, wxSecretStore,
  wxTempFFile and many new features in the existing classes.
- Significant improvements to: wxBusyInfo, wxDataViewCtrl, wxDirDialog, wxGrid,
  wxNotificationMessage, wxSpinCtrl, wxStaticBox, wxStyledTextCtrl,
  wxUIActionSimulator.
- Latest versions of all bundled 3rd party libraries, including all the
  security fixed and support for WebKit 2 and GStreamer 1.7 under Unix.
- Revamped OpenGL support better suited to modern OpenGL (3.2+) and EGL support
  and better support for Wayland in wxGTK.
- Further C++11 and later support improvements, wxWidgets can be built using
  C++20 compilers.
- A lot of bug fixes, especially in wxGTK3 and wxOSX/Cocoa ports.
- New experimental wxQt port.



Platforms Supported
-------------------

This version of wxWidgets supports the following primary platforms:

* Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10 (32/64 bits).
* Most Unix variants using the GTK+ toolkit (version 2.6 or newer)
* macOS (10.10 or newer) using Cocoa (32/64 bits)

There is some support for the following platforms:

* Most Unix variants with X11
* Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif
* Most Unix variants with GTK+ 1.2
* Most Unix variants with Qt 5 or newer (experimental)

All C++ compilers in common use are supported.


Licence
-------

For licensing information, please see the files:

* docs/preamble.txt
* docs/licence.txt
* docs/licendoc.txt
* docs/gpl.txt
* docs/lgpl.txt
* docs/xserver.txt

Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of proprietary,
commercial applications to use wxWidgets in addition to those writing GPL'ed
applications. In summary, the licence is LGPL plus a clause allowing
unrestricted distribution of application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't
have to distribute any source if you wish to write commercial applications using
wxWidgets.

However, if you distribute wxGTK, wxQt or wxMotif (with Lesstif) version of your
application, don't forget that it is linked against GTK+, Qt or Lesstif, which
are covered by LGPL *without* exception notice and so is bound by its
requirements.

If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT for libtiff licence
details.

If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program should contain
following sentence: "This software is based in part on the work of the
Independent JPEG Group". See src/jpeg/README for details.

If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular expressions support
(i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT file for Henry Spencer's regular
expression library copyright.

If you use wxXML classes or XRC, see src/expat/COPYING for licence details.


Reporting Bugs
--------------

The wxWidgets bug tracker can be found here:

* https://trac.wxwidgets.org/newticket

Please use the search function of our Trac installation to find any possibly
relevant bugs before reporting new ones. Also please notice that often trying to
correct the bug yourself is the quickest way to fix it. Even if you fail to do
it, you may discover valuable information allowing us to fix it while doing it.
We also give much higher priority to bug reports with patches fixing the
problems so this ensures that your report will be addressed sooner.


Further Information
-------------------

If you are looking for community support, you can get it from

* Mailing Lists: https://www.wxwidgets.org/support/mailing-lists/
* Discussion Forums: https://forums.wxwidgets.org/
* #wxwidgets IRC Channel: https://www.wxwidgets.org/support/irc/
* Stack Overflow (tag your questions with "wxwidgets"):
  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/wxwidgets

Commercial support is also available, please see
https://www.wxwidgets.org/support/commercial/

Finally, keep in mind that wxWidgets is an open source project collaboratively
developed by its users and your contributions to it are always welcome!


Have fun!

The wxWidgets Team, April 2021