FLTK 1.3 is now available via SVN to developers.

FLTK 1.3.0 will be the direct successor to FLTK 1.1.8, sporting the  
addition of UTF-8, Doxygen-based manuals, a bunch of new widgets, and  
a handful of other features including printing.

I am quite sure that the planned features for 1.3 are very attractive  
to core developers and users alike and I hope for a lot of echo and  
support. Please chime in, add your comments, cheer on the core  
developers. We need your support ;-)



These are the tasks for 1.3:

* verification of 1.2 STRs and possible push up to 1.3: there are 58  
STRs associated with FLTK 1.2. Most of these are probably fixed by  
now, but we will have to read through each of them and apply them to  
1.3 if needed.

* UTF-8 support: we will apply the existing patches and test them  
thouroghly until we have a stable and internationally usable version  
of FLTK.

* better typing: we can finally break the binary interface, so we will  
change some types in FLTK 1.3. Widget coordinates will be 32 bit, for  
example. At this time, we will also weed out some other limitations  
that could not be fixed due to ABI issues.

* Doxygen manuals: only *after* utf-8 is fully implemented and types  
are changed, we will move all documentation into the FL header files,  
using the Doxygen syntax. Doxygen is a widely accepted standard for  
library documentation with an insane ammount of options to create  
documentation just the way we like it. Please note: Doxygen docs go in  
the headers. Documentation about the internal workings of FLTK go into  
the source code. I will provide some sample doxygenization in the next  
days.

* Table widget: (this can be done out of order) Greg's wondeful  
Fl_Table widget will become an integral part of FLTK.

* Tree widget: (this can be done out of order) A yet to be determined  
tree browser widget will be integrated into FLTK. Alternatively, the  
existing Browser will be rejuvinated and extended quite substantially.

* native file chooser: (this can be done out of order) careful  
integration of the native file chooser as the default option. The  
original chooser will have to remain for compatibility. Details to  
follow.

* Printing support: (this can be done out of order) It is allready in  
Fluid, so why not open up printing to the rest of FLTK. We need a good  
API and some tweaks for the printing UI.



A few words on stability:

Please don't ask us to push tons of tiny features into the new FLTK.  
We will have toime for that later. 1.3 will contain the most  
desperatly needed features in what is hopefully going to be a very  
short time and without ever losing the focus on stability. As soon as  
the features above are tested and OK'd, we will move on to 1.4  
quickly. 1.4 focus on reorganisation of the source tree and the demo  
application. A stable 1.4 will then be the base for a systematically  
approach to integrating more excotic features without losing the F or  
L in FL ;-) .



A few words on versioning:

FLTK has a quite convoluted version numbering. FLTK 1.3 follows FLTK  
1.1. FLTK 1.2 is retired, but some of its features will flow into 1.3.  
FLTK 2 uses a quite different API and is not touched in this whole  
discussion. Both version will remain incompatible for quite a while,  
until a merge of APIs and code base may become feasible.


Matthias

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http://robowerk.com/