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