DN456403107

Subject: ANNOUNCE: Tcl/Tk 8.1b2 - DN [1]

Brent Welch <welch@scriptics.com> - 19 Mar 1999 - comp.lang.tcl

 Tcl/Tk 8.1b2 Release Announcement
 March 16, 1999

 We are pleased to announce the 8.1b2 releases of the Tcl scripting
 language and the Tk toolkit.
 Tcl/Tk 8.1 introduces several significant new features, including full
 internationalization support, thread-safety, and an improved regular
 expression package.
 This beta2 release is essentially feature
 complete, but it is still beta quality. An important improvement in this
 release is that several changes have been made to restore compatibility
 with 8.0 at the C API level so that extensions can be made to work with
 both Tcl8.0 and Tcl 8.1 versions.  A significant portion of the code and ideas
 for
 features in this release were contributed by the Tcl user community
 A separate posting will acknowledge and thank those contributors.

 Where to get the new releases:
 ------------------------------

 Tcl 8.1b2 and Tk 8.1b2 are available by public FTP from ftp.scriptics.com
 in the directories /pub/tcl/tcl8_1 and /pub/tcl/mac.  Within a few days
 they will also appear at numerous mirror sites around the Internet.  The
 easiest way to retrieve these releases is via the Scriptics Web page for
 the 8.1 releases:
         http://www.scriptics.com/software/8.1.html

 (The Macintosh releases are not yet ready, but we expect these to be
 built relatively soon.)

 For additional information:
 ---------------------------

 For complete information about all the Tcl/Tk resources available on the
 Internet, visit the Tcl Resource Center at Scriptics:
         http://www.scriptics.com/resource/

 Summary of changes since Tcl/Tk 8.1b1:
 -------------------

 Below is a summary of the most important changes in the 8.1b2 releases.
 For a complete list of all changes, see the "changes" files in the Tcl
 and Tk source distributions.

 1.Integrated the stub library mechanism contributed by Paul Duffin,
 Jan Nijtmans, and Jean-Claude Wippler.  This feature will make it
 possible to write extensions that support multiple versions of Tcl
 simultaneously.  It also makes it possible to dynamically load
 extensions into statically linked interpreters.  This patch includes
 the following changes:
       - Added a Tcl_InitStubs() interface
       - Added Tcl_PkgProvideEx, Tcl_PkgRequireEx, Tcl_PkgPresentEx,
         and Tcl_PkgPresent.
 More information about using the stubs interface in your extensions
 can be found at http://www.scriptics.com/support/howto/stubs.html

 2. Restored the Tcl_ObjSetVar2/Tcl_ObjGetVar2 interfaces from 8.0 and
 renamed the Tcl_GetObjVar2/Tcl_SetObjVar2 interfaces to Tcl_GetVar2Ex
 and Tcl_SetVar2Ex.  This should provide better compatibility with 8.0.

 3. Made the eval interfaces compatible with 8.0 by renaming Tcl_EvalObj
 to Tcl_EvalObjEx, renaming Tcl_Eval2 to Tcl_EvalEx and restoring
 Tcl_EvalObj and Tcl_GlobalEvalObj interfaces so they match Tcl 8.0.

 4. Replaced Tcl_AlertNotifier with Tcl_ThreadAlert since the
 Tcl_AlertNotifier function relied on passing internal data structures.

 5. Added a Tcl_GetVersion API to make it easier to check the Tcl
 version and patch level from C.

 6. On Windows, the channel drivers for consoles and serial ports now
 completely support file events.

 7. Improved the -command option of the lsort command to better use the
 object system for improved performance (about 5x speed up).

 8. Added tcl_platform(user) to provide a portable way to get the name
 of the current user.

 9. Applied various patches to improve the configure process.

 10. Several Tk bug fixes including (but not limited to):
     - Fixed bug in "grid forget" that led to crashes in rare cases.
     - Improved behavior of "focus -force" on Windows.
     - Under Windows, changed so toplevels that aren't resizable don't
       have resize handles and the zoom box is disabled.
     - Configure bug fix for TK_LD_SEARCH_FLAGS
     - Changed to treat zero width lines in the canvas like they have
       width 1 for purposes of selection
     - Added a workaround for a bug in GetTextExtentExPoint on Win
       NT 4.0/Japanese that cause a crash in some cases.

 11. Changed keyboard shortcuts for menus so they will only be
 found in the current toplevel.  Previously, they might be found in
 menus attached to other toplevels that might not even be mapped.

 12. Tk is now thread safe.  You enable this by configuring with
 --enable-threads.  Tcl must also be compiled with --enable-threads.

 13. Under Windows, wish can now inherit pipe handles on stdio so it is
 possible to use the wish executable in a command pipeline to capture
 the output of puts or read from the pipe with gets.

 14. Tk now uses the new stub library feature in Tcl.  The Tk library
 now contains no direct references to any symbols in Tcl.  In addition,
 there is a new Tk_MainEx() function that takes an interpreter as an
 argument.

 --    Brent Welch    <welch@scriptics.com>
     http://www.scriptics.com
     Scriptics: The Tcl Platform Company