| 1 | Wcl 2.0 is Now Available |
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| 2 | ************************ |
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| 3 | |
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| 4 | Wcl is the Widget Creation Library. It allows all Look and Feel |
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| 5 | aspects for an application to be specified in Xrm resource files, |
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| 6 | leaving your application code to consist of a simple main() and |
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| 7 | callback procedures. Wcl greatly reduces the learning curve for |
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| 8 | developing applications with Widget based user interfaces, yet does not |
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| 9 | restrict the developers to platforms, widget sets, nor development |
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| 10 | languages. |
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| 11 | |
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| 12 | Wcl is widget set independent, but Xt Intrinsics dependent. Wcl can be |
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| 13 | used on Xt Intrinsics from X11R3, Motif 1.0 (X11R3.5? as with SCO ODT), |
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| 14 | X11R4, and X11R5. Some capabilities are not available on Xt Intrinsic |
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| 15 | versions before X11R5. |
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| 16 | |
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| 17 | Wcl is portable: the distribution has been built and tested on |
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| 18 | platforms with SVR3, SVR4, SunOS, and other varieties of UNIX. Some |
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| 19 | embriotic support for VMS is also provided. Systems with dynamic |
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| 20 | linking (SunOS and SVR4) which have dlopen() and dlsym() can also |
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| 21 | invoke dynamically bound callbacks and actions from shared libraries. |
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| 22 | |
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| 23 | Support for Athena, Cornell, Motif, and OpenLook widgets are provided |
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| 24 | with campanion libraries (widget set registration functions) and |
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| 25 | resource interpreters with many example resource files. |
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| 26 | |
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| 27 | The Table widget, initially implemented by David Harrison while he |
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| 28 | was at UCBerkeley, has been re-implemented in two forms: XpTable is |
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| 29 | derived from the Xt Composite class and can be used with all widget |
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| 30 | sets except Motif 1.0, and XmpTable can be used with any release |
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| 31 | of Motif. |
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| 32 | |
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| 33 | New Capabilities: |
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| 34 | Mapping Agents - map arbitrary data to widgets. |
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| 35 | Templates - Useful for defining constructors in resource files, |
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| 36 | and for "resource scoping". X11R5 ONLY. |
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| 37 | Argv Parsing - easier to set resource file, AppShell class. |
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| 38 | Error Database - all messages can be tailored. |
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| 39 | New WcCreate() - much faster, more consistent, better creation |
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| 40 | ordering, better creation time callbacks. |
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| 41 | UndefinedCB - Useful for prototypign and incremental development. |
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| 42 | WcInitialize() - so Wcl can be used even if it does not create the |
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| 43 | initial widget tree. |
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| 44 | Dynamic Creation- New functions: WcCreateChild(), WcCreatePopup() |
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| 45 | and WcCreateRoot() return new child Widget. |
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| 46 | Invoke*() - WcInvokeAction(), WcInvokeNamedAction(), and |
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| 47 | WcInvokeCallback() make it easy to implement |
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| 48 | application behaviors as either CB or Action |
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| 49 | procedures, yet make the behaviors available |
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| 50 | as both CB and Actions. |
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| 51 | WcSetValue - Multiple resource values can be set from String |
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| 52 | specifications. Three interfaces: WcSetValue(), |
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| 53 | WcSetValueFromString(), WcSetValueFromStringAndType(). |
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| 54 | New CBs & ACTs - WcMap(), WcUnmap(), WcInstallAccelerators(), |
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| 55 | WcInstallAllAccelerators(), WcCreateRoot(), |
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| 56 | WcSpawn(), WcPrintTree(), WcPositionTransient(), |
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| 57 | WcSetValues(*re-worked*), WcOnceOnly(), |
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| 58 | WcAddCallbacks(), WcRemoveCallbacks(), |
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| 59 | WcTranslations() |
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| 60 | Dynamic Binding - WcDynamicAction(), WcDynamicCallback(), |
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| 61 | SunOS and SVR4 ONLY |
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| 62 | |
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| 63 | Wcl2.0 is NOT Wcl 1.07! I took liberties with the interfaces: in some |
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| 64 | cases the interfaces are different and incompatible. |
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| 65 | |
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| 66 | No-ops: WcAllowDuplicate*Registration() |
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| 67 | Enhanced (slightly different): WcLoadResourceFile(), WcSetValue(), |
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| 68 | XmpTable. |
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| 69 | Different (incompatible): the template mechanism. |
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| 70 | Removed: WcSetTypeValue(), |
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| 71 | many macros in WcCreateP.h. |
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| 72 | |
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| 73 | The XmpTable and XpTable widgets are complete re-writes of the previous |
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| 74 | Table widget originally written by David Harrison when he has at the |
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| 75 | University of California, Berkeley in 1989. The Table widget has long |
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| 76 | been distributed with Wcl. The new Table widget provides all of the |
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| 77 | same capabilites, with a few improvements and bug fixes. |
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| 78 | |
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| 79 | Wcl will be distributed on comp.sources.x and source archive servers |
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| 80 | including export.lcs.mit.edu |
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| 81 | |
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| 82 | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
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| 83 | David E. Smyth David.Smyth@sniap.mchp.sni.de |
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| 84 | Object/X Researcher david@ap542.uucp |
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| 85 | Esprit Research david%ap542@ztivax.siemens.com |
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| 86 | Funding provided by: Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG |
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| 87 | AP 154, Carl-Wery-Str 22, Munich 83 Germany |
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| 88 | |
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