Revision control
++ Qt 2.1 introduces new features as well as many improvements over the
++ 2.0.x series. This file will only give an overview of the main changes
++ since version 2.0.2. A complete list would simply be too large to be
++ useful. For more detail see the online documentation which is included
++ in this distribution, and also available on
++
++ The Qt version 2.1 series is binary compatible with the 2.0.x
++ series - applications compiled for 2.0 will continue to run with 2.1.
++
++ As with previous Qt releases, the API and functionality of Qt is
++ completely portable between Microsoft Windows and X11. It is also portable
++ between Windows 95, 98 and NT; unlike most toolkits, Qt lets a single
++ executable work on all three.
++
++ ****************************************************************************
++ * Overview *
++ ****************************************************************************
++
++ As usual, large sections of the documentation have been revised and
++ lots of new documentation has been added.
++
++ Much work went into existing classes, based on all the feedback we got
++ from our users. A warm thank you to you all at this point, we honestly
++ hope to satisfy most of your wishes with the new release.
++
++ Among the things that got a lot of polishing is the new geometry
++ management system that was introduced with the 2.x series. Some
++ classes, such as QBoxLayout, have been rewritten and many size hints
++ and size policies were optimized. As usual with newly introduced
++ systems, the occasional bug has been fixed as well. As a result,
++ layout in Qt-2.1 is not only nicer but also faster.
++
++ Big parts of the file dialog have been rewritten. It is now
++ synchronized in terms of features with the common Windows dialog,
++ including fancy drag'n'drop and in-place renaming. You can customize
++ both parts of the dialog, the front-end with info and preview widgets,
++ the back-end with different network protocols (see the QFileDialog and
++ QNetworkProtocol documentation for details).
++
++ Especially interesting for dynamic Qt applications is the newly
++ introduced property system. Many interesting things, from scripting up
++ to graphical user interface builders, become easier. The technology
++ requires a new macro Q_PROPERTY and a new revision of Qt's meta object
++ compiler (moc). See the Qt documentation for details.
++
++ Due to strong customer demand, we added a cross-platform way to easily
++ implement multi-document interfaces (known as 'MDI'). The widget is
++ called QWorkspace and makes this task trivial.
++
++ On X11, text dropping from Motif drag'n'drop applications has been
++ added, to make your Qt applications inter-operable with those Motif
++ applications that survived Y2K.
++
++ The rich text system, first introduced in Qt-2.0, has been
++ revised. Apart from great speed improvements, it now supports HTML
++ tables as well as floating images.
++
++ QMultiLineEdit, the text input field in Qt, got the missing word wrap
++ functionality. It's probably the last big extension we will add to
++ that widget. In Qt 3.0, it will be replaced by a fancier, faster and
++ more powerful QTextEdit widget that also deals with different colors
++ and fonts in a way similar to the existing QTextView.
++
++ Qt follows the respective GUI style guides even more closely. This
++ includes honoring desktop settings, and keyboard shortcuts such as
++ Ctrl-Z/Y for undo/redo in line edit and multi-line edit
++ controls. Dialog handling for both modal and non-modal dialogs has
++ been improved to follow the platform conventions precisely.
++
++ With QIconView, we added a powerful new visualization widget similar
++ to QListView and QListBox. It contains optinally labelled pixmap items
++ that the user can select, drag around, rename, delete and more.
++
++ Compared to the previous release, we have managed to reduce overall
++ memory consumption while improving execution speed and features.
++
++ Below is a list of the major new features in existing classes as well
++ as short descriptions of all new classes and the changes in some of
++ the extensions shipped with Qt.
++
++
++ ****************************************************************************
++ * New major features in existing classes *
++ ****************************************************************************
++
++ QApplication - new function wakeUpGuiThread() to simplify using threads
++ with Qt.
++
++ QArray - added sorting and binary search.
++
++ QColor - custom color support added. qRgb(r,g,b) helper function
++ now sets an opaque alpha value instead of a transparent
++ one.
++
++ QComboBox - support for text items with icons.
++
++ QFileDialog - many new features including fancy drag'n'drop
++ and in-place renaming.
++ Methods like setInfoPreviewWidget()and
++ setContentsPreviewWidget() make it easy to customize
++ the dialog extensively. With QUrlOperator and the
++ QNetworkProtocol abstraction, the dialog can operate
++ transparently by various different network protocols,
++ such as HTTP and FTP (see the Network Extension).
++
++ QFocusEvent - carries a reason() for the event. Possible reasons are
++ Mouse, Tab, ActiveWindow, ShortCut and other. The
++ addition makes line edit controls behave properly.
++
++ QHeader - added optional visual sort indicator. Revisited API that
++ operates on sections only (solves the 'logical' vs. 'actual'
++ index confusion). A reworked 'table' example shows how
++ to use QHeader in combination with a scrollview to create
++ a simple spreadsheet.
++
++ QListBox - many signals and functions added for convenience and
++ greater flexibility.
++
++ QListView - various selections modes similar to QListBox, many
++ new functions and signals added for convenience and
++ greater flexibility.
++
++ QMainWindow - implemented draggable and hidable toolbars. A menubar
++ can be made draggable by simply putting it in a toolbar.
++
++ QMetaObject - Parts of the API made public. The meta object allows
++ applications to access information about an object's
++ properties as well as its signals and slots.
++
++ QMultiLineEdit - added different word wrap modes: WidgetWidth,
++ FixedPixelWidth and FixedColumnWidth.
++
++ QObject - property access functions property() and setProperty().
++
++ QPen - added adjustable cap and join styles.
++
++ QPopupMenu - added support for tear-off menus, custom items
++ and widget items.
++ A new function setItemParameter() makes it possible
++ to distinguish between several menu items connected to
++ one single slot.
++
++ QPrinter - Now allows printing to the default printer without doing
++ setup() first.
++
++ QProgressDialog - auto-reset and auto-close modes.
++
++ QPushButton - added a menu button mode with setPopup().
++
++ QScrollView - support for auto-scrolling on drag move events (drag
++ auto scroll mode).
++
++ QSignal - optional additional integer parameter for the emitted
++ signal.
++
++ QSimpleRichText - added adjustSize() function that implements a clever
++ size hint. Vertical break support for printing. inText()
++ hit test.
++
++ QSpinBox - different button symbols, currently UpDownArrows and
++ PlusMinus.
++
++ QSplitter - supports three resize modes now, Stretch, KeepSize
++ and FollowSizeHint.
++
++ QString - new functions setUnicode(), setUnicodeCodes(), setLatin1(),
++ startsWith() and endsWith()
++
++ QStringList - new functions fromStrList(), split(), join() and grep().
++
++ QStyle - some extensions for menu button indicators, default
++ button indicators, variable scrollbar extends and toolbar
++ handles.
++
++ QStyleSheet - a couple of tags added to the default sheet, such as
++ U, NOBR, HEAD, DL, DT, DD and table support (TABLE, TR,
++ TD, TH). Many attributes added to existing tags.
++
++ QTextView - basic table support. Contents is selectable, selections
++ can be pasted/dragged into other widgets.
++
++ QToolBar - stretchable depending on the orientation (setHorizontalStretchable()
++ and setVerticalStretchable(). Added orientationChanged() signal.
++
++ QToolButton - added optional delayed menu with setPopup() and
++ setPopupDelay(). Auto-raise behaviour adjustable.
++
++ QWidget - new widget flag WStyle_ContextHelp that adds a
++ context-help button to the window titlebar. The
++ button triggers "What's This?"-help. The flag works
++ with MS-Windows and future versions of X11 desktops
++ such as KDE-2.0.
++
++ - New function showFullScreen().
++
++ - Enabling and disabling with setEnabled() propagates to
++ children.
++
++ - Changed isVisible(). It now returns whether a widget
++ is mapped up to the toplevel widget (the previous
++ implementation only returned isVisibleTo(parentWidget()).
++
++ - New property 'backgroundOrigin' that lets a widget draw
++ its background relatively to its parent widget's coordinate
++ system. This makes pseudo-transparency possible, without
++ the overhead of a real widget mask.
++
++
++ ****************************************************************************
++ * New clases *
++ ****************************************************************************
++
++ QCustomMenuItem - an abstract base class for custom menu items in
++ popup menus.
++
++ QFontDataBase - provides information about the available fonts. Not really
++ a new class (it was used internally for the QFontDialog),
++ but for the first time public API.
++
++ QGuardedPtr - a template class that provides guarded pointers to
++ QObjects.
++
++ QIconView - a sophisticated new widget similar to QListView and
++ QListBox. An iconview contains optinally labelled pixmap
++ items that the user can select, drag around, rename, delete
++ and more. The widget is highly optimized for speed and
++ large amounts of icons.
++
++ QInputDialog - a convenience dialog to get some simple input values from
++ the user.
++
++ QMetaProperty - stores meta data about properties. Part of the meta
++ object system.
++
++ QNetworkProtocol- base class for network protocols, provides
++ a common API for network protocols.
++
++ QUrl/
++ QUrlOperator - provides an easy way to work with URLs.
++
++ QVariant - a tagged union for the most common Qt data types.
++
++ QValueStack - a value-based stack container.
++
++ QWorkspace - provides a workspace that can contain decorated
++ windows as opposed to frameless child widgets.
++ QWorkspace makes it easy to implement a multi-document
++ interface (MDI).
++
++ QBig5Codec - provides support for the Big5 Chinese encoding.
++
++
++ ****************************************************************************
++ * Changes which may affect runtime behaviour *
++ ****************************************************************************
++
++ QDataStream / QPicture
++ To accomodate for improved functionality, the stream serialization format
++ of QString and QPen has changed in Qt 2.1. The format version
++ number has been increased to 3. Compatibility has been kept, so
++ applications built with this version of Qt are automatically able to read
++ QDataStream and QPicture data generated by earlier Qt 2.x versions. But if
++ your application needs to generate data that must be readable by
++ applications that are compiled with earlier versions of Qt, you must use
++ QDataStream::setVersion() (if the data contains QString or QPen objects).
++ See the documentation of this function for further discussion.
++
++ QPainter::drawPolygon()
++ An outline is no longer drawn in the brush color if NoPen is specified.
++ This matches the behaviour on Windows and ensures that the area
++ painted in this case is the same pixels defined by a QRegion made
++ from the polygon. To get the old behaviour, you can call
++ painter.setPen(painter.brush()) prior to painting, which will also
++ work on Windows.
++
++ QPushButton::sizeHint()
++ The size hint of auto-default push buttons has been slightly
++ increased in order to reserve space for a default button indicator
++ frame. This is necessary for a proper Motif or Platinum emulation. If
++ this change destroys your geometry management, a auto-default button
++ is probably not what you wanted anyway. Simply call
++ setAutoDefault(FALSE) on these push buttons to get the old behaviour.
++
++ QWidget
++ Font and palette propagation has changed totally (from "almost
++ brain-dead" to working). In practice, the only changes we've seen are
++ to the better.
++
++ QColor
++ qRgb(r,g,b) now sets a default opaque alpha value of 0xff instead of
++ a transparent 0x00 alpha value formerly. Use qRgb(r,g,b,a) if you do
++ need a transparent alpha value.
++
++ QPalette
++ It turned out that the old normal/active/disabled set of color groups
++ didn't work very well, except in the simplest hello-world examples,
++ that it couldn't be fixed without nasty hacks, and that during five
++ years nobody had discovered the bugs. So, we've dropped our broken
++ attempt at Tcl/Tk L&F compatibility, and added support for Windows
++ 2000 and Macintosh L&F compatibility instead. The Macintosh and
++ Windows 2000 looks differentiate between the window with focus and
++ other windows. Qt calls the color groups QPalette::active() and
++ QPalette::inactive() respectively.
++
++ QGridLayout/QBoxLayout
++ setMargin() now also works on child layouts. As a result of this
++ change, the geometry() of a layout now includes margin(). This may
++ effect programs that use QLayout::geometry().
++
++ QToolButton
++ The now adjustable auto-raise behaviour defaults to TRUE only when
++ a button is used inside a QToolBar. That's usually what you want. If not,
++ call setAutoRaise(FALSE).