wxWindows 2.4.2 --------------- Welcome to wxWindows, a sophisticated cross-platform C++ framework for writing advanced GUI applications using (where possible) the native controls. In addition to common and advanced GUI facilities such as frames, scrolling windows, toolbars, tree controls, icons, device contexts, printing, splitter windows and so on, there are wrappers for common file operations, and facilities for writing TCP/IP applications, thread handling, and more. Where certain features are not available on a platform, such as MDI and tree controls on Unix, they are emulated. A detailed 1800-page reference manual is supplied in HTML, PDF and Windows Help form: see the docs hierarchy. For a quick start, point your Web browser at docs/html/index.htm for a list of important documents and samples. Changes in this release ----------------------- Please see changes.txt for details. Platforms supported ------------------- wxWindows currently supports the following platforms: - Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP - Most Unix variants with GTK+ - Most Unix variants with X11 - Most Unix variants with Motif/Lesstif - MacOS 9.x and 10.x - OS/2 (alpha) Most popular C++ compilers are supported; see the install.txt file for each platform (available via docs/html/index.htm) for details. See also http://www.wxwindows.org/platform.htm. Files ----- The distribution is available in archive formats appropriate to the target system. Documentation is available mainly in zip format. In the following, x.y.z represents the current version number. wxWindows for GTK+ distribution ------------------------------- wxGTK-x.y.z.tar.gz wxGTK source distribution. You will need the HTML, HTB and/or PDF documentation (see below) wxGTK-demos-x.y.z.tar.gz wxGTK demos source wxGTK-samples-x.y.z.tar.gz wxGTK samples source wxGTK-x.y.z-0.src.rpm wxGTK Linux source as an RPM, without manuals wxGTK-x.y.z-0.i386.rpm wxGTK Linux binaries as an RPM, without manuals wxGTK-devel-x.y.z-0.i386.rpm wxGTK Linux minimum development system as an RPM wxGTK-gl-x.y.z-0.i386.rpm Add-on OpenGL binary as an RPM wxWindows for X11 and Motif distribution ---------------------------------------- wxX11-x.y.z.tar.gz wxX11 and wxMotif source distribution, without documentation. wxWindows for MS Windows distribution ------------------------------------- setup.exe, setup-*.bin Setup files in floppy-disk-sized chunks wxMSW-x.y.z-setup.zip Zip archive containing the setup files wxMSW-x.y.z.zip Zip archive containing all the files that are in the setup distribution As well as the core source, the wxMSW distribution contains: - Windows HTML Help versions of the documentation (docs/htmlhelp); - a Dialog Editor binary; - a Tex2RTF binary; - Life! sample binary. wxWindows for MacOS distribution -------------------------------- wxMac-x.y.z.zip Zip archive containing all source files (excludes documentation) wxMac-x.y.z.tar.gz Gzipped tar archive containing all source files (excludes documentation). You might prefer this format if building on MacOS X, since it preserves file permissions. wxWindows for OS/2 distribution ------------------------------- wxOS2-x.y.z.zip Zip archive containing all source files (excludes documentation) Documentation files ------------------- wxWindows-x.y.z-WinHelp.zip WinHelp documentation wxWindows-x.y.z-PDF.zip Acrobat PDF documentation wxWindows-x.y.z-HTML.zip HTML documentation wxWindows-x.y.z-HTMLHelp.zip Windows HTML Help documentation wxWindows-x.y.z-HTB.zip wxHTML documentation (for use with the helpview utility) Installation ------------ wxWindows 2 needs to be compiled before you can test out the samples or write your own applications. For installation information, please see the install.txt file in the individual directories: docs/msw docs/gtk docs/motif docs/mac docs/x11 docs/mgl docs/os2 Licence information ------------------- For licensing information, please see the files: docs/preamble.txt docs/licence.txt docs/licendoc.txt docs/gpl.txt docs/lgpl.txt Although this may seem complex, it is there to allow authors of proprietary/commercial applications to use wxWindows in addition to those writing GPL'ed applications. In summary, the licence is LGPL plus a clause allowing unrestricted distribution of application binaries. To answer a FAQ, you don't have to distribute any source if you wish to write commercial applications using wxWindows. However, if you distribute wxGTK or wxMotif (with Lesstif) version of your application, don't forget that it is linked against GTK+ (or Lesstif) which is covered by LGPL *without* exception notice. Under Linux systems your app is probably linked against LGPL glibc as well. Please read carefully LGPL, section 6. which describes conditions for distribution of closed source applications linked against LGPL library. Basically you should link dynamically and include source code of LGPL libraries with your product (unless it is already present in user's system - like glibc usually is). If compiled with --enable-odbc (Unix only), wxWindows library will contain iODBC library which is covered by LGPL. If you use TIFF image handler, please see src/tiff/COPYRIGHT for libtiff license details. If you use JPEG image handler, documentation for your program should contain following sentence: "This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group". See src/jpeg/README for details. If you use wxRegEx class on a system without native regular expressions support (i.e. MS Windows), see src/regex/COPYRIGHT file for Henry Spencer's regular expression library copyright. Documentation ------------- See docs/html/index.htm for an HTML index of the major documents. See docs/changes.txt for a summary of changes to wxWindows 2. See docs/tech for an archive of technical notes. The wxWindows bug database can be browsed at: http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=9863 The Windows help files are located in docs/winhelp. The PDF help files are located in docs/pdf. Further information ------------------- The wxWindows Web site is located at: http://www.wxwindows.org The main wxWindows ftp site is at: ftp://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/pub A wxWindows CD-ROM with the latest distribution plus an HTML front-end and hundreds of MB of compilers, utilities and other material may be ordered from the CD-ROM page: see the wxWindows web site. Have fun! The wxWindows Team, September 2003